A game where you're just a cube but it's sorta great. | Minutescape
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 9 ก.พ. 2025
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#indiegame #roguelike #gaming #indie #roguelite #incremental #idle #clicker
Thank you so much for playing my game! I will thoroughly enjoy this video now while I eat breakfast :)
Edit: Okay this is not as relaxing as I thought. I'm seeing so many things to improve and balance further.
Just ran through the demo. Perhaps an upgrade to advance the timer more quickly or to start it from "later." As in, it starts counting at 5 seconds. Pre-loaded Escape Algorithms?
Definitely insanely hard.
Making the first few "+"-s always spawn closer to the box would be a good one. As I can see there is a high chance you live until like 20 spawns and you getting 0 as they just spawn at the edge :/
@@GlawiousAldredMarci You read my mind, I just got done programming that. It's now definitely more consistent and fair. I will update the demo in the coming days with all the feedback I got
I really love the concept of a bullet hell incremental, I downloaded and started playing 1 minute into the video!
I agree 5 minutes is not remotely possible. With full upgrades, everything within the first minute feels balanced, but as soon as the purple spawns it's over in 10-30 seconds. purples do too much damage for you to focus on anything else, they hoam enough so that you absolutely have to shrink to dodge and the spawn rate is also quite high. With the current upgrades I could only imagine getting 5 minutes if you got close to perma-shrink and movement speed almost 1:1 with the mouse or if the slow effect got reduced in charge and slow magnitude but the timer kept going while you're in slowmotion.
I don't know about future currencies but linking enemies with currency seems tricky, with economy being tied to difficulty it will get exponentially hard to keep advancing in tiers. I can't imagine the next enemy being harder than purple, requiring 30-60 seconds more to spawn and probably one shotting you for you to get 1 currency.
Then again, these might be opinions of someone who just sucks ass and god tier gamers have no problem beating it lol. Regardless of any balance issues or future content I loved it and will be keeping an eye on the full release!
@@DonReptar I think there needs to be a point were you can basically ignore red circle damage, so you can focus all your attention on purple triangles. so either more regen or more armor, that maybe only works on red circles.
not me screaming at 2:17 "THE MANUAL YOU UNLOCKED SOMETHING IN THE MANUAL LOOK AT THE MANUAL" even though i know reading is your true weakness
watching haelian play incremental games is relaxing, but just in theory :D
Real
haelRead
Had two chances to expand the box so he could move around better and he goes off and clicks EVERYTHING ELSE
@@stygianrenegade big box boring
If watching youtubers play games taught me anything it is that when playing and trying to talk and entertain can lead to "icon blindness" hahah
As a person with a modest amount of shmup experience I recognized the bullet pattern as "aimed at where the player was when fired" pretty quickly, and I already have an evasion pattern on tap.
In addition to it just getting harder the longer the run lasted, I feel that you were having more trouble with slower bullets and a wider arena. Specifically because the way to dodge "aimed at the player when fired" is to stay in one location for a while, then dodge to the next location, then move back to the now safe previous location. Once you had the freedom to drift, you changed your dodging pattern and it became harder for you.
None of this _matters,_ I'm just reporting on events using my own experience.
@@Jikkuryuu I love when people are like strategic military analysts for video games
It's not so obvious, but the slower bullets make situations where you can't dodge, especially when they change their speed while flying
@@rudzakilawliet1742 slower bullets spend more time inside the box
This thought process wouldn't work with this game. As soon as one spawns that is in line with both of your "temporary safe spaces" then you'll have to abandon both.
With the rate the red circles spawn and the completely random directions they come from, you're not going to have success from this strategy long term.
@@JusteazyGames it's not perfect but it offers a method to influence the incoming shots, once you have a much larger box you can move to a more triangular or even square pattern
the "spots" you're creating are actually the dangerous spots, not the safespots by hovering in 1 location you guarantee that like 3+ bullets will be shot there which means there is a concentration of bullets in one area and the opposite everywhere else on the field
I played the demo while i watched and had the entire tech tree finished and purchased by 1:02:00 with this strat for reference and I think I couldve played much better
If this video taught me one thing about Haelian, it's that he was likely expelled from The Prometheus School of Running Away From Things... for running towards the Things to Run Away From... far too often. 🤣
Upgrade: Attract ?
