Alchemist by Jacksendary
Hi and thank you for checking out my little game!
Intro to The Game
You are an alchemist in a village, your goal is to keep your shop open (alive). Your goal is to become famous and a well respectable alchemist all throughout the kingdom!
If you make a video or take screenshot I'd love to see them, feel free to share in the comments!
My Take on the Theme
I've for the longest time wanted to make a game inspired by "Doodle God" without just being a direct ripoff. So I thought to myself "How can I use this theme and also make something like that?" - Well after hours of brainstorming I thought "What if it is an alchemist store you wanna keep open (alive) and withold your reputation as a great alchemist?" and so started the game idea to form!
My Final Product
I could probably have done a lot more, I kinda hit a block all Saturday and did not do much that day. I will go ahead and say it part is my own fault but it is a game jam after all :D - Regardless, The end result have some very basic functionality, I wanted to also include power ups/downs and items which would make your character stronger, but I ended out in scrapping those in this version.
How to Play/Game Rules
I sadly did not really have time to make an in-game tutorial, so I strong encourage everyone to read this Section!
You goal is to reach 100% Reputation by selling the correct potion to people asking for potions, but beware; if you sell people wrong potions or snake oils they will start disliking you and your reputation may take a hit for this! You will also need to make money as this kingdom has some very high taxes; 2500 Gold each week which is collected every 7 days; if you fail to pay taxes you will be imprisoned and the game is over. If your Reputation hit 0% the villages will chase you out of the village as they will see you as a fraud.
The game is completely randomly generated so each herb have different effect for each game, the same with potions!
When you start the game you have the possibility to do a few different tasks;
Search for Herb: You will for 3 hours go look for herbs
Create Potion: You can here mix two herbs into a potion
Buy Herbs: All herbs cost 250 Gold
Test Potion: You can test potions on your self or a test subject, if you test on yourself you have a chance to pass out for 8 hours if the potion have a negative effect (this was were power ups/down were supose to be used), and if the potion have a negative effect on a test subject you may loose some reputation if you didn't pay the subject well. After testing you will learn what the potion do and also some of the effects of the herbs used to make this potion.
Sell Potion: You can sell potion to different people, all people will ask for different potions with different effects, if you sell them a potion with the desired effect, you will earn reputation, but if you sell a person a potion they did not ask for you will slowly loose the reputation, unless the potion has a placebo effect which then may earn you a bit of reputation.
Known bugs (Currently being fixed)
The tax collector does currently not take money away from you.
Time passes if you try creating a potion with only one herb.
Ratings
| Overall | 1534th | 3.357⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 1630th | 3.125⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 1082th | 3.357⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 2442th | 2.607⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 1180th | 3.661⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 696th | 3.5⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 1650th | 2.452⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 1295th | 3.36⭐ | 27🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 86🗳️ | 21🗨️ |
[Add some text of congratulation on fun, graphics, audio, innovation and mood]
Ok, heres what i have to say:
1) Be more clear with the objective: add a little reminder that tells what you need to pay of taxes, and possibly a counter that counts how many days you have before the tax collector arrives. (Also, the tax collector don't actually take money, so fix it ASAP =O)
2) Dynamic Enviroments: This is just a my suggestion, but wouldn't be cool if, instead of a button where is writter "search erbs" you had to click the forest (or any scenario on the screen, if you want to add other places), and instead of "craft potion" you have a little table on te bottom right with all the erbs an when you combine out, you craft a potion and so on??? If you done that it would be out a great mobile game, and maybe even sell it for a buck...
3)When i try to perform an in coplete action (craft potion with one ingredient, sell nothing, etc) the time will still flow (This is a bug, right?? If not give the player a line of text like "my experiment has failed!!!")
4) Add some special text to "non potion" item, because in my first run i was almost selling one. (Little suggestion: maybe use "non potions" items to be sell as "fake potions", but of course at the cost of some reputation)
5) Infinite games are ok, don't try to add an ending in a game that dosen't need one... If you still want to keep the ending, at least pair it with a nice story/main objective, because otherwise it's just an extra skipped dialogue
6) Why let others test my potions when i can test it myself??? Add some deadly potions, or some sort of negative impact on harmfull ones, otherwise this feature it's useless...
...And that's all that comes to my mind!!! (Sorry for the big wall of feedback XD)
...Also, i will take some inspiration on how to write a cool description in my future games, thank you!!! (It's actually cool how you subdivided the description in "little" segments and described your experience, i really like it...)
1. yea it some how seems I forgot to subtract the money, will compile a now WebGL version soon
2. this was on my original idea list but I ran out of time/slacked too much :D
3. Thank you completely overlooked that some how
4. I sort of like this idea, but I also really wanted "Non-potions" to look as if they were potions :)
5. I know there was a certain additive nature to this game so I sort wanted (at least for the game jam) to let people playing have an objective to work towards and feel like they're "done" while still being able to continue playing afterwards
6. I had a whole item, buff and debuff system planned where all potions would give some sort of effects, atm 8 hours passes by only for negative potions but the time constraint sadly made me scrap it.
Also thanks for the feedback on my description page :D
Unfortunately, the gameplay is kinda repetitive and random at the moment, since you need to specifically write down recipes and hope that you will find the same herbs after identifying some potion, and then remember to put those ingredients together.
There is no tutorial, so the tax collector coming was a total surprise for me - perhaps, you could make it more clear?
And it feels like the price for testing the potions is just too high as you can drink it yourself and get no repercussions on yourself - so this probably needs some balancing as well.
The idea is interesting, and you could get a mileage out of it, so I'd be more than happy to check it out after 3 or 4 months, if you're willing to work on it :)
And as a gesture of honesty and gratitude for your feedback in the post, I will post my grades here, hope you won't get offended:
**Overall**: 2 - there has been quite some work done and the game itself does not bug out, you can play it for a bit
**Fun**: 1.5 - well, combining random ingredients can be fun, just require adjustments, currently the only fun you get is to read some character replicas at time
**Innovation**: 1.5 - this has been inspired by Doodle God, Skyrim, many other good games, There's nothing wrong with that, but that's not very innovative. I haven't really seen something actually new.
**Theme**:1.5 - honestly, it does not feel connected to the theme at all. The game is about making and selling potions, not keeping your house alive (at least at the moment)
**Graphics**: 3.5 - good graphics, a bit static, but overall very nice (are you an artist besides engineering/game developing?)
**Audio**:3.5 - nice music and sound effects (and a cool composer, I guess :thumbsup: )
**Humor**:1 - well, I haven't seen any humor (correct me if I'm wrong), not sure why'd you put it here
**Mood**: 2 - yeah, there is some story to it, it's just not a lot
I wish you to improve this game and get something good out of it, and thanks again for your feedback!
1) The tax collector does not collect the money
2) As the screenshot shows, you can have negative potions
Well done!