Swarmslam
NOTE: This is a Demo of Swarmslam
Swarmslam is an idle incremental game about a swarm that smashes planets, cracks their core and moves on.
You don't control them, you just give them directions, give them more power and watch ore fly left and right.
Gather more power by cracking planets over and over again, invest ore to get otherworldly powers and become stronger, more efficient, until you satisfy THE CORE.
Lots of planets, lots of ore, sinks, skill tree, ...COREBREAK prestige, ...even trading?.. and more.
SLAM. CRACK. REPEAT.
If you enjoyed demo here, wishlist the game on steam https://store.steampowered.com/app/4866530/Swarmslam_Demo
Presskit: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/17c3XyFm_tx-koi8bYw2w_vtB4Nnf0bTC?usp=dri...
AI disclosure: generative AI was used ONLY as a coding assistant, in order to speed up code writing process, nothing more. Every design, architectural and creative decision was made by me, and no AI generated art, audio, music or writing appears in the game.
[incrementaldb_verification: joffarex]
Comments
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Will there be a way to export your save from the itch.io demo to the steam full release?
Currently I cannot make any promises as this is a first version of the demo and game is still being built.
However realistically not much should change in terms of save file structure so most likely whenever there is a steam release there will be an option to export save
The visuals and mechanics are fun, but the gameplay itself quickly becomes boring with nothing to do. Especially tedious that you can't corebreak without leaving the autoplay. Also corebreak feels pointless since if you reach it once then you probably can reach it again the next run.
Demo cutoff feels sudden and unexplained with upgrades locked behind telurium withouth explanation as well.
Anti-pooling unexplained- since it sounds like it should spread out the smashers- but you actually want them to bunch up to reach the core faster.
Overal good but needs sidecontent, be it story or something other to break up the monotony.
Reached 25 corebreaks, hoping there's something else, but nothing, so left with the feeling of there not being any replayability. Was a fun 2 hours invested, but as thought there's no hook to continue.
First of all thanks for playing the demo and giving feedback!
1. corebreak + autoplay - this is an interesting idea, i have not thought about it honestly. i will definitely experiment with this and try to see how it feels.
2. reaching corebreak next run is definitely something i've been wanting to fix. currently trying to playtest the ideas where the mine becomes tougher to break for each time you have reached the core in the planet. will see how it goes
3. anti-pooling - you are correct and some other playtesters have highlighted it as well. most likely it will get cut out or reworked
4. regarding demo cutoff, i do understand that, and maybe i need some more connection to put with the 10 corebreaks needed to "finish" the demo, e.g. when you first get first corebreak, maybe i need to somehow highlight in skill tree that "this is" the goal. I did want to keep other planets as a tease as well, after all this is a vertical slice of a full in-development game
5. regarding side content i understand the need for it, i just wanted to higlhight core loop with this demo. currently i have ideas, such as trading/clouds/cosmic tree/ore events/etc. but all of them are in development and will most likely be part of a bigger demo that will be released in next few months or be part of full game.
Once again, thanks for the feedback! Hope to see you back in the future ^^
How do you unlock 2 Pallas? Or is that the limit of the demo? It remains locked even after millions of resources
yep demo only contains first two planets, demo's final "act" so to speak is to do 10 corebreaks.
In full game "2 Pallas" will unlock much quicker, probably even before you hit first corebreak, depending on how you'd want to progress of course.
Y'all getting diamonds? I might be doing something wrong but I cannot get beyond gold. It took a bit for me to figure out that you can scroll down to the next section (I was also expecting an auto scroll) and unfortunately the scroll sensitivity on a trackpad is quite high so you shoot down all levels immediately.
Not sure how I should be getting diamonds though, I barely get golds even though I get pleeenty of copper and silver.
That said, interesting little game, wishlisted it!
Yeah it was highlighted to me down below as well regarding scrolling so QoL is coming for that soon.
Regarding diamonds, the idea I had in mind is that at first its a small grind to unlock next planet, where Diamond is basically common resource. I will be trying to make this be more apperent as well.
I'll have a look in trackpad stuff once I get my hands on a laptop.
Thanks for feedback and wishlist!
I've got all of the upgrades except collector ones, and I can't seem to make it to depth 10 to unlock diamonds. I've reset my runs a lot as well, trying to get good RNG.
Am I missing something?
Tbh its possible that you could've gotten extremly unlucky with the ore spawns or the slammer movement, or both at the same time.
I'll try to keep playtesting over the weekend and see what I can do to make it better.
Planet 2 is the Diamond Planet, and once you get Auto-Mine for it, take a shower and come back and you are good for a bit, lol
Some of the mechanics are kind of vague. It took a while before I figured out that the cursor collects loose ore. And I didn't even know that you can scroll down, I was waiting for the screen to auto transition.
I recommend a tooltip or some kind of explanation for what the cursor does. And have it so that your can scroll down slowly between levels rather than hard flipping between them. And make each level just a tad bigger than your screen so you have to scroll to see the bottom in the first place. This would teach players that you can scroll from the get go, and maybe have an arrow appear pointing down to the next level once the drones break through.
arrow/tooltips are good ideas! I'll explore them.
Thanks for feedback!
Good start overall, but balance feels off. First i had to grind copper for few dozens of runs to buy enough run time to reach diamonds and then, even when i have every non diamond upgrade, i can barely touch diamonds once every few runs. "Reduce pooling weight" upgrade doesn't help either, i bought it before i understood it's actually bad and i can't reverse it now...
Apart from that there are visual glitches when i switch tab and get back to the game (all particles scale 100x in size for a second or two), but it's a minor thing
Thanks for the feedback!
1. Core idea with the diamonds I had in mind was that yes it is indeed difficult to reach it consistently on first planet, but second planet's unlock requires 15 diamonds and its most common resource is diamonds, so my thought process was that in order to progress further on first planet, you need to unlock second one, to get more diamonds to progress on skill tree.
Maybe this was not properly translated in the game that the second planet would in fact produce plenty of diamonds to keep progressing forwards?
2. I will look into wording for pooling weight skill in the tree so its less confusing, sorry about that!
3. Regarding visual glitch, I am aware of it and have been investigating it, its web-only problem unfortunately only appearing on itch (as when i run the game locally in the browser its not reproducable) so it might take a bit longer to get fixed.
I'd appreciate your thoughts on #1, as it might be something that needs to be reworked / highlighted a bit better. Or I might need to rebalance the skill tree so progressing first planet is doable much quicker (re: making certain skills on the tree cheaper)
I, in fact, forgot that there are more planets and that i can unlock second one now that i have a speck of diamonds. Obviously now, when i ran it few times i got a good progression speed, so yeah, maybe a pop up window about "now you can unlock 55 Cancri e Janssen" whould do the trick
is the music inspired by glass memory by snaptic bc its very similar vibe and I love it
It is actually not done by me. It's this album from free musics archive - https://freemusicarchive.org/music/holiznacc0/lullabies-for-the-end-of-the-world
One issue I have is the game for one is laggy and for two when I clicked on an item, it wouldn't let me do anything else.
Can you please let me know on which platform/browser did you try the game?
I play on my Chromebook.
Cant move the skilltree, except to zoom out. But then i cant read the text.
Middle mouse button drag or arrows on keyboard should do it. Can you please tell me which browser/platform did you try the game?