I cannot move at start after dialogue. But i like graphics :)

Fun game, needs some polishing but I like the gameplay loop.

Can't move at all, but idea seems nice!

The menu could look a bit better, and the controls are a bit uncomfortable (for me at least), but the audio and sprite work was quite impressive.

I got an error when I tried playing abort(120). Build with -s ASSERTIONS=1 for more info

@clvp @ostrich I'm so sorry the description said WASD but it should've said arrow keys. Woooops! Been fix, I hope you'll try again :)

@jd-parker thank you very much for the feedback!

@nithin very sorry to hear that. was this in browser or one of the downloads?

@pinosaur I appreciate your honest feedback. Controls were something we wanted to streamline but you know how the jam goes... only so much time. :) thanks for your kind words on the music and art, they're much appreciated.

good songs!

@trifectuh in the browser. Maybe cuz of safari

Well done, it takes some effort to build a crafting system :smile:

I like the diversity of options and effort put into a dialog system + inventory + goals.
One thing I would tweak for next time is to simplify the inputs needed for the crafting loop. Right now, it takes 4 interactions to put something in the cauldron (tab + click + space + e). You could make the inventory open automatically when near a cauldron/NPC and swap the item with one click, making it much easier to combine many things.

@fre thanks so much for the detailed feedback. I like the idea of the menus being context sensitive to simplify things. It's also possible to double-click an item to carry it (neglected to update the description on itch with this info) but I agree its still a little cumbersome. Something to fix when we go back to play with it post-jam!

Thanks again!

@nithin I will test this out in safari and look into it. Thanks for the heads up.

@fre Thanks for the feedback! I was the one that built the crafting system. I noticed how tedious it was opening the menu and putting things in hand, but I ended up focusing on getting the recipe panel implemented so people weren't completely lost. Would definitely be better if selecting an item from the menu while standing near the cauldron just auto-placed the item in the cauldron and left the menu open.

It's a bad idea to have controls keys on both sides of the keyboad (TAB and E on left, arrows on right side) AND the mouse. My advice is to add WASD controls, will be way more enjoyable.
EDIT: Okay I just noticed the control scheme on LD is said to be WASD but that wasn't the case for me, WASD didn't do anything, had to use arrows.
EDIT2: Okay now the LD description got fixed X) Nevermind the edits lmao

@starblast thanks for your feedback. We are coming to this realization very quickly based on the comments haha. Will probably add WASD support and re-upload shortly. Trying to determine if that falls within the Jam's rules...

You could ask on the official diskord, or if you don't use it I could ask it for you

@starblast oh good idea. I'll hop in there. Thanks!

Witchy LDJAM games unite for spookmonth! I really liked this, I'm trying to make a small collection of potion-making games, so it's really nice finding this! I loved the toad at the beginning, and I'm a big fan of collectathons so it was nice to gather everything and then see what I could make. I would say that the 4 clicks to put something in the cauldron is slow, but you know that by now, so well done! I had a good time playing :D

This for me is 80% cute
and 20% spooky


Lets make a potion together!

Nice idea and generally good execution, but the controls were a bit clunky, especially having to use mouse + space + e to put ingredients into the cauldron.

Edit: Nevermind, missed the double click.

@arzi the double click makes it a little better, I agree though, context sensitive menus would streamline the crafting system a lot. Thanks for the feedback!

@inky @velvetlobster Thanks so much for playing!

I really like the concept of this game, but the controls got me. Like a few others have said, it takes too many actions to add an ingredient at the moment. A little more info on how to sell would be nice too. I eventually realized it's just like adding ingredients to the pot. But it would still be nice to know what the potions sell for before selling them.

The idea of collecting ingredients is neat, but it needs a little work. Maybe the ingredients could be found on specific environmental objects? Also, it would be interesting if new ingredients would start to spawn as you learn new potion recipes.

The art is alright, though the style is a little inconsistent. ie. Some objects have outlines, others don't. For some reason the NPC text is blurry.

