Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → LD55 → Brew Some Unique & Appetizing Potions!
By hacksawunit
| Category | Rank | Score | Count | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 36 | 4.07 | 23 | |
| Fun | 34 | 4.04 | 23 | |
| Innovation | 45 | 4.00 | 23 | |
| Theme | 245 | 3.28 | 23 | |
| Graphics | 96 | 3.85 | 23 | |
| Audio | 30 | 4.02 | 21 | |
| Humor | 49 | 3.82 | 22 | |
| Mood | 64 | 3.82 | 22 |
Very well done. I would llike to have a hint in game for the rightmouse click to clear the item. I dig the art style! I rated it highly! The music is not repetatitive enough to enjoy. The only critique I have would be to slowly increase the target number of items to 'collect' You start by collecting 6. Why not start with 3 and ramp up the requirement for each level. But again: very well made entry. I enjoyed it.
I abrolutely love it, the idea, the art, the music. Agree here with @mdotedot that you could start with easier sets, but i understand the 48 hours constraint. Great job and good luck!
I like the art style and the gameplay was smooth once I worked out I could use the space bar rather than clicking the green swap button! I found it a little bit confusing working out what I was meant to do initially - the format made me think it was a like a match 3 style game so I lost the first round matching similar potions and had to re-read the instructions. I think it would have been better if the groups of 6 automatically cleared?
Thank you for playing! I found y'alls comments to raise some cool game design points so I'm going to give my (friendly!) perspective. :D
@mdotedot @freakyzelga I think your idea could be very fun in a game like this, but for this game I very specifically wanted the "6 unique" requirement, similar to how logic games like Sudoku work. So, I opted to have a time limit be the main difficulty factor rather than the amount needed to clear. I probably would have kept that the same even with 500 hours to make the game! Bwahahaha... That being said, I could see a similar game that is built around your idea being great, too, it just wasn't what I was going for. Oh, but I *would* have definitely added some in-game control info/rebinding if I had time.
@wilsk For this game I wanted players to be able to set up huge combos without having to stagger the pieces to avoid clearing early as is common in puzzle games like PuyoPuyo. I think that kind of gameplay is fun too, but I wanted the only pressure to be time and the player's own ability to work around the ingredient randomization.
Thank you graciously for the feedback!
An absolute joy. I'm a huge fan of stacking and matching games like tetris or Dr. Mario, and this is right up there. It has the perfect curve of "incredibly easy to learn, incredibly difficult to master" that I LOVE!
Here's me playing the game. Best score is 7807. Great game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8gckPFHZtI
This is really neat! I love the art style. The music is so retro, brings me back, how did you make it??
@weirdbitgames I used fl studio for the main theme, and for the "game over" tune I used LSDJ! In terms of the "sound", I just kind of went for what I was feeling in my heart and mind. Listening back, I was probably subconciously influenced by the Pushmo series OST's because I love that mix of orchestra and chiptune. (Even though this entry's music is all sequenced instrumentation.)
@hacksawunit oh wow thank you for responding. Music is my real weak spot!
@weirdbitgames I encourage you to experiment and try your best to make music in whatever way is most fun for you. I was able to figure a lot out with a little research here and there and *LOTS* of experimenting. :)
The art style definitely grew on me after a while. My initial instinct was to match 3 etc. but other than that it was pretty intuitive. Capture12.PNG
I really liked this game! Definitely something I could see myself play on the phone while in public transit. It feels like a match three, but it definitely doesn't play like a match three. It's such a good feeling when you get a combo, and definitely when you're able to make multiple. This game is also a good example of how simple art doesn't need to be bad art. I love it, and the music is nice as well. Awesome job!
Easy to understand, hard to master, neat little puzzle game! Didn't get very far, but it was entertaining, good job!
I love how sketchy it looks and how polished it actually feels. Priorities are spot-on! :) Epic music, it gets a bit repetitive by the end, but this tells more about how gripping the game is. Really fun gameplay, great game!
Really cool looking and unique graphical style, great audio work and solid gameplay. Animations etc. look suitably juicy and the game feel is excellent. Instructions could have been included within the game itself, but other than that not much to criticize. Extremely impressive results, especially for a compo entry. Outstanding work!
Art music and gameplay are all great! Love how it's more strategic than Tetris because you have time to think.
Nice! Love the "this was a quick sketch" art. Came out really good for what it is. Gameplay is nice too, like a reverse Dr. Mario. I also missed the "you can remove things" thing the first time and it could have been more prominently tutorialized, but otherwise, it was easy to understand. Good work, especially for a compo game!
Very solid, polished little puzzle game!
Interesting twist on the typical match-3 style! Very polished, although I felt like the mouse cursor didn't quite line up to where I expected. The scribbly art style is very endearing!