Post Jam Update 1

AKA quality of life or "should have been in the original" update.

Feedback on the Jam Version of Iron Sands has been great. Players have been generous in providing ideas to improve and expand upon the game! In that chorus was a common refrain: this game is jank af.

I submitted this game knowing that it had some pretty major deficiencis: there's no indication of whether or not a click will begin an interaction with a Crank or Ladder, the Web Version doesn't properly capture the user's mouse, and it's way to easy to fall off the Mech's big ol' head. Understandably, many players bounced off the game (figuratively and literally) when they encountered these problems. Those who didn't generally enjoyed the game! But for many, the price of admission was not worth the ride.

When you spend enough time with something with rough edges, like Iron Sands, it's easy to smooth them out in your mind. By the time I submitted this game (4am Tuesday morning to be exact) I had gotten used to the janky controls. Expecting someone who had never played the game and has no emotional investment in it to do the same is not reasonable.

I'm glad that I submitted the game and got to hear people's thoughts on it! Even if submitting it as I did meant submitting a seriously janky game.

This update seeks to fix or alleviate the most major deficiencies within the game. In the near future, I plan on continuing to update the game to add missing features (sfx, music, particle effects, etc.) But, with this first update, the game is in a much more playable state than the Jam Version.

This game continues to be a blast to work on! I hope it's now more of a blast to play!