DevShop
Games
idle management game
SHOW HN2019
393points
96comments
#58of 2,195 in 2019
Top 3%of 2019 by points
How HN took it
MixedNo clear lean
30 positive, 21 neutral or asking, 8 mixed, 10 critical, out of 69 comments about the project. Thread score +0.29.
Execution: 3 for, 5 againstIdea: 8 for, 0 againstDesign: 4 for, 1 againstPricing: 1 for, 2 againstDocs: 0 for, 2 against
The thread, comment by comment
Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.
positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker
What HN said
What people liked
Fun and addictive, with simple mechanics
From 4 comments
Incredibly fun game! Thought I would spend maybe 5 minutes checking it out and eventually turned into 30! You should definitely turn this into a mobile game, it can easily pass…
michannne on HNThis is a well made, fun little game. I accidentally sunk 20 minutes or so into it before I realized where the time had gone (just like real scrum meetings!)
kingbirdy on HNPlayed a bit, actually pretty fun.
bitwiser on HNThis is truly excellent. Well done.
mkohlmyr on HN
Accurately reflects Kanban and real workflow dynamics
From 3 comments
Simple and fun! Nice work :) Even in its simplicity there are a few similarities (lessons?) with the real-world that I think are worth mentioning: - Generalists (like the…
ivanmaeder on HNAs a founder who has operated in all the different roles, this game really illustrates the importance of JIT and continuous flow, which can be very hard to do consistently. Nice…
aaronschroeder on HNreally well-made game for vanilla javascript. I sunk an embarrassing 2 HOURS this morning planning this. Not a particularly productive morning. But the game was quite fun! It…
tajstar on HN
Clean vanilla JS, minimal style
From 2 comments
Took me a few tries to get the flow, maybe hiding irrelevant workers (and highlighting the appropriate workers) when you click on a task might help make it slightly more obvious.…
giancarlostoro on HNLove it - this is really simple and elegant
binarysolo on HN
Objections
Store items and self-starter behaviour are unclear or seem not to work
From 4 comments
That's really cool! I think my one complaint is that its unclear how some of the 'self starter' items are operating - sometimes they just sit there with stuff they can be doing…
RugnirViking on HNThe game is incomplete. Store items don't have any effect.
Geee on HNself-starter only worked once for me. seems like observation training has the same effect but much cheaper?
shawabawa3 on HNWell, they didn't seem to have an effect, and it says on the help page https://github.com/secretGeek/devShop#walkthrough that they're not implemented.
Geee on HN
Prices rise for every item, making progression slow
From 2 comments
Idea is good, here are a few details that really killed the experience for me (early game at least): - It is not explicit at which level of each "skill" each character is. i.e.…
glaberficken on HNAmazing, really loving this! One thing I’d change is that prices keep increasing, a chair should remain the same, keyboard too. No need to have “inflation” on everything. And…
diegorbaquero on HN
Hard to tell which worker has which skill; duplicate names confuse
From 2 comments
Idea is good, here are a few details that really killed the experience for me (early game at least): - It is not explicit at which level of each "skill" each character is. i.e.…
glaberficken on HNIncredibly fun game! Thought I would spend maybe 5 minutes checking it out and eventually turned into 30! You should definitely turn this into a mobile game, it can easily pass…
michannne on HN
Requests
Save and restore game state with localStorage
From 2 comments
I just bought my rockstar 10x tester an office cat, and then accidently hit the home button on my browser instead of exiting the shop. RIP office cat :< Needs to use local…
terom on HNTook me a few tries to get the flow, maybe hiding irrelevant workers (and highlighting the appropriate workers) when you click on a task might help make it slightly more obvious.…
giancarlostoro on HN
Turn it into a mobile or iOS app
From 3 comments
Incredibly fun game! Thought I would spend maybe 5 minutes checking it out and eventually turned into 30! You should definitely turn this into a mobile game, it can easily pass…
michannne on HNThis is great! Please hire a dev (lol) to make this a mobile game. Hopefully before someone else steals your idea and releases a shitty clone. (sorry to be a Debbie Downer)
bloopernova on HNOh boy, what till I show this to my team tomorrow in our stand up meeting :-) Being a product owner and using a Kanban board daily, I “lost” half an hour with your game. Nice…
NKosmatos on HN
Add project managers and cross-skilling
From 2 comments
Incredibly fun game! Thought I would spend maybe 5 minutes checking it out and eventually turned into 30! You should definitely turn this into a mobile game, it can easily pass…
michannne on HNCheers Ivan. That’s exactly what I was hoping it would show. There’s no cross-skilling available at the moment (I want to add this to the store) but that would demonstrate the…
LeonB on HN
Penalty for large backlogs
From 1 comment
Fun little game, and I actually quite like the look of it. For something so minimal, it has a nice feel to it. A couple of thoughts/ideas: 1. It seems like there's not much of an…
hyperpape on HN
Questions
How do self-starter and observation training differ and chain
From 3 comments
What's the difference between "Self Starter" and "Observation Training", then?
kingbirdy on HNDoes Observation chain in to Self Starter, then? For example, if there are 2 dev tasks and 2 test tasks and I assign my founder to test, will he test 1, use observer to go back…
kingbirdy on HNNo, the order is "Observation", "Self Starter", idle
swsieber on HN
How does the help button and skill effect work
From 2 comments
The game is incomplete. Store items don't have any effect.
Geee on HNIt's too real, the 'help' button doesn't work.
uname_amiy on HN
Alternatives named
Universal Paperclips
From 2 comments
I love it! Reminds me a little of the paperclip game.
sparkywolf on HNThe genius of Universal Paperclips [0] is that it teaches you the unintuitive ways that exponential systems work. Things seem to move very slowly, then they explode very very…
edraferi on HN
Cookie Clicker
From 1 comment
It's alluring but then I don't think I've played a Cookie Clicker game that wasn't. I suspect someone could make one about raking faeces and I'd still play it. In fact, there's a…
prawn on HN
Game Dev Story
From 1 comment
Reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_Dev_Story. If you were able to have people automatically grab tasks that would be awesome (which I see is already on your…
JamesQuigley on HN
Dope Wars
From 1 comment
This reminds everyone of some game or another, but ‘spreadsheet’-driven daily grind sims have been around for ages. I've seen similarly minimalistic coder simulators for DOS and…
aasasd on HN