Haelian: But we already get the money when the bullets spawn!
Me: Facepalm... XD
The difficulty seems to be growing exponentially. On one hand, the dots are getting faster, on the other, there are more and more of them. 30 sec to spawn a green cross is painfully long.
After all the skill showcased in Ballionaire it’s fitting that your weakness is squares 😂
I laughed at this way more than I should have
0.05 health per second means 1 HP per 20s. When you die within 35s mark, you at best regenerate 1 health point.
Then the upgrades makes it 1 in 10s, then 1 in 6.67s then 1 in 5s, 1 in 4s, 1 in 3.33s and finally 1 in 2.85s
The game *does* count partial HP, so really you get 1 extra hit almost immediately after your first hit, then a second extra hit after another 20 seconds and so on.
I think it would be interesting to have passive abilities. Like "get a shield that fully mitigates next hit, recharges after a period of not taking damage" or something more interesting like "you can now go outside the box, being outside depletes the ability bar and staying outside with fully depleted bar deals damage instead, the ability bar replenishes while inside the box of course".
The bullets shoot at your exact position, so you have to think where you should go to make the next bullets easier to dodge. This is similar to a game I made as practice, there you also have to dodge the bullets like this, but that is just a 300 sec survival and not an incremental XD
Two techniques used against such attacks in Shmups are streaming(moving slowly to barely dodge shots while keeping movement space open) and feinting(making a big move in order to cause a break in the projectiles you can slip through to switch direction) but both of those are reliant on attacks coming from relatively fixed points or patterns
56:00 lol, 5 minutes ago I rewound the video to visually check the difference in size.
It's huge. But I guess the game fails to show the improvement of each upgrade.
They are good (in the long term) but doesn't feel good.
They actually show the area grow a bit when you upgrade then start the next round. It is very subtle.
@@DoragonKeiyou Yes you are right, I caught a glimpse on one of his last upgrade.
You'll be happy to know that "Box size upgrade impact is now clearer" was a patch note basically immediately after this video came out 😀
I love seeing the Galactic Standard Alphabet. Decoding it back in Commander Keen was really fun when I was a kid.
Maybe when you find the "next" currency all previous currencies spawn one stage sooner or some amount of time sooner
Ooo
Or you can just make stages. When you find the second currency in the first stage it unlocks a next stage with another new currency. This would be useful only if you add more types of currencies (npcs). Player could also decide which level he wants to continue playing if the next level is too hard for him. In order to complete the game you could make it so that you need to research ability for every currency. Some abilities could work together with previous abilities so that you can still keep playing with just mouse. Last research would be just to finish the game. Maybe something like “prison break” or “quantum collapse” or idk. With some short cinematic at the end? Or even something more fun like just text “Now I am finally free” crating icon of the cube on the user PC (pun, now it needs to break out of the real PC 😁)..
Few ideas for new types of enemies:
1) instead of green squares enlarging you there could be types of enemies enlarging you (or keep greens making you larger and add enemies which shrink the bounding box when they hit you.
2) enemies which makes you slow on hit
3) enemies which slow down once inside the box and then stop and disappear inside the box (or maybe do a tiny explosion).
This would of course take some effort to balance. But would provide you with option to add one enemy for every new level or after certain time elapsed.
rough upgrade curve
I'll be working to smooth that curve out today, completely agreed.
@@MolterGames It's not a bad thing imo. Because upgrades are expensive it made me wonder what upgrade I'd rather buy. Usually in those games we buy anything and at the next run we get the other upgrade so we don't even have to think.
since the dots spown exponentially, and each replay is polynomial, it's hard to catch up the cost if each replay doesn't meet a set time mark.
What an absolute legend
39:15 The show magnet range indicator could be a bit more obvious, I saw it only at like second 40
it shows it at 30 sec when green spawns, but agreed. he made em green, so better
maybe, there can be some neutral ambient and transparent particels spawning in the area around which also get sucked in within the Magnet range... this may look nice, but my also confuse.
Definitely feels like the 90 second window is the "you win" condition for the demo. After the first minute, your upgrades are the only thing keeping you going at this point, and this is around the time they cap out for the demo.
it's rough being a green square in a sea of red circles, huh
Hey this is a first timer on your channel. Ive recently gotten into the incremental genre but i actually have a tip for these types of games. Considering the fact the game does allow multiple hits whilst actively playing (it gets insanely fast as I continue watching you play!).
