LudumData

Alchemy from Nothing by Solnak

[raw]
made by Solnak for Ludum Dare 45 (COMPO)

The philosopher's stone ...

Have you ever heard of it ?

Capable of turning base metals such as mercury into gold or silver. It is also called the elixir of life, useful for rejuvenation and for achieving immortality.

Do I have your attention now ?

And wait, the best part is that you can create it from nothing...

You will only need to give some of yourself in this project.

stone.PNG

This game is entirely made in 48 hours in solo, i really enjoyed this jam.

In this game, you will only have to combine ingredients to finally reach the philosopher's stone.

To help you to find the working combination, you can check this book :

book.png

Click on the alchemist to drain his blood, and start from it to reach enough blood to synthesize the philosopher's stone.

flawed stone.PNG

gameplay.gif

Control :

All the game is only playable with your mouse, the only key usefull will be SPACE to put the game in pause.

  • Solnak
Youtube https://drive.google.com/open?id=1yK-1cEY9Tm6PMMcNctFd_CZVjDh4VzZB
Youtube https://solnak.itch.io/ld45
Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/45/alchemy-from-nothing

Ratings

Overall 313th 3.259⭐ 31🧑‍⚖️
Fun 378th 2.879⭐ 31🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 359th 2.929⭐ 30🧑‍⚖️
Theme 178th 3.621⭐ 31🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 92th 3.862⭐ 31🧑‍⚖️
Audio 129th 3.446⭐ 30🧑‍⚖️
Humor 187th 2.786⭐ 30🧑‍⚖️
Mood 274th 3.089⭐ 30🧑‍⚖️
Given 35🗳️ 9🗨️

Feedback

Phil C
07. Oct 2019 · 01:41 UTC
Mana never regenerates, and I personally couldn't get further than slime both tries. Getting blood took me a minute to figure out how to do as well, that along with mana led to a little bit of frustration :p . Absolutely LOVE the artstyle and alchemy theme!!!!! The game looks beautiful should be proud of that. Love the Alchemy symbol 'cutscene' thing as well! Would absolutely love to see you expand more on it however!
Martynas
07. Oct 2019 · 12:38 UTC
Incredible art and music!
Nikita Demidov
07. Oct 2019 · 17:22 UTC
Good little game!
But I don't really understand what keeps you from crafting the big stone from the begin on...
But it was fun
Solah
08. Oct 2019 · 05:57 UTC
Hey!

As expected, your game is very cool and needs some effort to learn all the transmutations. During the first minutes I was like "What the hell can I do with these few ingredients" but finally managed to find all the recipes with the hints in the book :)

I did not really get into using the mana very much, I felt like it was missing something to make it really useful (maybe low probability to craft the last items so you'd prefer to use mana than having some waste?).

The music is great and sound design very cool. The graphics are very good also but I guess you lacked of time on the UI that looks a bit "basic".

Good job Solnaku-san!
AZAMATIKA
08. Oct 2019 · 06:41 UTC
Looks good, but i can play only 5 minutes maximum, cause there's nothing that i did not see before in other alchemy games. But for a jam it's cool game.
Need more miracle features next time :D
Hcursino
08. Oct 2019 · 14:06 UTC
I was trying to summon the fairy and all when all of a sudden I got this bug where all the items would always be dropped on the same slot. Then I couldn't transmute anything else D:
🎤 Solnak
08. Oct 2019 · 14:47 UTC
@hcursino Wow, weird, never had this bug despite all the time i tested my game, do you remember have done anything particular before it happened ?
BlueMirror
08. Oct 2019 · 14:53 UTC
Really love games like this, in which you need to find out how to craft things and remember yourself. Especially when once a recipe is found I go "Ohhhh that makes sense". The only 2 things I still dont get are how to craft the philosophers stone (I did have infinite blood) and why sometimes and at the end really often the screen went black a bit and that sign was popping up. I also realised that its compo ^^ the art in that amount of time, plus the crafting system, well done!
🎤 Solnak
08. Oct 2019 · 15:00 UTC
@bluemirror Thanks a lot for your kind words :), to craft the philosopher's you need to place the infinite blood in one of the table and leave the other empty. When the screen goes black with the transmutation circle it's a feedback for a critical success on combine (10% by default), this will spare the ingredients for this combination.
Lombax
08. Oct 2019 · 15:25 UTC
nice game. 48 hours does set some limitations to what is possible to make, and i can see some promise here if expanded upon ofcourse, realy nice art.
when i played it first time, the game lagged like a uhm yea (using chrome), when i did it the second time then the lagg was almost entirely gone.

i would like to see some uses for the stuff you make. like a fast growing formula, that you can give to a plant to extract a special pollen or something. :dog: :dog:
Lazlo319
08. Oct 2019 · 17:40 UTC
Alright game, dragging things back and forth from the inventory feels a bit sticky at times but other then that, interesting!
Youkool
08. Oct 2019 · 17:48 UTC
The premise is very good, but I feel like adding randomness was a mistake. You can never tell if you just didn't have a good recipe or if it failed because of RNGsus. Remove that, make sure the drag and drop always works and give a bit more clues on which direction to go and you have a very good game (already a great idea).
Toryf
08. Oct 2019 · 18:20 UTC
Pretty relaxing puzzle game, pleasant to play, Great Job !
Asue
08. Oct 2019 · 19:09 UTC
J'ai mis un peu de temps à comprendre ce que je devais faire au début (mode boulet activé) x) En tout cas j'aime beaucoup les graphismes, simples mais plutôt mignons :) Le concept est très sympa et la musique colle bien au jeu !
PatteDeCanaard
08. Oct 2019 · 20:54 UTC
Super! Beau boulot au niveau des dessins: il y a quand même un certains nombre d'assets et ils sont très beau :) Le drag and drop pour remettre les items dans l'inventaire est un peu capricieux, mais je suis quand même parvenu à créer la pierre philosophale! La musique est sympas. Bon jeu et bien dans le thème. Bien joué ;)
TasakaSama
10. Oct 2019 · 09:12 UTC
The idea is very good, but I have a little trouble from the start you tell us that to win it takes 999 of blood to get the stone. So that's what I do I take 999 and I craft the stone and here is it won ?

Because of this, the interest of the other craft brings only little ?

So, for the final craft, it would take something other than just blood ?
Or that the blood does not increase indefinitely ?

In any case the concept is cool and the design is clean, I really like the idea but the goal of the game disturbs me... WellDone !
stmatn
20. Oct 2019 · 08:42 UTC
Fun game!

It would have been nice, if swapping the ingredients would be more convenient. Especially removing something could be done easier.