Dwarven Mint for me was like “omg, I like this idea, and I can actually finish this game” so I finished a prototype in 4 days then kept working on it quietly after work for 1.5 years- now I am swallowing my pride and forcing myself to show it to people even though my brain is screaming “no, it’s trash, don’t show it to anyone” but I love it and I loved working on it!!
It has the one thing I wanted from my factory games: just let me make a real mess and sort my way through it. The ores, nuggets, coins and (coming soon) gems are rigid bodies (even some of the smoke objects are rigid bodies).
There are conveyor belts, but they don’t just neatly move your items in a queue like factorio- they just apply a force. There’s also a speed booster, a bunch of other unlockable components to help you sort out logistics.
It’s still in its early stages (I guess) but who knows, you might have fun testing it out:
apple store
google play
I should throw in a trailer link (even tho I need to redo it… w/e)
youtube link trailer
One thing I have learned over the last month → avoid making shorts/tiktoks (or any material) that just says “I made a game” or that formula “I spent 4 years making this, come look”. They just look like ads. For the reddit posts too- I think it’s better to create something more like “here’s what feature I added this month”
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So what feature you added this month? 
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Lol, I know that feeling well.
It looks great for a mobile game. I do think you need a better trailer though. (Sorry)
@normalized this month I am implementing gems which can be cut then set into coins with a jeweler component.
The gimmick is that each gemstone needs to be passed through a polisher n number of times, meaning you have to build in some sort of check to see if a gemstone is finished being polished else have it polished more. (it’s a late (maybe mid) game thing so I made it much more challenging than the other stuff)
@pauldrewett At least I can bring myself to post it here- I can’t bring myself to show friends… not enough inner peace or humility or something. But yeah- def need to at least have a trailer that shows building mechanics
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Overall I think it’s a really good puzzle game, with novel gameplay that’s still fairly intuitive to grasp. The presentation is nice, the controls work well even on phone, all in all a superb package 
For me the complexity (and difficulty) went up very quickly, and by level 6 it felt pretty daunting. I tried the first bandit level as well, and couldn’t find any way to make progress at all… were I just a player, that’s where I would give up and not look back.
Part of that feeling is from the long levels, with multiple stages, which is cool but a bit involved for an early puzzle. The number of machines (as I’ll call them) available is also a little overwhelming - you could consider doling them out as unlocks, leaving just the ones the player has need of in the early game. That way each one is a useful and earned reward.
Some notes:
- Might be better to have the main menu snap to pages rather than free scroll. I’m not sure how the free scroll improves the menu
- It’s hard to get an overview of the world map - it would be nice to indicate visitable locations more clearly (maybe just a panel behind their text / an outline / …), and see information like locked/unlocked, levels cleared, and fully cleared, without selecting a location first.
- Paths could be clearer too
- It’s not clear what the down-the-stairs / up-the-stairs icon does, to me at least
Gameplay:
- The coin counting is a bit confusing. It seems like the biggest spread of (correctly) collected coins is 5, which I don’t think was explained anywhere? That feels somewhat arbitrary.
The count also seems to reset sometimes even when no incorrect coins have gone through, possibly when an incorrect coin gets stuck somewhere.
- The coin goals (like in Edmund’s Secret lv 5) are quite high, which means more risk of a late mistake that will force the player to start over. It can also get a little tedious when the “puzzle” is solved, and you just have to go through the motions to get to the finish.
- Might be good to show the name of a machine when selecting it, or make them more visually distinct. I regularly wondered what a particular thing in the level did, which is only described in the shop.
- Maybe long press or similar to remove a machine, it’s easy to accidentally remove one, especially on phone. Nice that they remain bought though.
