Great potential!

[Comrad S.]

First the good stuff: I like the idea of floating around in space and the setting offers many possibilities. The sound design is great and I love the duplicant looks and animations. Even in the gravest of circumstances (a.k.a. mopping), the game has a joyous and upbeat feel. It's cute. The suboptimal behaviour of the duplicants doesn't bother me and I feel like some small 'quality of life' improvements will go a long way. The behaviour of the gasses is a cool innovation and I really like it. It is obvious that there is still a lot in the works but even the bare bones alpha is pretty neat. I'll definitely keep an eye on your game, and I'm looking forward to what you have to offer.

In short, I feel like the game has a lot of potential. The biggest pitfall, in my view, is a one-two-punch: a lack of any in-game goal and a lack of variation. In my experience also the Don't Starve games suffered (badly) from this. While I realize some players are happy to play through a stupendous amount of cycles, without any objective besides "the optimal base", I am not of those people, and I'm not alone. Moreover, even if you are happy to strive for a long lasting, self sustaining base, there is no future in it (ironic, isn't it?): say you have a good grip on the mechanics of the game, and you succeed in creating such an 'optimal' base. There would be not much left to do... What would be the point in going on? What would be the point of starting another game, only to go through the exact same motions? The nihilism hits you hard (it hits me hard).

The problem here is the lack of (meaningful) variation. A randomized landscape does not equate meaningful variation. For example; one game a pool of water will spawn on the right side of your starting point. The next game it will be on the left, or perhaps above or below you. It doesn't matter. The game play (the short term goal) will be the same; you'll get the water. Thus, the variation is meaningless; it doesn't really change anything.

An example of meaningful variation would be a world with (almost) no water at all. Instead, it offers a lot of hydrogen gas. Now, instead of simply getting to the water as you always do, you'll have to use hydrogen burners (assuming they will actually produce water in the future), or something similar. Other variations would be for example: a map where there is so much water around it becomes an obstacle, many small caverns with a bit of water, some very large caverns, etc. The general theme here is more extreme variation. (Balancing them is the challenge.)

These variations demand creative play, which leads to a varied and satisfying experience, versus a continues rehash of the same thing. However, there is one more caveat: before you can play creative, you need to be able to make choices. If there is only one way to achieve or acquire certain things, you'll still find yourself going to the same motions and things will quickly start to feel like a chore. The solution is to offer multiple ways to reach an intermediate goal. In this game you need oxygen, food, water and to a lesser extent: power. Therefore, there need to be many ways in which you can get to these things (and I feel you're definitely on the right track with e.g. the ways to generate power!).

However, there would still only be the one goal, and so the variation will be limited since all paths need to lead to the same point. To address this, I hope you implement a something like a campaign, or stand allone missions/levels. For example; say the duplicates work for some malicious company and they get various instructions (one or more per level). This could be: "Gather x kg of this or that valuable material", "Escape to the surface", "Generate x Watts of electricity", "Produce this or that", "Capture one of all critters" etc. To make things more interesting, you could be given only a limited amount of time, duplicants, oxygen, etc. in some levels. Suddenly you have a reason to play the game many more times; variation is life.

I feel like these things are definitely within the reach of your game, and I really hope you'll take advantage of this! Of course it is neat if it is possible (yet not easy) to achieve a completely self-sustainable base, but please, don't make it the end of this game.

Good luck!