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Very cool prototype! Very simple and fun. My high score is 125.

Beautiful design and animation! This will be the main character for my mini Metroidvania and plan to use more of your assets in my game. Thank you for uploading them.

Wow, I thought this was a meme game making fun of people who think making an MMO is easy. I was expecting meme-ish dialogue and undercooked gameplay featuring pretend MMO elements to try to trick some people into wondering if the game actually had MMO parts to it or not.

Well, uh, no. It's not that at all. It's actually fantastic??

I went mouse-only due to my cat napping on my chest and couldn't believe how well I could play the entire game with one hand (waifu update when?). The presentation was so clean and gameplay basically felt finished besides the many skills obviously needing balancing. Exploring deeper into the world felt scary and adventurous. Dividing my attention between moving, attacking, and figuring out the combination system felt so good. Seeing another player filled me with so many different chaotic emotions and thoughts until they ran away and I continued slaughtering the innocent(?) enemy creatures in cold blood for more power. The thought of what could have happened in that chance encounter still stimulates my neurons.

Absolutely well done to the team! Brilliant entry for the jam and good luck in the future with this masterpiece in your pocket.

It's definitely the best name! I'm glad we both came to the same conclusion before submitting our entries. :)

Thank you for the good feedback. We'll definitely keep all of that in mind as we continue working on this.

Thanks for the encouragement too! I'm excited to see what our game will look like once we liven it up more.

Thank you so much for your feedback!

We've definitely taken notes and got a lot out of hearing of your experience.

I do agree that our game will feel a lot better once we get some good SFX and perfect the balance of the game.

Thanks again for giving it a good go!

Okay, so first of all, the fact that both of our jam games share "Alchemist's Dawn" in the title is amazing.

So, I wrote my thoughts down while playing your game and then looked at the comments people have left and can see that everyone has already mentioned everything I wrote down, so I'll just list them quick without too much detail.

- Fingers hurt after playing multiple times.

- Accidentally clicked upgrades/new tower before seeing what they were.

- The game seems to be confused where the mouse is on the screen on the upgrade/new tower screen.

- Couldn't see player very well sometimes with so much going on.

- Too difficult too fast. Haven't been able to get to 2 minute mark.

Now, one thing I would like to talk about a little bit is how cool the element clash system is. I didn't even realize what was going on when a couple of them were going off on my first playthrough. Once I realized what was going on I had a ton of fun trying to set up new combinations and watching them go off on enemies. This feature is definitely the star of the show here and I only wish the game wasn't so quick to kill me so I could see more of it.

Good work. Maybe in the future you could add waves of enemies to the game to give the player moments of rest between waves before plunging them back into chaos.

Good luck in the jam and in future endeavors!

Very nice entry! Using alchemy to dispel shadows fits the theme of the jam to a T and the basic story setup at the beginning doesn't overstay its welcome while also providing a reason everything is happening and a concrete goal.

I do think that how the movement feels could use some polish. Especially having 100% full control of air movement feels pretty jarring to me. I could be wrong, but I also feel like the player character lacks acceleration and deceleration. I would like to recommend a really good GMTK video on this subject called "Why Does Celeste Feel So Good To play?"

I'm also not a huge fan of waiting for a projectile to almost hit you so you can use it to reach new areas, at least not as a fairly major mechanic. I feel it does overstay its welcome in this game. But this could definitely just be a personal preference thing.

I loved the way parts of the level were designed to bend in on itself at points. Looking around and recognizing areas nearby that you had been before is a great way to feel like you're making progress as a player. I also loved the cartoony aesthetic and unique character design.

Overall, I feel this game has some kinks to work out, but with some work I feel this game could end up being something very cool.

Good work, and good luck in the jam!

Nice entry! The narrative bit at the beginning was great and the mechanics of your game are really cool.

I got stuck on level 8 and ended up skipping it until getting stuck again at level 12. After that I didn't really try to beat any levels after that. Just checked them out to have a peek.

One thing I'd suggest is making it so after the player gets the potions the first time for the level, that resets after that point wold automatically start the player with the potions. (Or maybe a toggle in options to make this the case?) I feel like difficult puzzles are going to frustrate players to an extent by design, so doing anything to avoid unnecessary frustration would be good in my book.

I feel your puzzles had a really good flow in introducing mechanics and then iterating on them until introducing even more mechanics. Some of them seemed really clever! Well done. I feel like this game would be worth continuing after the jam no matter the results of the jam itself. Some more mechanics/potion types, some optional challenges of higher difficulty, and some more narrative bits interspersed throughout and I feel you'd have a winner for making some side cash on Steam. Heck, maybe even get a talented artist onboard and do a lot of playtesting and you could have a top seller on hand. Good luck!

Adorable cat. Love it.

Though confusing at first, the combining elements and unlocking spells was really fun to play around with and try to strategize which directions to go with it. One thing I'm not sure anyone else has mentioned yet is that on my first playthrough I was very confused why the spells I was combining weren't benefiting me in any way. I was like, "I combined these elements to make those elements, but nothing has changed when normal gameplay is resumed?"