You can actually minimize a lot of the damage if you decide to tank a hit rather than scurrying away from every single red increment. If you view it as hyper focusing 1 attack you'll eventually fall in line with 3 other ones.
Another thing i noticed as you further play the game. The bullets for the red increments actually track your last known location and shoots for it. If you go towards the areas you travel to less. You'd survive a tad longer. Which lingers the idea of hanging around certain areas to be a downside.
Personally, as a controller user. I imagine dodge this type of game would be easier. I give props to you considering you are using a mouse! Even if you have to, its very difficult to plan ahead with a block trying to follow behind where you're leading. Currently watching on my console as is a little over an hour in. You've certainly improved a lot compared to your earlier runs! Try not to beat yourself up too much. There is always a better way to handle a tough situation.
Nearing the end of the video now. I applaud your performance in trying out this demo. It makes me want to go play it when the game offically releases it. I'll check out some of your other stuff sometime. I've enjoyed your commentary throughout your play. Ideas for the developer to take note of. Overall great video!
30 seconds in and the game is already on my watchlist. That's a hella good advertisement XD
All the shapes are tryna go into the square hole!
😭
58:00 the reason those tvs are so cheap is they are selling your watching habits to advertisers and intelligence agencies, and are banking on you subscribing to additional stuff. Razor and blades model except most of their profit comes from selling your personal data.
I watched a minecraft speed runner do a run where he got an electric shock every time his character got damaged. He was still good, but WAY worse than he was normally. The fear of getting hit jammed his brain.
I think that you get much better at games if you get okay with losing and taking hits. You relax in adversity.
At 50:00 Having lines showing where the dots are going would become problematic as more dots came onto the screen, since it would likely fill your box with lines, making it so you don't know which "line" to avoid first.
The solution I thought of was making the line start as one color, and as it got closer to the box changing to another. So say it starts purple and works its way through the rainbow as it gets closer. This would signal to you to stay out of the orange and yellow lines, while the green, blue, and purple lines are (relatively) safe.
@@sonan333 the upgrades could also make it so the lines from the dots increase in length but don’t cover the entire screen
This is a really good game demo tbh. I only made it about 90secs and it's 5 minutes to win... I'm sure some god tier gamers can beat it, but man was it solid. Can't wait for full release. It's easier than he made it look, but it's still pretty impossible once you reach the 1 minute mark. Just too much to watch and not enough energy to keep dodging. Good video showcasing the game
The dark souls of incremental gaming
I love the dodging part. It looks fun ❤
1:25 I'm glad I can read Standard Galactic (Minecraft enchantment table gibberish) so I can confirm that the text actually does read exactly as it should when its decoded later
I thought "wow he's actually really good, those bullets are so fast" until i realized i was watching in 2x speed 😅
Lmao
Man i love the new Path of exile 2 gameplay
Unless they are planning to make some high price red costs, they should have an ability that temporarily repels the reds, but it costs a saved red per red you repelled (every fraction of the second you use the ability)
50:04 lines on the screen that shows all current reds pathes, that changes in color the closer to the center that the red gets.
Reverse node buster
I gotta say, half the time it felt like you were literally running into traffic... XD Like dude, you are IN a safe zone, you don't need to move! "I'mma go jump in the direct path of these 5 different circles!" Either way, thanks for sharing. I think I'll be picking this up. If you want to try something similar that came out a while back, try Seraphs Last Stand.
i downloaded the demo after i started watching and noticed they changed the costs of some upgrades but ended up with almost the same survival time 1 minute and 20 seconds so i agree the 5 minutes is a planned full game goal.
Nice game, looking forward to see it develop
This feels like a spiritual relative of Nodebuster
From the Steam forums: "Yes it is! I loved Nodebuster. 100% recommend it to anyone who hasn't played it yet."
The greens have to spawn like 10 seconds sooner. They are purposely just wasting your life away 😂
I hear you, I hear you... I will make sure to tweak some stuff and update it
@@MolterGames Love to see that you already took some of this feedback and implemented it and that you've engaged in the Steam discussions as well! Really looking forward to 1.0 and happily 100%ed Nodebuster on your rec after I was done with the Demo.