Sorry if that seems like a lot of criticism. This is probably one of the more ambitious games I've played this LD so far. Since there's a good amount going on, there's a lot of room for feedback. It's a good enough concept that it may be worth developing the game further.

@thecritterscove Thanks for the extensive feedback! It means a lot when someone takes the time to write at such length to let us know what we can improve on.

Controls:
The controls could definitely be streamlined, some other commentors mentioned this too. I'm thinking a context-sensitive menu would make crafting a lot less tedious. I.e. you select an item while standing next to the cauldron and it just auto-places it in the cauldron for you and leaves the menu open.

Ingredient Gathering:
This is feedback I haven't seen on here yet, but was mentioned by a few of my friends that played it. The original idea was to have a heavily dialog driven game where you have to talk to the other NPC's to learn about ingredients and recipes, which would then spawn in the world or allow you to craft them. We just simply ran out of time to implement so much dialog after getting the crafting system running.

Art:
The inconsistency is due to some of the sprites being "dev art", like the "Leaf" sprite was meant to be replaced and we just didn't find time for it. The good-looking art was actually done by the artists :)

Thanks again for the valuable criticism.

This is so cute! I'm a sucker for 8-bit, and the purple-haired witch is AMAZING. I really like that you put in the extra effort to have music and non-default font, and the story is promising! I really liked this game, so I wanted to write a ton of feedback in case you wanna take it further than the 72 hours :smile:

* FYI, when your game is in normal mode instead of fullscreen on the web build, your font overlaps (see attached photo)
* From a pacing perspective, I'd put Petunia after the cauldron (maybe where the guy is?)...I hadn't even realized how to make potions when she told me I could combine them. This is a super teensy nitpick though.
* It'd be helpful to have some feedback for selling ingredients/potions...I totally thought Petunia just stiffed me (+$XX rising up from her and fading out as it goes up would also allow me to easily see how much I'm getting for the things I sell her!)
* The music is super cute! a little short. an easy hack to make game music longer is to build it over time (eg add a track in every 2 or 4 bars instead of all at once), then remove tracks the same way...it gives a bit of arc and length to the music without needing to write more music :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:
* Sound effects (eg for walking and item pick up/drop off) would make it feel even juicier!
* It took me awhile to figure out what the green box over the cauldron was for...that interaction could use some finessing.
* How do I interact with the guy? There's no interaction speech bubble, and I've tried giving him potions or ingredients to cheer him up, but he still won't talk to me! :cry:
* It would be great if you could select several items from your inventory at once...making potions got repetitive after awhile.

Overall, really nice work! Looking forward to your future jam games!


@catie-jo Woah! Thanks for taking the time to write so much feedback, much appreciated!

- Interesting, what browser are you using? On Chrome the font appears correctly (at least for me).
- I agree, if we continue work on this then Petunia will end up somewhere else or turn into multiple NPCs that you sell different potions to.
- At one point Petunia would give you a "Thanks!" bubble after selling something to her. Her dialog interaction is actually written differently from other NPCs since she doubles as an "interactable" like the cauldron and she ended up getting her dialog broken a few hours before deadline. I fixed it for the most part but forgot about the feedback bubble for selling something. She needs a bit of TLC to fix her dialog bubbles not showing up correctly if you're already standing in her area and put something in your hand to sell too.
- I agree the music tracks loop pretty quick. If we keep working on it we'd probably add some length to them and make more tracks that swap in when you go to different areas so it doesn't get so repetitive.
- Sound effects are a great idea!
- Ya the cauldron was also my work before I totally understood the UI system in Godot Engine. That ingredient box definitely needs to be cleaned up. I think it ought to have the same cool scroll texture as the dialog boxes too.
- Hahaha ya I mentioned dialogs getting broken, the guy had dialog at one point and we totally blanked on fixing it before the deadline.
- A lot of other players mentioned in their feedback that the crafting system was pretty tedious too. I posted some thoughts on how to fix that in other comments, but basically having the menu be context sensitive to whatever you're standing next to would solve a lot of the clunkiness.

