I’ve played through a lot of TMT games, and still am playing through some, but this is one I’ve played twice (once on mobile, once on PC) and have not liked it either time. This is not to say that the game is outright bad, or to insult the creator (I’ve played 3 other games from them and they’re all much better), but that it has several features that make the gameplay frustrating and boring for me. This does, however, present several learning opportunities for new creators.
I have narrowed down my issues with this mod into a few separate bullet points:
- Buyable spam: This mod is one of those mods that are a cross between TMT and Antimatter Dimensions. Here, the dimensions* are each presented as buyables. The issue with these buyables is that you can generally buy a lot of them at once until you unlock their autobuyer, especially once you have done an Infinity reset. In its version of the PS layer, Damned Souls are also a buyable, which makes them incredibly painful until you get to their autobuyer. PTD was made before the TMT update that added the ability to hold down a buyable to spam buy it, but even with that feature, loads of buyables can still be annoying. Lesson: Generally, if it is taking more than a few seconds of mouse holding to buy as much of a buyable as possible, you should increase its cost and make its effect stronger to compensate if its current strength is important.
- Challenges: The Hindrances (challenges) in this mod are numerous, central for progression, and extremely boring. Large parts of each Infinity are just throwing yourself at them. They’re not even interesting, as they’re all just “X mechanic is disabled” except for “Impossible?”, which just serves as a counter for another mechanic. Lesson: A good Challenge is hard to make. Either make them present a new obstacle to force the player to use their brain when doing them (e.g. some of TPTR’s Hindrances or The Factoree’s competitors), or don’t have them as a central mechanic.
- Full game resets: In PTD, you will eventually hit a point cap. This will force you to Infinity to make any more progress, resetting to the start of the game in exchange for some buffs and a milestone. Hitting a higher cap forces you into another Infinity, repeat until at 10 where the mod’s endgame is. This is clearly based on the Big Crunch system from Antimatter Dimensions, but the latter is executed better. AD’s Infinity system gives you Infinity Points, which you can spend on upgrades to make the process of reaching Infinity faster and smoother, as well as Challenges which (mostly) provide new interesting obstacles to overcome and give a reward in exchange. PTD’s Infinities just grant some generic boosts and let you start with some of the stuff that you already had and add a little new content… not that they tell you what new stuff they add before you get there. Additionally, the content you need to go through to get another Infinity is much more complex than AD, and you have to slug through the challenges and buyable spam again. Lesson: Use full game resets sparingly, make sure that the content that the player must repeat is not too frustrating, and try to make it feel like progress rather than losing progress.