@@MolterGames I think an upgrade that makes all types spawn sooner would be nice.
This way over time you will start skipping directly to higher currencies as you progress.
I like the way the game does the manual.
36:00
I have now been screaming at you to “INCREASE MAX CHARGE YOU BIMBO!!!!!” for the last 10ish minutes😭
Oh… now I get why you didn’t get it earlier😅
Times should be reduced to 20/25s and 45/50s for "waves" to spawn.The downside to magnets is quite harsh. Maybe there should be more options to counter them (esp. when you go for wave 3 and don't need ress 2 that much anymore) or deactivate the magnet.
This seems fun, put it straight on my Wishlist. :D
I thought the ticking in the music was tied to the timer, or the gain of money... would have been a nice touch
This is basically Terraria's torch god challenge and I love it
incremental games my beloved ❤
yeah, feels a little grindy to me, kinda like, what I want is for something more fun in terms of gameplay or less tedious upgrade tiers. Or both. But to an extent, doing that would mean I get less practice at dodging the circles, so, it's a matter of perspective.
hey man love your incremental videos (made me buy a bunch of them myself) but us the audience would appreciate the qol upgrades like magnet range cause we dont get a feel for that as much as you, that’s about it. thanks!
A little bit in I tried the demo. I stopped and went back to your video to see the ending.
You came as far as I did.
But I chose the time slower on the research, so I only had time slow - Not the shrinking.
The nuke thing I never got to work. Shield was okay, but not as good as shrinking
Thanks for making me discover this game, awesome video and have a nice day to everybody that reading that comment.
"Bullets start slower" actually seems like it's making it worse, because now the bullets are spending even more time inside the box. Faster bullets would clear the box faster, giving you more room to maneuver
Until you can increase your move speed, the slower bullets really help you survive the early game, especially since they continue to speed up as time goes on.
"They spawn too far, nothing I can do"
"Getting in the corner is the worst"
Not like you could save just 2 or 3 runs to increase the box size...
For a minute I thought he misinterpreted that you're supposed to dodge the red circles. Turns out he just isn't very good at dodging them.
1:22 oh that's cool a manual
IS THAT FUCKING MINECRAFT ENCHANTMENT TABLE
Kinda! Galatic Standard Alphabet (or Standard Galactic Alphabet) was actually in Commander Keen first!
@somefreshbread star war language 💀💀💀
@@eWosMrV Nah that's a different one!!
I feel like the playtime on this one is artificially increased by the pointless 30s at the start of every run before you can even start to make actual progress.
As a note to the dev. The CRT effect is something that should always be optional in games. I personally don’t really like it as I feel it’s just a bit distracting.
30:30 "Reduces Growth Effect is now the cheapest green"
Increase Max Charge: Am I a joke to you?
Edit:
33:20 Ah, it was locked. 💀
Sometimes it looks like hes trying to collect the bullets lol
you can tell when somebody hasnt played geometry wars
20:51 I absolutely agree that anyone will get better at a game given enough time. I’m currently playing through Nine Sols, and while it’s tough, and might take me many more attempts than that the average player (I have a disability that affects my motor function) I do feel myself making progress with each attempt. Learning the patterns and getting the timings down, able to take out tougher enemies and eventually the bosses.
Idk if any of that applies as much to a game like this where things are randomized, but I’d like to think your reaction time still gets quicker. 😛
Your voice sounds so nice 😊
Love these kind of games and this one looks awesome aswell! I just wish there were more, it scratches all the right itches for me
Did u try Kittens Game?
Not really interesting for a video but it (mobile version) had me hooked for the last 4 months and still counting
Lol it was soo frustrating how long it took you to get the big box upgade 😅 when you could of just saved instead of buying the first upgrade available
why do you hate armor, it compounds with regen and makes you last longer = earn more 0_0
I feel like I grabbed it pretty quick 🤷♂️
man grabbing all the upgrades that help less the the currents ones out their lol
At least it's obvious that you aren't cheating. You got that going for you.
