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!

Wow! I don't understand this at all!

And that's what makes this fun. The element of the player just kind of poking around and seeing if they can figure out what to do is a form of engagement, one that rewards with discovery and new understanding. I have not met such discovery yet... But others will!

The most intuitive parts probably have to do with the similarities of the chart layouts, and how the goal is somewhat isolated. I don't know what the down arrow or the plug-shaped buttons do, but I think they have something to do with creating a new output. The alchemical formulas (I'm assuming are to the right) are too interconnected for me to get right off the bat, but the titles of the levels are tipping me off for what I have to do. Like is "salt" the gray one and the brownish-gold inverted triangle "earth"? Or am I missing the mark here lol

Feel free to give my game a shot, I could use your feedback: https://wasabiiii.itch.io/grass-elemental-demo-demo

I would love a basic explanation of how everything works, or maybe just a quick summary of what it is. I might have time to poke around later... what fun :)

You're right about your identification of Salt and Earth. I really should include the functionality to display the element names above or below the symbols for convenience of communication.

I'll have to take a look at your game when I have some time. Thank you for the feedback.