Thanks a ton for giving it a go and for the proper review!
There's a reason the crafting feels so underdeveloped, haha. After getting my GDD together, I started out with making the pixel art for the game first without really expanding on the mechanics, it ended up taking 'till Monday to start actually coding things and even then I focused on peripheral systems before the core mechanic :p
By the end I realized I really should've stuck with simpler art and iterated on the core gameplay before doing anything else, because the way I implemented the alchemy felt really bad to play IMO, so I switched to recipes last minute even though I wrote the GDD with recipes in mind. At least I learned I gotta plan things out more, actually stick to those plans and iterate core mechanics first through this experience.
I also wanted the drawing to have more depth instead of such rigid form requirements, but then I think I'd need Machine Learning and that's a lot of math I don't understand (yet).
And a more guided "Show, don't tell" tutorial is definitely on the docket, Potion Craft did something like that pretty well imo.
I'm definitely gonna develop this further eventually! Just gotta focus on my driver's license first now, I didn't drive for 2 weeks 'cuz of the jam, haha.
Thanks so much for playing! Yeah, I had a lot of QoL ideas that I couldn't get ready in time for the jam ending.
I only changed to a recipe-based system a day before the end or so because the previous system felt much worse to play. Otherwise, recipes likely wouldn't have needed a specific order, and I was indeed planning to have a "table of contents" with quick links to chapters and pages in the book as well, so the player wouldn't need to sift through the entire book to view known recipes and materials.
I took a bit too long doing the backgrounds at the start of the jam instead of iterating on my core gameplay mechanic and figuring out how it should work while being fun to play :p at least I've learned that lesson now, haha.
Someday I hope to refine this into a full game, though I'll need to think on how to give the crafting more depth like Potion Craft.
Man, this is great! At first I was a bit confused about how to get drinks and that you could hold 2 at a time because I didn't read the description and was scrolled up too much to see the platter, but after figuring it out it got quite fun!
I even found a nice strat to keep all the monsters happy, though idk if it works on later levels.
Thanks! I'd hoped to get a proper prototype done by tomorrow evening, but it'll probably take a few days longer. I heavily underestimated the difficulty of implementing the main mechanic :p
Thanks! I'm not entirely sure how much work it'll be, but looking at examples of pixel art drawing programs in Godot did make me realize I might've underestimated how difficult it'll be, haha. Luckily I don't need to work or study rn, so almost all my time can go to jamming out!
I didn't actually intend to do a retro look at first, but the palette I ended up using in Aseprite was the NES palette, so together with my fairly basic pixel art skills it ended up looking quite retro indeed :p
