Alchemist by Jacksendary 2020-04-23T05:18:22Z
This game was fun, but I think there's a bug: when the tax-collector comes, there is a pop-up box but my money doesn't actually go down.
Foon → Ludum Dare Explorer → Users → Istaera
| Year | LD | Theme | Game | Division | Rank | Ov | Fu | In | Th | Gr | Au | Hu | Mo | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | 59 | Signal | 👥 | Traffic Control Publican | jam | 602 | 3.32 | 3.31 | 3.37 | 3.73 | 3.22 | 3.32 | 3.32 | 3.34 |
| 2025 | 58 | Collector | 👥 | Trading Postage | jam | 85 | 4.00 | 4.00 | 3.90 | 4.30 | 3.60 | 3.46 | 3.12 | 3.79 |
| 2025 | 57 | Depths | 👥 | Journey to the Centre of the Ocean | jam | 392 | 3.62 | 3.74 | 2.84 | 4.00 | 3.00 | 2.95 | 2.66 | 3.22 |
| 2024 | 56 | Tiny Creatures | 👥 | Deadly Trails | jam | 313 | 3.78 | 3.70 | 3.88 | 4.08 | 3.26 | 3.08 | 3.47 | 3.60 |
| 2024 | 55 | Summoning | 👥 | Euclid's Elementals | jam | 322 | 3.80 | 3.71 | 4.30 | 3.82 | 3.45 | 3.71 | 2.97 | 3.52 |
| 2023 | 54 | Limited Space | 👥 | Compact Domain | jam | 91 | 4.13 | 4.11 | 3.56 | 4.09 | 4.34 | 3.47 | 2.76 | 3.68 |
| 2023 | 52 | Harvest | 👥 | Seeds of Civilisation | jam | 91 | 3.97 | 3.88 | 4.00 | 4.05 | 3.60 | 3.71 | 3.61 | 3.70 |
| 2022 | 51 | Every 10 seconds | 👥 | Regular Railway | jam | 222 | 3.87 | 4.00 | 3.63 | 3.94 | 3.33 | 3.31 | 3.20 | 3.48 |
| 2022 | 50 | Delay the inevitable | 👥 | Flickerlight | jam | 98 | 4.08 | 3.45 | 3.45 | 4.17 | 3.97 | 3.93 | 2.97 | 4.21 |
| 2021 | 49 | Unstable | 👥 | Three Miles High | jam | 132 | 4.04 | 4.16 | 4.06 | 4.33 | 3.79 | 3.93 | 3.79 | 3.75 |
| 2021 | 48 | Deeper and deeper | 👥 | Polyomino Prospector | jam | 478 | 3.78 | 3.78 | 4.11 | 4.31 | 3.50 | 3.69 | 2.88 | 3.36 |
| 2020 | 47 | Stuck in a loop | 👥 | Crocodial | jam | 646 | 3.60 | 3.81 | 3.86 | 3.78 | 3.30 | 3.18 | 3.75 | 3.50 |
| 2020 | 46 | Keep it alive | 👥 | Vivere Computatrum | jam | 600 | 3.76 | 3.28 | 3.73 | 4.21 | 3.52 | 3.00 | 3.15 | 3.63 |
| 2019 | 45 | Start with nothing | 👥 | Warp Trash Flotilla | jam | 28 | 4.25 | 4.24 | 4.43 | 4.32 | 3.67 | 3.65 | 3.61 | 3.98 |
This game was fun, but I think there's a bug: when the tax-collector comes, there is a pop-up box but my money doesn't actually go down.
Great job. It's got a nice simple mechanic which results in a game that is surprisingly fun to play.
However, a few bugs, probably with the images. Around stages 11 or 12 the image became really small, just for that stage before reverting. Then around stage 40 the image disappeared entirely. It was still gone when I lost in stage 42.​
When I open it there is just a blank grey screen. Just when I was ready to give up, it changed to a "connecting" screen, but that was where it stayed.
Great game, but the bottom of the screen appears to be cut off.
I took a few tries to actually beat this game, so I thought others who are having trouble might like some hints.
Firstly, it does get quite hectic. I find that I can't focus on everything at once, so I just need to sort of "flow" - see the enemies out of the corner of my eye and try to take in everything at once without focusing on anything in particular. And, except at the beginning, I basically ignore the spell wheel (see next point).
Secondly, I treat the game as having two phases. In the first phase, there are very few enemies around, and you spend this time slowly travelling side to side, collecting spells and allocating them to your spell wheel. I tend to look at my spell wheel during this time, and try to avoid trees out of the corner of my eye. Then, once you've allocated each spot on the spell wheel that you wish to, you then start watching the enemies and travelling down quickly. Going down helps to point the spells towards your enemies.
Also, it might be useful to have a list of spells and what they do:
- shield (blue): makes a shield which circles you. Absorbs projectile damage - energy orb (purple): makes an orb which circles you. Does damage to enemies it hits. Does not kill projectiles. - fireball (orange): shoots a fireball. Does AoE damage. - busy bee (yellow): shoots a homing missile that looks like a bee. - ice shards (light blue): shoots a cluster of ice shards, a bit like a shotgun. - haste (black): makes you go faster - serpent (green): shoots projectiles that wiggle through the air.
Generally, spells deal more damage at higher levels. Many also make more projectiles at higher levels.
I had a lot of fun exploring the world and upgrading my hive. I was a bit worried that I would run out of tokens before I was fully upgraded, but that didn't happen. The pacing of exploring and upgrading seemed pretty good.
Once I got all the upgrades I wasn't really sure where to go from there. It felt like I'd already won, and just needed to click through the next 15 days, but I wasn't even sure whether I'd lost because I don't know exactly how much honey I need to get to support the bees over winter, but I'm also not sure what I can do about it anyway.
The art was great, very pleasant to look at, and the music was enjoyable too.