10:20 it does NOT look easy at all🙏😭
11:43 The enemy is on some Touhou shit, m'lord
looks fun it seems like its best ot save up for bigger space, as you are a fishin a small barrel, same 2-3 roudns vs spendign isntantly when you can
like had 200- and spends, it then has 300 and spends it
when he could wait till 50 for a bigger box
Lore of A game where you're just a cube but it's sorta great. | Minutescape momentum 100
Finaly, that game from GTA:Vice City arcade machine!
this games music scares me
My strat would've been to max speed and income first then prioritize other stuffs like box size and magnet speed.
Reason: The more speed the easier to dodge the red balls at the same time earning more. Gradually I would upgrade box size but isn't the priority
you are the definition of mobile game ads rage bait
not maxing out the magnet range is triggering me so hard 😂 29:42
So it’s a survivors game like vampire survivors just in a different skin… got it
TAS finna be handy
WAS THAT THE GALACTIC ALPHABET FROM COMMANDER KEEN AND MINECRAFT ENCHANTS ?
watching this feels like one of those adds for a crappy ios game where theey purposely mess up in the add to mkae you want to play it yourself and do it corrctly
The easiest path moves clockwise
Incremental games. I watch them, but I cannot bring myself to play them. A side thought and question for the viewers. At the max capacity of the Atari system, could this game have been made?
while I'm not familiar with the Atari's systems, given that Micro Mages can fit on an NES cart and that Asteroid already looks pretty decent, I think you could approximate pretty well.
very painful watching you get everything but the very big box.
I like the game, looked in the first 20mins.
When he is not playing an ARPG it is terrific to watch (I am sorry, just being honest)
Did anyone think the green things were health
Did they use the theme based on "Magic Fly" by "Space" (1977) for this game?
Cool game
Just a small suggestion - instead of trying to catch all those red dots, try avoiding them... ;)
Why is it that almost all youtubers and streams forget how to read as soon as they either start recording or streaming?
because they are trying to be entertaining which is a mental load, and watching someone pause to read carefully isn't exciting
Relax my man!
@@tshvahn I think I would rather them pausing to read than them missing important informations and progressing slower...
I think that the commentaries could simply be added during editing (which, in itself would increase their quality since you can really think and practice) so that he can completely focus on the game and increase the gameplay quality.
It would take very little edition to make the pause go completely unnoticed, lots of big and small TH-camrs do that and it really works.
Am I the only person watching this and saying Bigger box. BIGGER box…. BIGGGERRR BOXXXX
Impressive
Is this undertale combat: the incremental game?
I was so mad at you for not just saving up for bigger box cuz you weee having issues with dodging and I’m thinking “if you had more space you could dodge easier”😂😂 but I enjoy your gameplay nonetheless 🎉
You're sorta great. :)
Have you tried lowering your mouse DPI until your cursor stays within the green square when you drag it around?
This game looks kinda fun, but it hasn't released yet?
Looks like a cool little game but I'm not sure I actually need to play it now I've seen it. Seems like Demo was enough for a Demo.
I’d like to see color options for your square, maybe even other shapes like circle or plus or slash/hyphen would be neat.
Also, backgrounds - for the love of the game - backgrounds - I would love to see a galaxy theme and underwater theme ❤ best of luck with game looks awesome
Surviving 5 minutes is not reasonable in this demo. Maybe some Bullet hell god gamer can do it but the average player won't even reach 2 minutes.
The greens (and purples) take too long to spawn. The problem is not the long wait (30s and 1m) but the fact that starting over is boring. You can dodge everything (or even face tank) with zero effort and it's boring.
If the game was more engaging during the first part it would be ok.
Maybe make it 20s (15s with upgrades?) for Greens, 45s for purples (40s with upgrades?) or something.
Maybe an upgrade to skip 20s ahead? Start the game at Green stage.
For the final "survive 5 minutes" objective, it could be a "separate" thing from the farming stage.
Let me explain:
The "normal" farming stage could have all "time advancement" upgrades i mentioned (skip first boring stage/new enemies spawn sooner)
The "survive 5 min" must be initialized separately (click some button), start from "second zero" disabling all "time" upgrades and you don't earn any currency from this "special" stage.
Just some ideas.
Surviving 5 minutes is the goal for the full game, in this demo you will most likely only reach about 90s at MOST.
Thanks for the feedback and ideas, I will keep working!
This manual thing... Tunic-inspired?
I played this minigame in Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds. Those evil chickens were vicious
Omg I remember that and HATED it
This guy sounds like Nile Red and Squidward lol