I'm going to be blunt in this and point out all that I noticed. Maybe it'll help you with the next game you'll make (or with this if you want to keep working on it).
This is a quick and cute game.
The mechanics are clear and easy to understand.
The screen with the combinations would benefit from being in the center bc that's where the player looks most.
The top of the screen get's very little attention bc all the gameplay happens below. Which is sad bc it's cute and fun to look at.
The colours of the mixing ingredients and dots in the screen should line up to avoid confusion. This could be aided by using a limited palette.
The colour dots on the screen get added in the oposite way as the slimes above, closer to the top( danger zone) than the line before. I would have understood it better if the lines would have pushed up from the bottom so as to show that the top most line is the one with the highest priority.
I personally think that you could have added all your mechanics into either the tower-slime part of the screen or the cauldron-room part of the screen. That would have tightened it up quite a bit.
In any way this is a good prototype. Congratulations on finishing a playable version on your first jam
Play game
Potion Thrower's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Playability | #214 | 4.500 | 4.500 |
| Theme | #653 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
| Cleverness | #678 | 3.500 | 3.500 |
| Artistic Style | #893 | 3.500 | 3.500 |
Ranked from 2 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Judge feedback
Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.
- Hey! neat game you've got here, reminded me of typing of the dead. Few criticisms for you to work on: i found that occasionally i would mix a potion and nothing would happen, I'm not sure if this is a bug, or if something was already in the cauldron. Some audio queues could help with this dramatically, like a sizzle noise when something gets thrown out onto the field, since the players eyes will be locked onto the ingredients and the board telling you what to mix. The art does its job, but I'd say that's all it does, it wasn't anything particularly nice or stylish. As for theme, while you did include the alchemy aspect of the theme, you didn't include anything that i recognized as using the shadow part of the theme. The concept for the game in general is pretty average, nothing ground breaking but interesting none the less. a quick glance over your GDD shows that you did document a lot of your ideas but i think the concept has a lot of room for expansion in many possible directions, more then you detailed in your GDD. Keep working!
- Super easy, simple, but coded well! The color palettes don't match very well, pink and teal were not a good match for purple and blue. Using the main color of the object would help with this. The top screen was actually very adorable! The only thing I would change on the potion line up is have it centered under the top and have it scroll with the enemy! This would make it work very well as a phone game too! Keep up the good work, art and design are really good with this!
Did you include your Game Design Document as a Google Drive link?
yes
Seriously... did you include your Game Design Document?
yes
Is your game set to Public so we can see it?
yes
Tell us about your game!
Enemies spawn and want to destroy your tower. To eliminate the oncoming enemies you have to mix potions. In the mirror you will see what type of ingridients are needed for a specific enemie. Click on them (or press the keys) to add them into the boiler. when 3 ingridients are mixed a potion is automatically thrown
Extra Notes
As it was the first game for both of us, we had some difficulties properly documenting our ideas, in that regard we learned alot
Comments
We really love the main mechanic, the game being more of an "activ" tower-defense. But we are not quite satisfied with the visualisation of the potions needed to kill the enemie. Thank you for taking the time to formulate valuable feedback. currently much detail is lost by the mirror being the main focus
Yeah, thank you so much for the kind feedback. :D ye the colors are not quiet matching yet
thank you so much, this sounds like a great idea! definitely we will work on this even after the jam, got kinda hooked.
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