And since you took so much time to write all that feedback I'll write some more on our original ideas.
- We wanted to have a lot more NPCs that would unlock different ingredients on the map or give you potion recipes but time constraint just didn't allow for it. Would have added a lot more depth to the game overall.
- It's actually possible (or at least should be) to drink the potions, but they all just flash the screen, we ran out of time to actually add effects to them or give other NPCs interactions with them. One idea we had; we thought it would be funny if after drinking a Potion of Toadspeak, you go back to the toad you speak to in English at the beginning and he just says "Ribbit!"
- The potion progression definitely needs a balance. To get to the final potion it requires a lot more elderberries and mushrooms than any other raw ingredient because I used the Potion of Minor Stomach Aches as an ingredient in too many recipes. Some players have reported that they can't actually reach the last potion because they run out of elderberries. I think there might be a difference in the random gen between desktop and web builds

Thanks again for all the valuable feedback! We really appreciate the time you took to play and review our game.

edit: I just realized you're the FairyTiles dev, I LOVED it!

Nice game!
I realy like the gameplay it just need a little more polish like finding ingredients around the town. Make me (the player) works for them!
Excellent graphics & audio that fit the idea!
And you made that using the amazing engine Godot!

@negator2vc thanks for the feedback! That's a common criticism, we wanted to add more in regards to gathering ingredients but just didn't find the time.

I love the art and music too, our artists/musician did an amazing job!

This was my (personally) first jam and first real project in Godot, it was a lot of fun figuring it out. It seems like a pretty powerful engine and we'll definitely be making more projects in it.

Nice idea, audio and arts. You could improve the game by improving the controls. It is a bit tedious to enter inventory, leave inventory with a single item, put it on the 'carpet' and so on. Thank you for this entry

@nathan-wash thanks so much for writing back! and so thoroughly!

I love the idea of NPCs wanting different potions or unlocking ingredients, especially the Toadspeak (I totally forgot to mention that in my previous wall of text, but the potion names are THE BEST)...making the potions have different effects on different characters would be a really fun easter egg!

For the title card bug, I was on the latest Chrome browser, but I'm also on a 15" Macbook, so my screen may be too small? Chrome was full screen though. It looks like an anchoring problem to me (like each word got pinned 100px from each edge, so when it got too small they just overlap eachother), but not 100% sure tho).

And I'm so glad you liked our game! We have tons of ideas for new storylines and audiovisual polish to add...I wish there was a game jam specifically for taking old game jam games to the next level :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

@shubart thanks for the feedback! The controls have definitely gotten the most criticism out of anything else. Our idea to fix it is to have the menu be context-sensitive, so if you're standing next to the cauldron and select an item, it just automatically enters the cauldron and leaves the menu open instead of closing the menu and making you hit E to place it.

@catie-jo Haha I'm glad you liked the potion names, wasn't sure if they'd be too goofy for a laugh.

As far as the browser bug, that's super weird. I tried resizing my browser to a ton of sizes and refreshing the page but the most I was able to get it to do is give me a blank box and play the title music. The game itself doesn't run at a very high resolution so most things shouldn't have an issue. Could be specific to OS X Chrome maybe?

A Ludum Dare: Reboot where you take previous submissions and try to improve them would be super cool!

@velvetlobster No you're cute

Play this game was really cool. I liked the music it matched the pace of the game. what I would have liked to see replayability because other than making potions there is no other objective which would make you want to play further. I would suggest adding mobs which drop certain crafting materials which you can't find on the ground. This way the play would have to fihgt in order to get further within the game.

@mrabnox thanks for playing and streaming. Appreciate your feedback :)

This game is pretty fun, but it needs some polishing. Great entry!

