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Owlchemist's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Playability | #214 | 4.500 | 4.500 |
| Artistic Style | #318 | 4.750 | 4.750 |
| Theme | #588 | 3.750 | 3.750 |
| Cleverness | #678 | 3.500 | 3.500 |
Ranked from 4 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.
- I did not think I'd enjoy this game as much as I did, I ended up playing everything you had to offer (even while I'm terrible at platformers as of late). Besides that, the art style is fantastic; the controls are very cool to learn; the music was enjoyable from start to finish; and the implementation of the themes made sense (based on what was said in your GDD). I would definitely like to see the story expanded upon, and how the themes are used as a result of the story and gameplay as a whole. This is one I definitely enjoyed and cannot wait to see what else you do! Awesome stuff. P.S. Beep Beep
- Very good GDD, I loved seeing the whole design laid out with such complex details. Very cool! The ideas and foundations link very nicely to the game jam, and the underlying themes are mysterious & magical with an awesome soundtrack! Your training section was fantastic and well thought through. Thoroughly enjoyed my little play through. Feedback: Add the ability to speed up and slow down the sensitivity of the owl. Add more control to the potions that are thrown (things like increase throwing speed or distance it can be thrown) The rest of the game is nicely laid out and thought out, please keep going with this. I would be very interested to see how you implement new items and upgrades to the movement and the potions :)
- Great platformer. Controls are easy to understand. Sound effects give the nostalgic feeling of classic Sonic. Could lean a bit more into the "shadow" theme, but it's well done overall. Make more games!
- GDD Good with the logo of the game! the pace of the GDD is good. Nice to see images for inspirations. Good with explaining the game mechanics. Always show the images of the game and write the thoughts behind art down. Very good. Good minimum viable product. Also yes. Absolute gaming. Game At first I noticed there is a flicker in main menu. Probably a visual bug? Good with the settings! Good with the skip button! I noticed the tutorial text said [arrow keys] but I can use ASWD movement? I can stand on spiderweb? Probably a bug? The jumping and potion feels very quirky because it feels almost as they are ahead of time before I registered it in eyes. The level design feels good, but I dont like how the spike trap, lava and saw-wheels gives like instant respawn but fireballs doesnt.
Did you include your Game Design Document as a Google Drive link?
Yes
Seriously... did you include your Game Design Document?
Yes, did you?
Is your game set to Public so we can see it?
Yes
Tell us about your game!
Owlchemist is a 2D precision platformer about an alchemist who was evicted by a shadow wizard from his tower. Your goal is to take back your tower!
Keyboard controls:
Move: Left & Right arrow keys
Aim: Up & Down arrow keys
Jump: X
Throw potion: Z
Interact: C
Swap potion: V
Pause: Escape
Gamepad controls:
Move & Aim: Left Stick
Jump: A
Throw potion: X
Interact: Y
Swap potion: B
Pause: Start
Extra Notes
All assets were made during the jam with the exception of a few minor systems (collision, drawing utils, etc)
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Comments
Congrats on being TOP #8!
Not too bad, the ending was ridiculous. Not typically one who likes precision platformers, but this was good time. Would have been nice to have one more potion that had to do with motion. Great work though! Controls were tight, movement was good overall. found the best strat for the final boss was just to bounce around the last arena.![]()
Awesome as hell. smooth gameplay and awesome art/music. The level of polish on the game is amazing and I love the shadow wizard money gang cameo. One thing that I would change is the velocity at which the explosion propells you is quite fast, at times it almost feels like a teleport
Great game, but I will write a honest feedback for you as a team mainly beacause I got a feedback like this and this elevated our game design a lot. You should get out of the confort zone. The game is great? Yeah. The art is polished and the controlls feels somewhat good to controll. But puzzle platformers seem like a blueprint where you can fit any theme or diferent mechanic.
Nice little game, like the animations and the speed of it. Great job!
Wow, the music is tremendous! Very fun game!
The platforming was really fun and I like the potion mechanic. I love the little destructables across the map and how the game controls.
I really liked the checkpoints, although some parts of the game required very precise jumps and resetting back to a previous point made it harder to get through.
I think the art was spectacular and the story was very cool. Overall it was a lot of fun, I could see this becoming a full game! Great job!
A well polished fun game with some odd things mainly why did somethings send me back to the checkpoint but others dont the controls also fell of arrow keys z x and c are fine but they just felt off however the movement is fun the potion is great to use and the animation is awesome. overall the game is fun just some small tweaks and the game would be fantastic
Wonderful game !
I tried speed running this game (with potion boost mechanic) and it was amazingly well done. You can see it here
Now for some feedback:
Pros:
1) The unintended mechanic that saved the game
Potion boosting in the tutorial tells you to throw the potion upwards and jump as it lands. This mechanic however is inconsistent and hard to time right, making some of your jumps higher and some lower. HOWEVER THERE IS ANOTHER WAY TO DO IT !!! Intentional or not, you can throw you potion downwards and have max boost every time !!!
What's more you may ask ? What if i tell you you can skip a whole section of a room in under a second ? Yes, yes you can with diagonal boost ! Simply walk and throw your potion down at the same time and you will be launched diagonally. This mechanic alone made the game WAY more fun and utilizes the most unique part of the game (potion boost).
Still want more you say ? Well, adding on top of the diagonal boost, how about a horizontal boost ? Simply cancel you upward momentum after a diagonal boost and you will be launched horizontally .
