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Alchemise's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Artistic Style | #1 | 5.000 | 5.000 |
| Theme | #233 | 4.000 | 4.000 |
| Cleverness | #755 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
| Playability | #804 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
Ranked from 1 rating. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Judge feedback
Judge feedback is anonymous.
- Allowing the player to learn as they go can prevent the player from getting in situations that are unpassable such as buying too much materials that cannot make any money. Memorizing recipes to achieve the desired gold makes it feel like a math problem that once I memorize the best one there is no objective or goal outside of that.
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!
In this game, you play a shadowy alchemist, who works for a local king. The newly appointed king has banned the selling of potions to the locals, which caused a great rift between the alchemists and the nobles. As an alchemist, you must do what you can to craft potions and avoid detection, however, you will need to sell potions to pocket enough gold to flee the castle. Have you got what it takes to escape?
Flow of the game:
- dissolve ingredients and then take them to the separator to make vials
- interact with these when you have items in your toolbar to see what happens!
- mix vials, spices, essence and metals in the crucible to obtain a potion similarly
- be mindful, the crucible takes 3 ingredients and 1 metal vial (which acts as a multiplier) so make sure all 4 are there. Recipes can be found on the pause screen.
- Although there is a normal way of finishing the game (by selling potions), there is a secret SPEEDRUN exploit that came about as a bug but was a fun feature to keep as an easter egg. Can you find it?
Extra Notes
Thank you for organising such a cool jam, its a fantastic learning opportunity for so many aspiring game developers! Keep it up! ;)
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Comments
graphics are nice and it runs with really high framerate, but i couldn't really figure out what to do. The player needs a bit more direction and game feedback! Good job tho! keep making games!
Thanks a lot for the review! Really appreciate you enjoyed the art! :) I agree, there was meant to be a tutorial level but sadly due to time constraints it had to be scrapped. The base premise of the game is to walk on over to the shop, purchase ingredients and using the different stations and pause menu recipes, craft potions to sell.
Good game, i liked the potion mixing mechanics and music is fitting for the chill gameplay too.
Couple of suggestion i have is i think it would be better if there was a pop up showing how much money you get when you sell items. I also thought it would be cool if the character holds the current inventory item on his hand or on top of his head. Both these improvements could make the game more responsive and give more emphasis on player actions. Also it would be better if the pause key was not esc because it's the exit fullscreen key for itch.io, i had espacially hard time with that because the recipes for the potions are in the pause menu.
Overall an enjoyable game loop and complementary visuals and sounds, keep up the good work!
Thanks a lot for the feedback! Glad you enjoyed it. :)
Good point on these improvements, definitely would be cool to have the item above their head now that you mention it!
Didn't realise the ESC key would do that on itch, thanks for raising it so I know for the future!
Cheers!
Neat game! I found the potion mixing and gameplay loop to be quite fun! The art is also very cute.
I did run into a bug where I could walk away from the shop while the menu was open and then not be able to close the shop menu until I got close to the shop again. Maybe lock the player's movement while in the shop?
Other than that, I had a lot of fun playing the game! Keep up the great work!
Thanks a lot for giving it a go! :) Glad you found it fun and liked the pixel art! I appreciate you raised the bug, wouldnt be a game jam without one! Best of luck in the jam!
Nice game! I almost gave up at the start because I didn't realize you can scroll down in the shop, you probably want to add a slider for dumb people like me :)