The systems seemed to have a fair amount of depth just beyond what the narrative was driving me to do. This made me feel a bit overwhelmed and lose some interest in that depth. The UI was definitely difficult to wrap my head around, and seemed like it could be made much simpler. I'd love to see this taken further, because the ambition and ideas are there. The graphics and sound were a good start, with fun character designs and interesting world sprites. Thanks for the game!

@carloso thanks so much for playing. We agree with you haha!

@adamcyounis thanks for playing and streaming! We really appreciate the honest and detailed feedback. Got quite a bit of insight from watching you play and comment on it, especially as far as pacing and game structure go.

Thanks again!

Incredible job!:)

@brallex thank you so much!

Awesome game, funny that the game felt so nice and light hearted, but you win by crafting a psychotic episode in a bottle. Dunno why anyone would buy that, yet alone for $1000, but quite funny (and simultaneously depressing). Some of the menu was a bit tedious, combinations of tab, e and double click, but everything was still usable. Very neat little game! :heart:

Thank you so much for playing and taking the time to leave feedback @justcamh glad you enjoyed the wacky potion names :D

@justcamh Thanks for the feedback! Funnily enough, there was actually supposed to be description texts if you hovered over stuff in the inventory and the description text for Psychotic Episode in a Bottle was "I'm not sure why Petunia would even want this..."

It was nice to have a lot of combinations, items, and recipes to work with. I had to revisit the controls to get that down, but once I quit doing it the hard way, it was good. Nice entry!

@arkinrev thanks for playing! We're well aware of the cumbersome nature of the menus. Something we'll be working on in our post-jam branch of the project. Glad you had a good time despite them :)

Great fun, though the controls were a bit tough to come to grips with. I loved the depth of the crafting, this is a fantastic entry!

It is cute, unfortunately the html versions does not yet have the changes in controls it seems. So it was pretty tedious to mix smth together.

@ancient-pixel We would rather not update the currently available version of the game while the rating period is still in effect. Don't know if it's explicitly against the rules but that big of a change in the menus and control scheme would mean you aren't getting an accurate representation of what we were able to complete in the 72 hour timeframe.

Thank you for playing and for you feedback however. We appreciate you giving it a try and taking the time to rate.

@dxk2294 Thanks for taking the time to play and leave feedback!

I actually wrote a blogpost [found here](https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/45/wicked-wanderings/wicked-wanders-implementing-feedback) about how we're working on fixing the controls and menu experience.

I had a lot of fun coming up with all the potions and recipes, glad you enjoyed it! :)

Nice! It's like a puzzle game disguised as a tycoon game. Regarding the ingredient spawns, I found exactly 8 elderberries, and used all of them. It would be nice to have some way to replenish the ingredients, or at least an in-game way to restart.

@mao This is actually something I looked into the other day. It turns out the random generation runs differently on the browser version than the desktop version. We don't actually change the seed for the random gen, so it's the same every time and the web version just got unlucky with Elderberry spawns.

In the future we will probably change the way items work completely so they don't just appear all over the ground. Most likely the player will need to talk to an NPC who will tell the player where they can find an ingredient, and then the ingredient will spawn and replenish on certain trees/bushes/etc.

Thanks for taking the time to play and leave feedback!

Ok, so the controls do need a bit of additional polish, but you've already said you've got plans to address that. More notably, the potions, and the ways you combine them, are pretty darn funny. I was able to discover all the recipes, and craft all the potions at least once; when I sold my ultimate creation (the first sale I'd made), the game _immediately_ ended, so, I assume that potion was worth 1000 or more. It'd be nice to be able to see how much something is worth before you sell it, if I had known the game was going to end as soon as I sold that potion, I would have played around a bit more before finishing it.

In any case, good work so far, and, looking forward to the updates!

@philomory Thank you for the detailed feeedback! Funny you mention wanting to see the prices of the potions before selling, as this is what the interface looks like after some updates:


We don't feel good about updating the jam version but will post a link to the fixed up and updated one after the rating period has ended. Thanks again for playing!