Welcome , Shifter.

A few days ago, I created this page and searched for some players for my game. My first goal was to get some feedback on my core gameplay loop. I liked the idea and luckily, it seems like I am not the only one. So I will continue the work and try to deliver a good game. :)

But what is next?

Looking at some feedback and my own observations, I discarded the idea of already creating the second factory. First, I want a really strong foundation.

The tutorial is way too much text and hard to follow. Building a belt is difficult. UI is rescaling. Those are some quick and easy fixes.

But that's not all.

What is it that really hits the sweet spot for us factory gamers? If a plan works? Of course. But we want to see how. Details. Visual details.

Where is my metal going? What is happening with it? How is this machine processing it?

I was happy with my machine design at the beginning. For a first try and a short first demo, it was fine. But looking at it now, it's just too simple. I want more details. Open machines with interesting mechanics. I want to zoom out and see that the machines are running. I want to zoom in and see what is happening to my materials.

Besides that, a better color palette. Dark on dark is just not appealing. Fast and easy visibility. I need to know immediately what this machine is for.

So a complete asset rework it is :)

But there is more.

It is a fast game where mistakes hurt. There is not really time to calculate everything like we are used to. Not much time to find the bottleneck. We need to act fast. 

A real factory would give you the answer where something is blocked. So I will use lighting for basically everything. Each machine will get small lights:

Green, all good. Red, output blocked. Blue, idle. Red blinking, wrong material in the input.

And for belts? Maybe also a red warning light if it's blocked for too long.

Last but not least: a heatmap.

Yep. One click and you see your factory with color codes and immediately see where a bottleneck could be. 

The tricky part will be: how do you want to fix this ASAP? Or is it a lesson learned for the next shift?

Oh, btw. The next patch will also be a rebranding:

One More Shift (OMS)

New logo. New main menu.

Let's see how all the changes will work out :)

Until then, the core gameplay will stay the same. Try out the demo ;)