Really think carefully about "Why Credit-sink is needed?" "What does Credit-sink achieve?" "How do I balance the Credit-sink and Credit-generation" etc, Before you commit to one.
Otherwise you will turn the game into a Grind-fest that's plaguing so many games (especially html ones like yours)
Tho, since this game is centered around bad end, a meta-progression system like in roguelite games is a very nature fit. Also makes it "more like a game than a bad end gallery".
Agreed. Perhaps "Credit sink" wasn't the best term for me to use. I need to revisit the game's economy pretty soon, with the intention of making it less susceptible to spamming (because it's boring) and rewarding players who earn Credits from a bunch of different sources (because it's interesting).
In terms of meta-progression, I'm attempting to explore that at the moment with the recent expansions to the cloning system. As of Build 148, there will be 31 different mutations the player can acquire when they respawn, based on how they were bad-ended. Planning to add new content where the player's appearance is recognised and scenes play out differently based on it (i.e. Wandering into the Gnoll-Taur war on Taun while looking like a Gnoll).
Secondary to that is the new 'Kink' system, where your player character can develop a 'Kink' if they've been bad-ended by a particular type of content enough. This is intended to reward players who seem to have a favourite type of content, to keep their experiences a bit more varied. Again, it'll change how some scenes play out and maybe open up unique dialogue options with certain NPCs. Currently, there are only 5 kinks in-game and they don't do much, but a bunch more functionality is in development.
I'm also trying to figure out if it's worth the scope-creep to turn the act of rescuing your clones into a progression system as well. Maybe some kind of colony management sim, where you're building a colony entirely comprised of your own recovered clones on some distant moon? Possibly this would also work as the end-game Credit sink. Who knows?
Really though? If you need enough credits for something, you could grind on the prison with an autoclicker for 2 minutes. Besides, there are enough events where you can just get hundreds of credits in one scene.
As above, I gotta fix stuff like this. It's not that I have problems with the player
doing it, I just think it's really boring and I'd rather reward exploring.
Note that in the 1.0 of the game there'll be a cheat menu, so if players do wanna just have infinite Credits, it'll just be a button in a menu you can hit, no spamming required.
There is a Na'Ja event that requires you to have 10k credits for the bad end. The event implies it took all your credits (though that would be a major turn-down to even try it if it actually went through). I do think rewriting the bad end so that the black box immediately GTFO and locks the bank account the moment you hand over the 10k credit more as a failsafe for the overall mission (and that the AI is smart enough when you're intentionally being a lost cause) so that the "new clone" wouldn't have the baggage of being broke because of its predecessor.
I'm not 100% happy with these scenes. They were heavily inspired by 'Lane' from 'Trials In Tainted Space', but I didn't take the concept far enough. Maybe now that there's the 'Inbox' system in-game I'll re-write these as a sort of fin-dom thing, where the player is blocked from jacking off or sleeping with crewmates unless they pay their Master's 'fee' or something...
Your point is making the credit system already more complicated than this game is even needed. I do think it's more simple (and probably as easy) just having a page/location/[insert whatever] that acts more as a bank box where you can deposit and withdrawl depending on your earned credits.
I may just add the option to lie about being broke, tbh!