It took me a bit to 'get' what was going on, but I like this idea a lot. It was a really fun surprise moment when the game looped with my new species. abiogenesis really fits both themes very well! With a bit of quality-of-life tweaks, I think this could be an amazing game, and I'm quite impressed at how the game communicated things without text.
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- The opening phase requires a ton of clicking with no meaningful decisions. QoL would be an upgrade or something that lets me auto place or auto upgrade? Or maybe the phase needs another mechanic.
- Breaking down each phase a bit further with gates to unlock features might help players learn what the different things are actually doing.. for example, in phase 3, I never actually learned what the "white dots" UI on the left did. I just kept clicking things based on what seemed interesting ignoring things that I wasn't able to modify / upgrade.
- Another (minor) example: clicking on the meteor doesn't appear to do anything, but if the cursor changed or if the meteor followed the cursor, that might help teach what's going on.