Brew Some Unique & Appetizing Potions! by HacksawUnit
Conifer the spindly wizard and their companion Cyan the fairy-elevator sorceress are ready to brew some unique and appetizing potions. These potions are special stew-like potions which are delectable but also have magic qualities... In order to make them, you need six unique ingredients out of a selection of seven. You may be wondering, what are the ingredients? I'm glad you asked. There's sea-oat-powder, sparkling water, star jelly, karob powder, vital wheat gluten flakes, mushroom, and deluxe whole rock salt... Please do not attempt to make this at home, because it is not fit for human consumption, and our world's oats won't quite work the same way. Anyway, what was I saying? Oh yes, the potions. It's quite a fun thing to make potions, so I'm going to let you get right to it!
Use the mouse to play! - Drop new ingredients: Left click - Swap position of new ingredients: Click the 🔁 button, use middle click, use scrollwheel, or press Spacebar - Remove ingredient (time penalty): Right click - Screenshake toggle: The zero key!
How to make progress - Get six unique ingredients in a horizontal, vertical, or rectangle bundle, then click the button when ready! - Get more points by clearing multiple bundles of ingredients at a time.
Hints - You can re-use ingredients by clearing them in multiple ways at the same time. - Rectangle bundles only count within the lines dividing the playfield. - You get less time every time you level up! - You can "over-score" while leveling up to get more points. - At level 8, the star jelly goes missing... - At level 9, the time limit resets! - There is no ending! Please have fun as long as you'd like.
*(April 15, 2024 - Edited this description to make clearing more understandable/obvious.)
| Game + Source Code | https://kirklindsay.itch.io/brew-some-unique-appetizing-potions |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/brew-some-unique-appetizing-potions |
Ratings
| Overall | 36th | 4.071⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 34th | 4.048⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 45th | 4⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 245th | 3.286⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 96th | 3.857⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 30th | 4.026⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 49th | 3.825⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 64th | 3.825⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 18🗳️ | 11🗨️ |
@mdotedot @freakyzelga
I think your idea could be very fun in a game like this, but for this game I very specifically wanted the "6 unique" requirement, similar to how logic games like Sudoku work. So, I opted to have a time limit be the main difficulty factor rather than the amount needed to clear. I probably would have kept that the same even with 500 hours to make the game! Bwahahaha... That being said, I could see a similar game that is built around your idea being great, too, it just wasn't what I was going for. Oh, but I *would* have definitely added some in-game control info/rebinding if I had time.
@wilsk For this game I wanted players to be able to set up huge combos without having to stagger the pieces to avoid clearing early as is common in puzzle games like PuyoPuyo. I think that kind of gameplay is fun too, but I wanted the only pressure to be time and the player's own ability to work around the ingredient randomization.
Thank you graciously for the feedback!
Here's me playing the game. Best score is 7807. Great game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8gckPFHZtI