this game has big potential.

i played it for 15 minutes straight, and really enjoyed this time..

i found some bug: if you scrolling trough pages too fast, the recipe and the product that should turn out are different.

hope to see this game on steam someday, good luck!

The game is quite addictive, it has simple but really rewarding mechanics. I thought about making a cheat sheet of references to get a high score but I'm too lazy for that lol, I hope the super high scores are not you guys, it feels a bit discouraging when you open the leaderboard and see such huge numbers :smile:. one thing I'd change is how the spell book works, I found myself spending most time just changing pages looking for that one ingredient I need, and while it is the challenge of the game it felt a bit frustrating when the timer ran out because it didn't entire feel like it was my fault. if I draw a wrong shape it's totally my fault and feels fair but if I run out of time because I don't remember where the page I'm looking for is it can feel punishing. I'd add previews with icons of next and previous pages just so searching is faster and make it so that the pages loop, so when going right after the last page it takes you back to the first (it's a magic game anyway lol).

This is just my experience, don't take it as me not liking the game, I totally had a fun time going through it and trying to figure things out, and the practice mode did help a lot with that, nice work!

Quite stressful at times until you get the hang of it. I agree that an infinitely looping book would be better, but I guess the point of the game is that along the way you start to learn these patterns and you don't need the book anymore. An interesting mechanic I haven't seen before and very cute graphics!

Fast, fun, frenetic, fantastic. 5/5. couldn't offer any ideas for improvement other than "more, please!"

It was a really fun play! As someone said before, it might be less frustrating if the pages were in a loop rather than having to go all the way back. Keep up the good work!

The style was an absolute killer here. Man the high scores are really high, I only got to like 200 and the others are at 2000.

I thought I had it all memorized! The game is fun and the mechanics are addictive. Occasionally I have problems with stuck page turns, but it's not a big deal. Nice work!

A very cool game to relax, an interesting idea and an insanely beautiful visual. very smooth animations and VERRRRRY CUTE LITTLE FROGS!!

Very well made game.
The graphics are very nice, the music in engaging, and I really liked the gameplay. It has _some very slight_ similarities with our gameplay idea in the intention, however yours is far more gratifying (by design).
I'm a bit sad though, ended up 3point below the 5th in the leaderboard :(

Really good polish on this game. All the little animations, effects, particles, etc. add up to a very nice presentation.

Gameplay is pretty straightforward but super addicting.

Great job!

I really like this game ! Pretty fun and relax to play. I can play it for a long time !

I love the vibes, the art is amazing! It was frustrating a couple times when I completed the recipe slightly too late, and the ingredient went into the next recipe, but otherwise the gameplay was really well done. Everything tied together nicely, great work!

Pretty cute game!
But a few things make it a little frustrating: the arrows used to flip pages drift around and sometimes away from the cursor, making it hard to click, and flipping pages too fast messes up the recipes in the book.
Overall, the graphics and the music are pretty cool, with an addicting gameplay loop!

Really liked the realization of graphics and animations! Everything is so lively! You were an example for us during development, as we came up with similar mechanics, only we don't summon bats, but battle stumps and bushes from skeletal arms XD.
I found it a bit hard to memorize the spell patterns, maybe if you did like we did - added lines to the diagrams and linked by associations with the summoning item - it would be easier and more fun to play. But in any case - good job! :)

Decently fun.
I liked the graphics and audio, and the end credits music apparently.
It was intuitive enough that you almost don't need instructions.

Awesome game and fits the theme super well!

Phenomenal game. I found myself memorizing the shapes by making up mnemonics for them, like the tooth is flat, the frog hops, the bat swoops, etc. Really got into the flow state and couldn't stop until I broke 10k score. Love this game.

If only my recipe book wasn't so treacherous, I feel like I could've made a delicious, devious stew ;) Really LOVED the music, and the art was super cute and characterful for the sprite size, great job team!

This was really fun - It felt really cool to have half the spells memorized, and to flip my glance back and forth from the summoning circle to the spellbook and back for quick references of ingredients that I didn't see very often/hadn't fully memorized yet

The art and sound is also great! The sprite art is executed extremely well, and I love that you're presenting everything with a consistent pixel size, and nearest neighbor scaling so it all looks crisp and consistent! My only suggestion here is absolutely a nitpick, but I think it makes a big difference in pixel art presentation - If you make sure that you're using integer scaling of your sprite art (eg: scale up to 2x size, 3x size, 4x size, etc, but not 1.5x size), you can get rid of the shimmering effect where sprites gain or lose an extra row of pixels as they move around. It looks like you might currently be scaling things up by a non-whole number of pixels, which means the nearest-neighbor interpolation occasionally has to double up the height/thickness of certain rows of pixels. You can see what I mean in this screenshot, where the two "l"s in "willingly" are different widths:


Hopefully that makes sense, but I am happy to try to give a better explanation of what I mean if not 😅 Like I said, this is a total nitpick, but it's one of those things that can add an extra layer of polish to already amazing sprite work

Like I said, the gameplay was a lot of fun! My only nitpick there was that the recipe would occasionally change while an ingredient was falling into the pot, which felt pretty rough. I also didn't notice the timer to the bottom right of the cauldron at all for my first several playthroughs - It might be clearer to the player that they're on a timer if you move the timer towards the recipe, so that all of the information that they need is available in one glance :)

But really, those are nitpicks, and I'm only writing them up because the game was fun and engaging enough that I was able to develop opinions about the most minor things :) Great job!

Great game all around. It's based on a solid idea and executed very well. Not much to say other than excellent work!

Very simple and quite fun. Great job!

Thanks all for you reviews !

@muhyrla @digitaliliad @the-sphess @ffffchai thanks for your bug report :). We just did a simple fix to prevent book page bad synchronisation !

Have fun !
CKS

I haven't played all the games (at least for now), but this is the coolest so far.

It's a nice idea and well executed. Found the book mechanic a little tricky at first but soon got used to it!

Great execution. Nice and beautiful pixelart mixed wth a fitting soundscheme and a small, yet competitive mechanic. Well done.

One of the best games of this Ludum Dare, really awesome! From the graphics, to the music and the addictive gameplay. I enjoyed playing this polished little game. I think you should even expand this marble of a game and put some levels into it, like a little story mode, where you get new recipes for example.

The feedback you get by different sounds and visual effects is really good.
I will recommend this to my Ludum Dare team, so they can play it too. :)

I like the Scottish vibes in the music. It's a great OST.

Awesome cauldron effects! :rainbow: Impressed how quickly I can memorize all the spells. I did not notice x2 on my first playthrough, but nice to know it is there, I guess that is the only way to get score 4000+.

Here is my playtest:

https://youtu.be/fstw0EMV-vw

This game is epic! Arguably the best I've played on LD55! You're legends! Rock on!

We liked those pixelllls! And the froooogggy

Amazing mechanics and art !

loved this game, good job!

The game is amazing! Very polished and interesting.

I like that the game has 2 phases of learning. First you don't remember anything and try to flip pages as fast as possible, and then you memorize and start building complex combinations very quickly, feeling like a real alchemist!

Good job!