I personally don't think that these two mechanic is intended to be included by the devs, but it completely turned the game upside down from a slow and boring platformer to a fast paced high skill celling speed running game and is in my opinion, the mechanic that saved the game.
2) Decent level design
Levels don't feel repetitive, despite diagonal / horizontal boosting (which i don't think was a intended mechanic), each room felt fun and unique.
3) Banger music
Despite repeatedly restarting the game and having to listen to the music over and over again, it does not get repetitive and i enjoyed every beat ! (My favourite is the ending / credits music, it just fits so well !)
Cons:
1) Enemies have pointless existence.
Enemies feel like they are there just to watch you zoom by, and are overall just pointless since you can just skip / ignore them. I would suggest removing them.
2) Poison potion
This ties to my first point, which is there is no reason to use this potion. Enemies don't drop loot or any rewards and most enemies are just alone, so there is no real appeal to using this potion in combat given its main strength is AOE damage.
3) X for jump on keyboard.
This is self explanatory and whoever decided that X is jump + unable to bind them to other keys
have a special place in hell just for themshould consider binding jump to spacebar4) A very annoying bug (invincible potion)
Sometimes when throwing a potion, it plays the animation but the potion is not thrown (invincible). Its really demotivating to have a good run ruined by something that is out of the player's control.
5) Lack of speed running tools
Where is my restart button >:(
Timer does not reset after a 2nd run, and it just starts off where the previous run left off.
6) Poorly coded potion boost
when you throw your potion upwards, it detects collision of the player and explosion and will always boost upwards even if the potion explodes above the player.
When throwing the potion horizontally, it detects collision of the player and explosion and will always boost towards the direction it was thrown at, even if the player is standing to the left of the explosion, it will boost the player to the right if the player throws the potion to the right.
Overall, although there are some bugs / changes desired here and there, this game is still amazing and got me hooked trying to get a good run. GG !!!
Hi! one of the devs here (art and design). Thank you so much for your feedback! I'm glad you enjoyed the game so much :0
Some of the flaws you listed will hopefully be fixed in a post-jam version. We've received a lot of feedback about the controls, so we'll likely add alternate bindings in a short update once the jam is over. We'll also probably try and update the speedrun controls as well as the disappearing potion bug.
As for the potion jump, being able to throw it downwards / diagonal jump was an intentional feature. (Being able to throw the potion directly downwards was an addition later in development after players had difficulty landing the potion jump) However, the levels were designed without it in mind, since most players weren't able to consistently pull it off, hence why it feels like an unintentional addition.
I'm super impressed by your speed run! One of the first ideas during development was to give the player a high skill ceiling in regards to techs/movement abilities, so it's very satisfying to see somebody put that to the test. Especially seeing how quick you beat the boss, lol.
We hope to see you back for the post-jam build! :)
Lovely game! And it's pretty well done too! Loved the tight controls and art style. Also, potion(rocket) jumping! Wished that is used more and expanded upon, I loved that very much.
There are a few nitpicks that I would like to raise, such as the game resuming too quickly after a resetting death resulting in dying over and over to a hazard nearby, or some jumps are a bit tight that it feels like you need to be quite precise to pull off. But these are not game-breaking, so no worries.
Anyway, this is extremely well done! Good job!
I like the game however I don't enjoy the controls for it as it feels like this was made for a gamepad and keyboard last which majority of games would be played on a keyboard so its a bit disheartening to understand why but U did good on the game overall besides the key inputs.
great name! great art and music, very shovel knight :)
Super polished and fun! Love the feel of the controls for the most part, and I like the glide mechanic. I also love the music. My only issue really was with not being able to jump with Space. Great work!
It was so cool! Awesome delivery on fun premise. My only issue was my habit from Spelunky where you jump on 'z' and attack with 'x', but it's a me issue. Really amazing game!
This was amazing. A true professional work well done. Cheers to this!
This game is great! The art is exceptional! I like it a lot, the mechanics and gameplay are so well done. I'm shocked of how much you made in such a small period of time!! Congratulations, you guys rocked!
I'm personally not big on platformers, but this was super engaging and cute! I really enjoyed the artstyle, and music. I'm curious if you implement invincibility frames when the player respawns? I found that if I died, and spawned close to another damage source I would also trigger that one and repeat the cycle.
Glad I bought that Corolla.
This was a great game in all fields and I really enjoyed it. The controls felt very tight and the level design was properly challenging.
There wasn't very much of it and it wasn't the game's focus, but I think the weakest part of the game was the combat. The enemy AI seemed finicky to me and I mostly found myself standing back and spamming potions to defeat everything.
The potions also didn't have any purpose outside of combat other than launching yourself upward. I think it could have been interesting to incorporate different types of potions in the level design, there's a lot of potential for ideas there. For example, using the explosion potion to perform a long jump or a fire potion to melt ice.
Also, I think some of the obstacles were maybe too easy to brute force? An insta-kill from fire would be really annoying but I also found it pretty easy to jump through some of the later game obstacles while only getting hit once or twice (not enough to kill me).
Definitely looking forward to a full version of the game! It's very impressive that this much was done in such a short amount of time.
HOW IS THIS A GAME JAM GAME?!?!?
THE POLISH. THE TIGHT CONTROLS. THE STORY. THE MUSIC?????
Y'all honestly deserve to win the prize. Genuinely. I want this to be a full game. I would pay good money for this!!!
Very good. Very polished.
Everything feels great.
Doesn't feel like a gamejam game!
Good job!
Awesome game!
Clean graphics, good music, decent controls. Pretty impressive.