Another bit of feedback is that I felt it was hard to tell what parts of the environment were ones I could walk through and which were obstacles. Maybe obstacles could be a tad lighter in color or something similar? Something subtle that can be used by players to make deciding their path easier.

Lastly, I found legibility of text on screen to sometimes be a bit poor. The worst offender is that the 8 and 0 look so similar I can't tell them apart most of the time.

Overall, really fun and cute game! Good luck in the jam and in your future endeavors.

[Spoilers throughout]
Nice entry. It had a nice flow from introducing the main character and the world to introducing the new environment they found themselves in. I liked having the option to look at definitions/additional information on certain words. That gives me the option to set the pace I want for reading.

One question I had (and I may have just missed it while reading) but what time period does this story take place in? In my mind I was picturing something medieval, but then it said that we were receiving a call and that made me wonder whether it was modern technology or some sort of magical/alchemical version of a phone.

I enjoyed the mission and felt rewarded for my choice of searching around the building and finding an alternative way in. The riddle was so confusing at first until I found the keypad. I then felt a grin on my face as I opened my inventory and then the riddle and started finding numbers in it. The amount of light at night stumped me for a bit due to the moon and countless stars, but I eventually settled on what turned out to be the correct answer. Getting the keypad combination right on my first try made me feel really clever. Good job setting up an experience that let me feel that way.

Getting a success in apprehending the bad guy felt really good and eventually finding what the Saltmasons were trying to hide was great.

I did a quick second playthrough where I tried some different choices and got to play with the limited natural alchemy uses. I think having one use per element and deciding where best to use them is such a cool mechanic.

Good job.

Now, the post on the discord specifically asked for feedback on how to improve their writing. I don't consider myself an expert on the subject, but I thought I could throw something out there and hopefully it can help.

There were a few times where I felt the story skipped information such as how the main character was receiving a call I mentioned earlier. So added details would be the main thing I'd say, I think. Another example was "someone walks into my vision. I can tell they are part of the Saltmasons." My immediate thought was, "How?" An alternative could be something like, "someone walks into my vision. Their robe is adorned by a badge with the letters 'SM' on it making it clear they are a part of the Saltmasons." (or something like that)

A final example is the reveal at the end of the story. It seemed odd to me that the main character would know that they were human souls. Maybe more detail such as the character not knowing what they are but slowly coming to the horror and realization of what's in the bottles before stating it to the player and ending the chapter could work well there.

These are just my thoughts and I'm definitely not an expert.

Hopefully you found something helpful or nice to hear in this lengthy comment.

Good luck on your future endeavors!

Omg, amazing concept. Stalking Greg silently from the shadows with my claws out, poised to take his life as he he remains oblivious to my machinations...I felt like a true monster.

It definitely felt light on content, but it fits the jam's themes flawlessly and is such an interesting take for a game. Well done.

Thanks for the feedback and for playing our game!

We’ll definitely work on balancing how long the lantern light lasts as we continue development.

Thanks again!

Omg, I'm not sure I've ever played a game where I went from being so scared and weak to being so unbelievably overpowered. It felt so good and the the fun level of your game is absolutely off the charts! And that doesn't even touch on the unique way you made the game in the first place! Wow! Well done!

Woah, really nice ending. That and the bit that introduces the ghost mechanic. Amazing. Really good story beats. Got my eyebrows raised and wanting more.

I feel the movement could use some work to feel more polished and fun, but that might just be me having high standards for movement in platformers. Also, something minor I didn't like was that shooting a projectile shoots in the direction the player is facing rather than which half of the screen the mouse is clicking in.

I loved the art design of the main character and the general feel of the game's atmosphere. The spider wall climb is so cool that just seeing it in action in a gif made me realize that I needed to play this game.

One thing that might be cool is if making a new potion for the first time added a sort of "recipe" button for it under the crafting menu that you can click and it would automatically craft the potion if you have the ingredients.

Overall, very cool game. Good luck with the Jam, and I hope you decide to continue working on it!

Very cool game! I ended up crafting a bone weapon but still got demolished by the big red hood boss.

Maybe you could show a greyed out version of recipes you have partial ingredients for. I thought the crafting was broken after getting so many different ingredients and nothing happening at the cauldron until I got even more ingredients after.

Loved the enemy variety and getting different crafting items from killing them felt really good.

Loved the art and interacting with objects. Finding secret candles everywhere was a ton of fun and felt very rewarding. I did need the hint in the game page description to get past the the book puzzle and I ended up stuck in the passing room. Shortly after entering and exploring the room I ended up "softlocked" out of candles like you mention in the game page because of so many restarts trying to figure out the book puzzle initially. Instead of trying the incognito method, I decided to call it there.

Very cool start. I hope you end up continuing it!

Seems like a really cool game! I loved the feeling I got when entering a new area and looking around. The feelings of isolation while exploring massive, wondrous, and magical places was awesome.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to figure out how to beat the air world. I gave it a lot of goes and was able to extinguish 2 beacons, but after dying like 20 times trying to jump to different places and taking a long time looking down around the edges of the walkable area, I eventually gave up. It made me sad because I wanted to experience more cool and wondrous places you guys had created.

Good luck with the jam! I enjoyed what I was able to experience in it.

Gorgeous art