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Malchemy's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Cleverness | #282 | 4.000 | 4.000 |
| Artistic Style | #401 | 4.000 | 4.000 |
| Theme | #653 | 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.
- The art was wonderfully done, the music was a nice touch (though a tad loud with no way of adjusting the volume), and the controls are easy to follow. While I very much liked the way the themes were used here (especially after reading your description of them on your GDD), I think my only 'gripe' is how much there is to work with in the very beginning. Not to say the game needs to hold the player's hand, but I feel with pet simulator games, things start small and you work your way into certain aspects the game has to offer. Here it feels like you're given everything to play around with and personally I found it a bit tough to grasp what would be good/bad for said pet you create. I know indicators were put in place for a few things at the start, but I guess I'm basing this off my previous experiences with these kinds of games, too. The experience was fun all the same, whether my comprehension of the game was different or not. Keep up the good work!
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!
A game about discovering and taking care of your malwares and stealing personal information.
Malchemy is a pet simulator game where the player creates and takes care of malware pets using a system called “Malchemy”.
Players can combine different components called “DLL files (DisLikes and Likes files)” to create pets.
Resources gathered by the pet can either be sold, unlock a special DLL file, or be used for certain deployments. The earned currency can be used to buy foods, toys, and training data for the pet. Pet’s happiness and level dictates deployment success rate.
The pet’s level can be increased by training with training data. Training decreases happiness and satiation, so does deployment. Using food increases satiation and toys increase happiness. Player is incentivised to consider dislikes and likes of the pet.
Extra Notes
Thank you for giving us an opportunity to develop games.
It was an amazing learning experience and genuinely a fun event.
We will continue to make cool games.
Moka: bread.
Fearon: Go to my bank account and give me money
Hydout: Have a good day!! YAYY
*yarrBongos**yarrBongos**yarrBongos**yarrBongos**yarrBongos**yarrBongos**yarrBongos**yarrBongos**yarrBongos*
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Comments
Interesting concept and game overall. It needs a little rebalance IMHO, because we can farm many coins by the green DLL, but still it's good. The graphic looks nice. Good job :)
Thank you very much for your kind words :)
We will continue to improve our game!
Love the art style and the sound design, very original idea and implementation of the theme, well done!
Thank you very much! <3
I've leveled up my 1st character for almost infinite $!
Was that a good strategy? Idk but it worked for me :P
Great art style! And awesome idea.
I would change the swapping between pets mechanic.
Instead of arrows I would love to have sth like an inventory/album/list o pets I have.
And for the Input/Output text it would be great to have an icon of what it its next to the text.
WOWW I've never thought of leveling up the first pet so much ahahaha
Thanks for great suggestions!
Yeah I agree! I think having a better pet swapping method and Input/Output visuals would improve the game :3
I appreciate your feedback!
Great visual style and music! I really like how you interpreted the themes, me and I think most people took them in a very literal way, but I like your unique approach.
I was a little confused on what the objective of the game is besides making money and keeping the pets alive, but to be fair this is not really the kind of genre I play very often.
Overall loved the presentation and how polished the game feels, but it would be nice to be headed to an objective or having the mechanics evolve over time
Very fair point!
Another player also mentioned the lack of objective, and I also agree the game needs some player direction.
We will polish the player directive and clearer goal in future iteration.
Thank you for your precious feedback! <3
I loved the art and the music, it really gives a cozy yet energetic vibe to the game. Art for computer screen is really cool too. I also liked the irony and funniness of these cute pets being hackers.
I think game lacks some tutorials though, it took me couple game overs after i realized what consumable items do for different pets. But after realising if was fun to guess what each pet likes or dislikes. I think it would also be better to have some kind of pop up when an item is used like when you give food to a pet it should show how much fullness it gives or how much happiness decreases when you use a training data.
So overall i think game needs a little more communication with the player. Besides that game feels very polished and it's clear how much effort was put. Great work!
You're right! I also think it needs better communication with the player.
We will put more effort into it and improve some UX/UI and tutorials.
Thank you very much for your thoughtful feedback, it helps us a lot! <3
Really cool game, it’s definitely got potential post-jam :). Visually the game is stunning, and the audio fits so nicely. A better tutorial is definitely needed, as I got very confused at first (I closed out of the PC without creating a pet at first and the game didn’t work properly, so I had to restart it), and a little more clarity about what the failing conditions would be nice too, as I got a sudden game over without really knowing why.
I’m not much of a pet simulator person so I’m not an expert on the genre, but I feel like some sort of real time element with pets losing happiness or fullness over time would make gameplay more interesting; you’d have to manage all of your pets, switching between them, making sure they’re all happy to ensure you don’t game over that way. Maybe that’s not the direction you see the game going in, and that’s alright too - while it’s a really charming looking game, it’s probably not the sort of game I’m going to want to sit and play constantly enough. I’d also like to know how you plan on expanding the core mechanics further; at the moment I’m unsure of how much depth the systems you have would keep people playing for longer than a few minutes at a time.
None the less, the game looks amazingly polished; the game as is looks almost ready for Steam, I just think it needs a little more depth to keep people interested for longer.
Thank you very much for your thorough feedback!
Yes, as you mentioned, we agree that some better tutorials and clarity are needed.
Also, thanks for suggesting a way to deepen our mechanics! We will try to create something more engaging :3
I didn't really know what I was doing but it was fun to figure out the likes and dislikes of each kind of pet. I eventually figured out a way to make money kinda quickly, but it required a lot of mindless clicking, I knew I could get the money I needed if I kept going, it just kinda hurt my hand after a while so I stopped. Loved the cute characters and pleasant music.
Hello Turncoda!
We will polish the game and from your comment, I think giving player direction is one of the crucial improvements to make.
Thank you for your feedback!
Music slaps. I don't really play pet simulator games ever since Neopets, but I can still appreciate the excellent work and polish put into this game. :>
Thank you very much!! Our team really put a lot into music
We'll continue to polish the game, and we plan to release it on Steam!
love love love the music, especially inside the computer. very pleasant and cozy experience.
it took me a second to get the game loop. but now that i understand it is very cute. it is not overly clear how the theme of shadow and alchemy relates to the pet hacker tho :P
Overall a very pleasant and cozy experience.
Thank you for your feedback Ryan!
We will work on a better tutorial to get player into the loop more smoothly! :3
This is really cool! Personally I am not a pet simulator enjoyer but I think this has a solid aesthetic with great music and art! I also see the appeal in getting resources from some of your pets and then using that to do the little mission things for more money with a different pet, just part of the whole resource management thing. It is satisfying to find a resource you need or figure out what a certain pet likes, etc. It was a little confusing understanding the systems, I'm still not sure what XP is for and I only figured out how to increase it by really paying attention to the numbers after doing an action. I think it would be better if it were more clear about what does what and how that benefits you. Also this may be just me but the computer inventory was really laggy. Overall I think this is a cool entry, great work
Thank you very much for your feedback! :D
I agree, actions and status should be easier to see. We will improve our UI/UX in near future!
Also, we will start looking into optimization for the game as well.