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Well of the Synthesist's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Cleverness | #227 | 4.500 | 4.500 |
| Theme | #233 | 4.000 | 4.000 |
| Playability | #804 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
| Artistic Style | #970 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
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.
- The idea looks pretty amazing, it's quite the complex game you made there! It took a second to get behind what the player is supposed to do but I really like it!! And I could even create my own character? Sweet! I think a tutorial would make sense to make it easier for (new) players to get into the game but this is really a cool idea that I haven't seen here before. Well done!
- GDD It seems good. The pace of the pages is good and clear to understood. I would like to see some images and perhaps an viable minimum product schedule. Game The game cannot runs in chrome browser because of "The following features required to run Godot projects on the Web are missing: Cross Origin Isolation - Check web server configuration (send correct headers) SharedArrayBuffer - Check web server configuration (send correct headers)" EDIT: Managed to find a way to get the game playable on firefox. Good with the character intro and the settings menu. Big fan of that. The loading sceen were stuck on the 90% eternal hell... After reload, it works. However I dont understand fully of what is going on. Might be nice idea to included an tutorial to show how it is suppose to work.
Did you include your Game Design Document as a Google Drive link?
Affirmative
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!
On a tall mountain, within a deep well, sits a mysterious cauldron guarded by a stone statue. This cauldron is famous for many miracles, but the statue is known for bringing downfall.
Surrounded by shadows and spirits on all sides, is a true elixir worth the risk? Find out in this strategic puzzler where the position of your cauldron influences your alchemy. Drag, Drop, and Merge compounds to create the perfect elixir before you get struck down or the cauldron stops moving.
Extra Notes
Takes forever to load, thanks to the 9 gazillion shaders I put in this bit**. It also stutters a bit when some big boy shaders are shown for the first time.
From my very limited testing, it seems to play a bit better in Chrome (ridiculous ik)
The web version might get stuck during loading if you unfocus the window. Please be patient with it, sorry, thanks!
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Comments
Excuse me this is friggin beautiful what the heck?! It has a character editor, gorgeous effects, and an atmosphere that is really lovely thanks to the neat art and awesome music. I love it! I love puzzle games and would love to really pop off in this one, but I was a little confused tbh (probably my own fault, not yours).
What a terrific entry, great job!
Thank you for the praise! I sorta tripped up and made the game a little too vague, sorry about that
Alright, i'm back again. I decided today to read through the GDD, and REALLY give it a shot. I am BLOWN away!! I played for almost 2 hours, and had a ton of fun trying to get the highest potency concoction. The impurity/volatility is still a bit difficult to understand, but can absolutely be overcame by just playing with it. I think the leaderboard might be bugged as well, since it is only showing the top 3 scores, and the rest seem like they would be low potency, unsure though because I am still not 100% on what makes something the most potent :)
Managed to get up to about 3.5k, and it was an absolute blast. The systems on display here are not only beautifully done, but very interesting and unique. The mixing menu had a few quirks, and it was difficult to combine things that I was intending too, but that was remedied once I discovered that you could place them off to the side and they would stay there. Truly fantastic piece of work here, and I am really glad that I took the time to really dive in!
To anyone reading this, put your best foot forward and just play around with it for a bit, once it settles in, its so much fun!
Thank you for giving it another try! The rules for efficacy calculation are pretty much to use big particles (blue,pink,white), not repeat colour or letter ("zyz" bad, "boz" good), and have good synergy. The synergy value is determined by what particles are combined as it picks the value by sampling from a 3Dish noise texture using the particle makeup as coordinates for sampling (this one requires trial and error to figure out and even I don't know what particles combine to form the best synergy). 3.5k is a good score, especially considering how hard it is to grow particles up. I'll try and make a write-up to explain it a little better as someone suggested but I am happy you hear you had fun with it!
My game had frozen the first time. I had to reload to actually check it out.
The visuals are REALLY good. Good job on the aesthetics in general.
I couldn't figure out what to do beyond pushing the cauldron and combining random orbs, it seemed too complex.
It's a shame because it seems it has really deep and complex systems.
Maybe explain in the description or comments?
I might try adding a little instruction portion in the desc, I guess I'll have to put my lore paragraph at the end lol. Thanks for playing! Sorry about the freezing!
Amazing visuals, music and polish. Unfortunately i wasn't able to understand what do I need to do.
Thanks for playing, sorry about how vague the game is!
I had seen this in the discord earlier and the week, and was VERY impressed with the visuals. It looks amazing. The gameplay is a tad bit confusing without much direction though, it took me a good 5 minutes to figure out how to collect items using the cauldron. Conceptually, this is a phenomenal project! Loved everything that went in to the atmosphere, environment and ambiance. Regardless of the gameplay confusion, this is an amazing entry!!
Thank you for the praise! I'll try to work on better clarity in my future projects!
Loved the vibe of the game, synthwave music was awesome and visuals were cool. The alchemy system is not very clear from gameplay, although I appreciate the little tips at the bottom of the screen; from what I gathered in my short time playing the game you need to move the cauldron around with different places granting different elements based on the yellow/red things nearby, without the sentinal seeing?
Pretty much haha! After I got the main movement and alchemy system down I sorta added a new mechanic every other day trying to make a compulsive gameplay loop. Thanks for playing!