I kind of hit the wall with the game. When I played it recently, I realised that it was becoming what I wanted to avoid. I didn't want to turn it into a long grind. My approach was about giving options, more ways to do stuff. But when you play a game that can be optimised, you will end up finding the most optimal way for your gameplay style. Especially when you have to spend time to unlock stuff.

How my recent playtests looked like? I stopped using little robot grenades, proximity mines, found weapons. I used to exchange them for Knowledge Points to get more Data Chunks, to get Data Blocks, to unlock stuff. If I could salvage a weapon, I was doing so to get parts out. All unused parts were exchanged for Knowledge Points. I didn't care much about reactor time, extending it, living longer to go further. I was tending to focus solely on just getting more Knowledge Points to unlock stuff. And then I was throwing all my grind out of the window by combining Data Chunks as quickly as possible. See, instead of gathering lots of Data Chunks to maximise assembled Data Blocks value, I ended up with trying to unlock stuff as quick as possible. I stopped caring for energy. There was plenty everywhere. Haven't used transfer kiosks at all. I thought that if I add a penalty that unless you get to the station, you get less or none stuff. It didn't work. Unless it's essential, you can only focus on a very few things. And you tend to choose fewer and fewer. There were too many different things to track. My mind ignored most of them and focused solely on getting KPs.

I created things that not only on the paper but in the game, on their own, seemed fun to me. They were fun. I had fun. But when all of them got combined - it became a dull job.

That's why I decided to stop, look at what I have and what I want to do with the game. Initially, I wanted to make a roguelite that wouldn't have persistence. Playing Everspace changed that. But after a while, Everspace became a bit boring to me. As many roguelites with persistence. The first minutes of each run are boring. Enemies are too easy to kill, etc. And then the difficulty goes up quickly. The first minutes are too easy, followed by a moment when the game is fun and challenging and then there's a wall. And if you fail, and most likely you will, you have to start all over to try a different approach. With hour-long runs it soon becomes discouraging.

That's why I wanted to have a reactor, variety of options, mobile starts (that were meant to be added) and lost what I really wanted to have in the first place. A game that, if you're good, you can finish right away. And if you do so, you want to do it again (instead of thinking, I have no time for another 20 hours, let's check some other game). If you're not that good, you may keep playing it over and over again. Although - I want to make it a mix of roguelite and an ordinary game. If you want to play it as a roguelite, go ahead. If not, there will be checkpoints. Hell, I will just add infinite ammo and health, so you can enjoy the story.

I still want to have an unlock system and weapon crafting. But these are going to be simplified. A lot. I'd love to focus more on the story as I think that I finally have what I wanted to have. I was going forward and backwards with it and while I loved some of the stuff, I couldn't put everything together. Decided to focus only on the stuff that works, so many things will remain untold. And instead of making it a game that focuses mostly on uncovering the lore and the world, decided to make it more about characters.

But first, I should simplify the gameplay to keep it much less convoluted. I haven't yet decided whether I want to do it in batches or not. I still want to try the open-world feature. Although I don't want to make a game about sidequests and side activities. The open-worldness should give you freedom where to go, although you will still end up with going with a linear story (now I am sure that I am not good enough to go with some experimental storytelling, one day I will try that for sure).