This game took a lot of understanding and I'm very thankful to Varii for explaining things to me in Discord. I had a lot of issues with the game but I'm super happy I got to understand and play it. The mechanics are awesome!
So let me just get all the negative out of the way first 90% of this is due to a lack of tutorial. This is going to seem really harsh but trust me it'll be followed by praise.
I wasn't a fan of having to download the windows version to get a working experience even then the Windows version has no way of quitting or mouse settings so it was quite difficult to navigate and close the game.
I was SUPER confused about what to do. Even after reading the tutorial on the game page it was difficult without the dev answering my questions in Discord. I didn't realise I had to open activate the table with a reagent in hand for it to work. I was originally throwing it into the cauldron first. The page does say to do this though so that's on me.
The fact that the reagents all have this wispy/mist effect rather than their actual shape made it a hassle trying to figure out which ones were which without picking them up and taking them to the table. In addition to this there's no readout that tells you the current values of the shape either when being held in the shadow table or after it's added to the mixture.
The game also doesn't explain what makes a potion unstable and the way to fix this. Or the reason/fix for the side effects. Both which lower the value of the potion due to the customer complaint. The solution being that any effect that was +5 or -5 (I think?) becomes unstable and the side effects need to be countered by mixing in other reagents with the opposite effect.
With no readouts on any of the current effects it becomes a very difficult mental task to balance and remember what you have in your mixture and what you need to balance out.
Also not knowing what effects the shapes gave via the shop menu was a bit irritating as I had to just buy them and look at them one at a time to figure out what did what.
With all that being said. Once I knew all this (Thanks again Varii) the potion/shadow system is absolutely fantastic. I want a full game with this system so that I can run a potion shop and sell them to customers using this system. It was SUPER satisfying once I figured it all out and my biggest complaint is that it was so easy to unlock the other reagents and make money once you knew how it all worked!
There wasn't much to comment on art-wise minus the things I've already explained. The NPC portraits didn't work for me at all regardless of the version but the 3D models were fine. The shadow table and the rune effects were cool and the shadow movement/rotation etc was all really nice.
There wasn't any music but the ambient cave sounds/dripping fit the scene well and the SFX were all fitting and nice.
I know It seems like a very negative review but I genuinely loved the systems on display and I hope I get to see them again in the future in a more developed (and well documented) fashion.