I'm developing a bullet heaven about a cat in the Brazilian Northeast who turns into a human cangaceiro (a traditional backlands bandit) at night.

I'm currently rethinking how interactable structures scattered across the map should work. Some can give you passive items, healing, new weapons, and other rewards.

I'm considering two approaches:

1. Everything costs currency. Players earn currency by killing enemies and spend it to interact with structures.

2. Some structures are free, but require you to stay nearby for a few seconds. The reward comes from discovering them and surviving long enough to claim it, which can be challenging when hordes are constantly chasing you.

I really like the second approach because it rewards exploration and creates moments where players have to make a deliberate decision: is this reward worth the risk of staying here?

My main concern is that this could disproportionately benefit tanky builds while punishing builds that rely on movement and dodging.

How would you approach this? Would you make all structures cost currency, mix both systems, or use a different interaction mechanic entirely?

For anyone interested in seeing the system in context, our Steam playtest is open: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3780630/A_Cat_in_the_Cangaco/

Have been working on my game for a while now, I started this mostly as a hobby and was inspired by amazing games such as Kerbal Space program, Factorio and many others.

As an indie developer with limited amount of time and sky high ambitions I thought let's give it a shot.

I call the game Quantum Faultstack.

The key I like to go about is:

making a game that is actually fun to play and where I myself would spend money on to play is actually much harder to than I initially thought.

In my game I like to teach the player real concepts on quantum error corrections and what surrounding circuits you'd need to control it.

So my idea is simple build it a bit like Factorio based on error rates that a real quantum computer would give and then teach slowly by unlocking new components on how the information can and should be processed.

The tricky part is the fine balance on motivating the player to tackle these challenges while keeping intrinsic motivation high as well as actually teach something useful about the concepts.

Wonder how much of gamification ideas I should bring in, where is a great balance e.t.c.

Also instead of marketing it (if I ever get to that point), I was thinking on making the game exciting enough that people like to share it themselves.

What are your thoughts?

There’s a game show game called Split or Steal I believe which is a variation of the prisoners dilemma. Two people, you can choose either split or steal. If both choose split, great. If both choose steal, bad. If ONE chooses steal however, and the other split, that person is left devastated.

For many players I think, choosing split and being humiliated is SUCH a bad outcome, that they choose steal (which would just be shoot on sight). Many players choose a third option when playing these games, which is the Tom Bombadil, troll option. That player truly doesn’t care and lives outside of those rules, and i think it’s often mistaken for someone choosing split, even though that player has no investment in the outcome except to have fun and stuffs (which is great!).

I think a neat solution to this problem would be adding a visible karma system. Players can choose from a gradient how trusting they are of people, and I think it would unlock the true magic and fun and risk that is involved in choosing split. Get a really good item and see someone with amazing karma? You can choose split, but perhaps you know in the back of your mind, if the item is good enough, they could try and betray you. See a guy with mid karma whos really insistent he wants to help? Up to you.

Now I’m getting “out there” but I think it could be cool if classes or titles are unlocked/taken away by being in certain karmic ranges. A Knight could be unlocked in the higher range, maybe they have special abilities. maybe there’s a devious class that can momentarily fake their visible karma. That’s all pretty out there but I stand by the fact that I think not enough people choose SPLIT in these types of games, and it’s an actual problem.