Aether Mine was a tedious game to work on, but I had fun with it and I'm pretty pleased with the judging results.

• Overall: 112 (3.727 average in 24 ratings)
• Fun: 242 (3.217 average in 25 ratings)
• Innovation: 216 (3.273 average in 24 ratings)
• Theme: 165 (3.682 average in 24 ratings)
• Graphics: 46 (4.217 average in 25 ratings)
• Audio: 176 (3.19 average in 23 ratings)
• Humor: 414 (1.938 average in 18 ratings)
• Mood: 107 (3.619 average in 23 ratings)

First, a thank you to everyone who rated and left comments! Also, a shout-out to @cosine who left this screenshot of her colony in the comments, admittedly better than any of my own--

Criticism was much appreciated, since this is an idea I'd like to refine and maybe turn into a full game some day. 46 is a new record for graphics for me. I'm not sure how anything else stacks up against past ratings, except mood. 4th was my best mood (LD33), but otherwise I think this was one of my stronger entries into the compo. I'm happy for that, since my last LD entry was one of my weaker ones.

So, what to take away from the experience? As usual I think I was too ambitious, but at least I knew I had a tendency to take on too much and had some plans to scale back already in mind. That would be my advice to new LD participants: Make your plans, but also have a plan on how to scale back. Something will go wrong and cost you time, so have a list of things you can cut and an idea of how to handle the missing features. My best LD entry was a complete game with a beginning and an end. This game never intended to have an end, but as a consequence, could've used more variety to keep it interesting longer. But I think I cut the right things, even though some of the missing features were mentioned in the comments.

My original vision was a "mini Sim City". I've been playing quite a bit of Cities Skylines recently, and I had my own ideas for a city builder in mind. The end result was closer to an idle/incremental game. It's impossible to lose, and as such, while there is some strategy in building quickly and efficiently, there isn't any in surviving. That's the one thing I'd change going forward--build on the strategy elements. The framework for having individual simulated citizens is present, but as of now the game is more of an interactive spreadsheet. A revised game would emphasize managing individuals, construction of the colony, effective defense, and have some defined goals to shoot for.