Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD49 → ALCHEMY unsTABLE
By kpded, Aprioriface, Alex Belikov, bo_rocket and Yanamoe
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 337 | 3.82 | 31 | |
| Fun | 821 | 3.36 | 31 | |
| Innovation | 302 | 3.72 | 31 | |
| Theme | 174 | 4.15 | 31 | |
| Graphics | 166 | 4.32 | 31 | |
| Humor | 362 | 3.55 | 29 | |
| Mood | 311 | 3.82 | 31 |
The instructions aren't quite clear but I figured it out (at least partly). The customer may request multiple colors. When they do, you must bring them to the alchemy lab thing in the top right one at a time so that they'll combine, and bring that to the customer. Interaction with the customers requires facing the right direction, so you'll need to use both arrow keys (to rotate not just the potion but your facing direction) and wasd (to walk around).
I had troubles understand what to do and what not to do at first. Later on I understand that I have to combine potions in correct colors and put each near book on upper right. The idea is fun but it become less fun when potion combinations become too long.
i had problems with collisions, and later an npc stuck me at a room's corner, but nice idea overall
Graphics and theme were cool but in the gameplay i couldn't manage to combine the potions together i think a practice tutorial were we are guided on how to do things would be cool.
Amazing game you got here!!! But it is hard!
Great puzzle design, the grace period before the potion breaks while colliding with a wall is a really nice touch that gives the game a nice learning curve
Great concept and overall a fun mini-game in my opinion! love the art style, super cute & clean! Definitely needs a tutorial but it doesn't require that much thinking to figure out what to do
Game pace was a bit slow. Gameplay and controls felt nice but also a bit slow. If the game is 2x as fast i would have been interested for longer the game idea is really good and i liked it alot :D very good job!
OH man 🤣 I blew up everything. I loved running around and getting potions and the cat was a hilarious addition to the game. I didn't think the controls for turning were working until I held the button for more than a second but I suppose it is a good idea to have more control over how you're turning because otherwise it would be so much easier to explode everything. Great take on the unstable theme and definitely a patience test for me!
I liked the graphics, music, and just the mood overall but there were some parts that weren't very fun. A lot of the things just felt kind of tedious. In particular the yellow potion which I had far too much trouble getting out of that tight corridor. Nevertheless, I rated the game very highly overall since I like the overall premise and (aside from that cursed yellow potion) also the execution.
I would actually disagree with many of the commenters here and say that, after reading your description, I thought it was pretty clear what I needed to do once I started the game! There were some really cool and well-thought-out game design elements here, from the amount of time it took a potion bottle to disintegrate after being in contact with a wall (long enough to be forgiving but short enough to provide lots of good tension), to the width and layout of the corridors of the house. I think I eventually found that the best strategy was just to watch backwards while holding the potion in front of me lol.
Honestly, this game seemed super solid for what it was! If you were to expand it further, I might suggest having different house layouts, since this existing one started to get a bit tedious after a while--eventually I just learned how to get the potions everywhere through muscle memory. That, or perhaps you could introduce more obstacles to dodge once the player had a few successful runs. One small bug(?) I found: you can actually hand the completed potion back to the person who requested it through one of the walls of the house, which eliminates the need to go through that final curve on the way back to the bottom left.
Very fun game overall! I liked how you worked in a bunch of different elements of instability into it. Great job!
This game is very challenging, but I like it. The instructions I just blew past, which I shouldn't have done, but I feel like a tutorial would be better. ( Walking the player through the steps instead of just having some text on screen. ) Overall great game, very innovative.
Great looking game, nice choice of music. The labyrinth / puzzle side of the game is really cool, I just wish the potion rotation was a bit faster. I think the concept is cool but becomes quickly repetitive, maybe add some kind of more specific objective.
