Thanks for playing. :) I'd have liked to have been able to do more with the tutorial, but ended up prioritizing other things once I got a basic tutorial set up.
Hexblue
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Thank you for taking a look at it! I was worried the first few levels might be too easy, but ended up going with what I did based on user feedback and just watching people play it blind.
I really struggled with the CRT filter, trying different ones. ^^; One of the previous ones I did have a working option to disable it, but I suppose that must have gotten broken in a recent build.
Thank you for playing.
There is a tutorial in the game, in the form of the information provided through the character dialogue in the first few floors. This information is also made available within the guide book, accessible at all times.
The guidebook updates with information as it is presented by the character dialogue (or at the start of the next floor if you're faster than they are!)
I'm sure if you take a look, you can do it!
![](https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzE1MDQ0NjQ1LnBuZw==/original/mh5kS2.png)
I appreciate the feedback on the framerate (on, I'm assuming, the web version.) When I do profiling, the overwhelming majority of the time is taken up by the level rendering.
There may be more I can do to streamline that rendering code, but it will require a full rewrite of that rendering code at this point rather than minor optimization. I've already plucked all the low-hanging fruit I could find.
Very interesting concept in that you don't control the movement fully, only what kind of movement is occurring. I did get into what I assume was a bugged state where I could slide, but not jump, trapping me in a valley. Camera could be a bit too zoomed in at times.
Overall, fun and interesting. Nice graphics, music, concept, and decent implementation.
I figured out what Death's Favor measured pretty quickly, but it might have been best to explain it explicitly. I do think Death's Favor was a nice balancing mechanic to prevent the player from simply running away the entire time.
Things were very well balanced; I was down to about 20% health at 3 minutes, which made for a nicely tense experience. Surprisingly enjoyable given I generally don't go for this game genre.
Thank you for the understanding. I have updated the HTML5 and Windows builds on the game page. This build has no gameplay changes, but drastically improves the fps.
For context, I was previously seeing fps dropping down to 10 by floor 15 (each successive floor is larger than the last, meaning it is more resource intensive.) And that was on the Windows build. The HTML5 build was far worse.
With this build, I still had 60+ fps on floor 15 on the Windows version, and a still-playable 30 fps on floor 25. I haven't been able to do full testing on the fps improvement of the HTML5 build, but I imagine it will benefit from the fixes as well.
My game experiences pretty severe lag, especially the web version. In the FAQ, I see the following:
[What if I don't have enough time to submit or I miss the submission deadline?]
Don't stress too much, this jam is intended to just be a fun escape or a fun challenge. We can work with those who miss the deadline by a short while but all submissions are due at the due date (February 13th) During the rating period you are able to push game breaking bug fixes but can not add more content until after the week long rating is done. After rating is done you can update it to your hearts content!
Would it be alright for me to upload a build which helps with the framerate issue but otherwise doesn’t affect gameplay/content? Thank you for your consideration.
Thanks for playing! The first 5-ish levels are designed (to try to force the player to learn the mechanic being taught,) while every level after that is randomly generated. : )
You're definitely right about performance issues. It works better on desktop, I swear! lol (Though the game still starts to lag around floors 10-15 on my machine.)
Thank you for the feedback. I haven't had much time to work on the game lately, though I am hoping to return to it when I have time.
I do have the beginnings of a tutorial system set up. I'm hoping to make it a lot easier for the player to learn the early mechanics, as I'd really like for the challenge to be primarily in the later levels when you're having to balance adjusting multiple elements with a limited instruction set.
What the Game is
Lately I've been working on a game inspired by Zachtronics, a dev which made some of my all time favorite games. (Though the temptation to include some 'discovery' influence from Tunic and Outer Wilds is ever-present.) AlchemArcana is inspired primarily by Opus Magnum and The Forbidden Path. In each level, you are tasked with transforming some input into a specific output via conditional alchemical instructions.
A lot of my dev time thus far has been in setting up the system to handle the various transmutations, and generally making the game pretty. (I can't help it, I like the pretty.) The areas I'm likely to be concentrating on going forward are level design, mechanic tutorials, and some of the basic narrative framework for those levels.
Feedback
While I'm open to any feedback, what I'm seeking most at the moment is to know what things are intuitive and what really needs to be spelled out for the player. Right now there's zero in-game instruction, and that's one of the big things I want to fix currently. But it would probably be good to know what things players have the most trouble with and what is at least semi-intuitive.
I've tried to order the current levels in roughly ascending difficulty.
You can find the game here: https://hexblue.itch.io/alchemarcana Thank you to anyone who takes the time to try it and let me know how your experience went!
Hello! We're a team of 2 (programmer/designer + music/sfx composer) looking for a pixel/sprite artist. We are looking to make a game in the top-down or side view, currently a little undecided between them (So if you're really strong in one or the other, you'll likely push us to pick that one!)
We've got the bones of a game idea at this point which could work in either of those formats, though of course the contest's theme could throw us for a loop. We'll just have to see what it is!
Current Team
Hexblue - Programmer/Designer
WillyB - Music/Sfx Composer
If you're interested, please message me here or via discord (@Hexblue)! Thank you for your time.
Edit: We are no longer looking. Thank you!