Devlog
Mostly about the things that were wrong. An idle game is an economy wearing a user interface, and an economy fails quietly — the numbers keep rendering, the buttons keep working, and forty hours in the whole progression turns out to be a formality. These are the ones I found, how I found them, and what each fix depended on.
Economy
Every city multiplied income by six and left every price alone, so the six-tier shop collapsed a little further in each one. What a simulator said, why half-measures did not work, and the three lines the fix quietly depends on.
Balance
A tester reached the halfway point of a progression meant to last weeks in about half a day. The cause was one constant that never moved, and the fix was a single exponent.
Design
I replaced the standard coins-per-second engine with timed trades that pay lump sums. The average income is identical; everything about how the game feels is not.
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The player guide states as fact what these posts argue their way to: what automation actually buys, how the market phases move prices, and when to move city. There is also a shorter guide to prestige and regions for the part most people get wrong.