I had some trouble with understanding what to do with blue and red bottles (because I missed it in instruction). I tried to give bottles to the customer :joy: I think, if switch rotation to mouse It will be interested. Nice game. :thumbsup:
@zachery-delafosse thank you for your feedback! Yeah, that was not very clear initially, so we added one more help screen in game. Hope it is clear now :smile:
@bloodbane thank you very much for the feedback! We have tuned a recopies a little, now difficulty is not that steep, and added some guidance within the game
@mirko thank you very much! We have tweaked the collision system a little, should work relatively stable now
@cocomineral thank you for playing our game! We will try to put those instruction more straightforward next time
@spider-developer that's true :smirk: we have changed the balance a little, to make it easier
I didn't succeed to make at least one potion... More precisely, I did it, but never go to customer because of some... bad walls that just want to brokes my potions ! I really like graphisms btw
I never get tired of potion games! The art is really cute and so is the little cat! I like the idea of moving potions with magic, and the game is challenging in a nice way. I also really love the sound design. It seems the menu buttons can only be used with the keyboard (?), but I wish one could also use the mouse. The brief tutorial did a good job in my opinion.
All in all, it's a really charming game! The alchemist should probably do some remodeling tho, hehe. It'd be interesting to see something like this as a full game.
@loiclegrosfrere thank you! That's true, our artists did really great here
@anaxie-studio thank you! We are thinking of something bigger, based on this mechanics
But not sure what could be the better way to make progression clear and gameplay deeper here.
The alchemist is not a 3D model, btw ) It is a spine animation, thank your drawing our attention to it
@kpded Perhaps you'd have to build, upgrade and manage your own shop? Or become increasingly famous, having to work in more and more well-known places? :)
@anaxie-studio I think we gonna move somewhere in that direction
@felixwentzel thank you very much for the feedback! We are planning to tune the movement and rotation to make it faster if this will go to something bigger
@jayjack thank you for playing our game and your feedback!
Yeah, the cat! It is our favorite useless feature. At first it should take a bigger part in the gameplay. But eventually it didn't) And decided to left it anyway, because it is hilarious
As for controls, we are still thinking on improving them
@pwnzer thank you for your feedback!
That's right some blancing is required with the yellow potion (one of our programmers thinks that it is cursed too, btw :scream_cat: )
I broke everythings XD Nice game ! The rotation is a little bit slow. I never arrive to pass the corner with the big potion :( But the gameplay is well thought. Thank you for your game!
Amazing and hard game! I really-really like the visuals, soundeffects and design. Well done!
@krjemelik thank you for your feedback! We are still working on making it less tedious )
Ipressive graphics, fluid mechanics and a very creative unstable theme usage. Well done! Congrats for the great work!
Pretty cool game :v:
Meowww!! ^^
I loved it The yellow is so hard !!
Congratulation for this entry
This is a pretty neat idea, I liked the walking and rotating to keep the potions from touching the walls. It might work well on a controller with two analog sticks for movement and rotation.
I will start my stream about 9pm Uk time. Hope to see you there. https://www.twitch.tv/thesoulselector
I played this on stream tonight. https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1179627561
@arron-fowler thank you for the stream Unfortunately had no chance to see it live due to my time zone :sob:
@arron-fowler thank you for high rating
And sorry about it being so dense we didn't mean it :smile:
Nice polish!
Oh boy was this hard. I managed to make a couple potions before frustration got the better of me. The mechanics are super clear, I'm just not a patient person, and the pacing is clearly optimized for the slow, methodical types.
Graphics are lovely, and the music is simple yet catchy. I didn't encounter any obvious bugs.
Great job!
Good one it was pretty hard but still keep up the hard work
@matthewlacker yeah, with analog it could be much better
Basically a mouse is analog input device, and that was our first prototypes controls, but it turned out that there are some pitfalls, so we decided to switch to arrow keys. Thinking of making it back :thinking:
How difficult it was to carry these potions, but I tried to fulfill it!) The game looks great, the graphics are beautiful, I would like to separately mention the running cat :3, pleasant music, in general, the impressions of the game are positive. Well done!)