LudumData

GONZO ALCHEMY! by kristinamay

[raw]
made by kristinamay for Ludum Dare 49 (COMPO)

Welcome to Gonzo Alchemy! A game in which you use strange objects in your post-apocalyptic world to create even stranger potions, which you can then sell to the strangest of customers. There are over 100 potions to discover!

BUT!!!!!!! Beware. If you mix a potion improperly, you'll need to add it to the Unstable Mixture barrel (where else would you put it? you're not a litterer, and garbage collection was suspended in the apocalypse). If you fill the barrel up, it's game over!

You might want to get a pen and paper handy to write down clues that customers give you (they're usually standing there but they're not in a rush, so take your time). As you meet more and more people, you'll get more ingredients and be able to sell more potions. Thank you for giving this game a try!

Heads up that this game has some racy humor (a few R-rated references but nothing explicit).

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MAKING THE GAME

Well, it happened again: I got overly ambitious. I didn't fully finish this game, but I did finish enough such that if you wanted to try to discover every ingredient and every potion, you should be able to do so. I spent most of my time on the UI and on writing, as per usual. I didn't finish descriptions for some of the ingredients, I forgot to add in the sound effects I created, and every customer looks the same, but aside from that, I think it's a nifty little game, and it probably has potential, once the code can be despaghettified.

  • Art: Pixaki, with title card created in Procreate

  • Music: Medley

  • Software: Love2D (someday I will make a game that isn't so ridiculous to make in Love)

If anyone has any tips about getting an app up and shared for MacOS, I'm all ears. I'm not an official Developer for the app store so my project keeps showing up as "broken". Thanks, Apple.

Github https://github.com/kristinalustig/ld49
Windows https://kristinamay.itch.io/gonzo-alchemy
Web https://kristinamay.itch.io/gonzo-alchemy
Original URL https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/gonzo-alchemy

Ratings

Overall 489th 2.942⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Fun 526th 2.404⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 404th 2.981⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Theme 471th 2.827⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 165th 3.731⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Audio 272th 3.115⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Humor 110th 3.38⭐ 27🧑‍⚖️
Mood 298th 3.173⭐ 28🧑‍⚖️
Given 21🗳️ 27🗨️

Feedback

Moomka
04. Oct 2021 · 08:07 UTC
Very interesting concept, excellent graphics, inspiring music, but the controls... My fingers are still bleeding :D
Zarkonnen
04. Oct 2021 · 09:50 UTC
Funny, and lovely graphics, but the controls are mystifying, sorry.
🎤 kristinamay
04. Oct 2021 · 17:33 UTC
@zarkonnen What's mystifying? I can update the instructions perhaps if I knew more about what was unclear. Thank you for playing!
IcedJaM
04. Oct 2021 · 18:49 UTC
I'm amazed at how much you managed to achieve in such a short period of time. I love the audio, the graphics and the concept, good job!
LDJam user 174638
04. Oct 2021 · 18:54 UTC
Hey I like how it looks and the idea seems interesting but like the others I had a hard time with the controls.
I feel like most of them could have been simple clicks ?
🎤 kristinamay
04. Oct 2021 · 18:58 UTC
@dekajoo you're totally right - they could have been, EXCEPT! I made the mistake of making a point-and-click with Love2D which does not handle mouse click positioning very elegantly at all, so I figured I'd be able to do a lot more and make it less buggy with keyboard controls instead. I suppose it was less successful than I'd hoped. :laughing: thanks for playing though!
GeroX
04. Oct 2021 · 19:03 UTC
The game was fun, and the graphics looked nice, but I also agree that the controls of the game aren't very easy to use. I also never seemed to have to position that the customer wanted.
binary_coder
04. Oct 2021 · 19:06 UTC
Really fun concept! I didn't have paper on hand but I could spend a while going through and making a list of potions for sure. That said the controls were a bit tough. I eventually got a rhythm going but I couldn't read the letters on some of the labels, they would blend together.
cogcomp
04. Oct 2021 · 19:10 UTC
Nice game with a catchy tune. However I do agree with @zarkonnen and @dekajoo . There's a lot of different buttons that need to be pressed instead of utilizing the mouse and drag'n'drop. For instance, click on the customer or drag the ingredients you want to combine instead of having separate buttons. Still a nice game. Now I'm going go back and try more different things :-)
thesedatedprince
04. Oct 2021 · 20:42 UTC
Great concept - I've always had a fondness for "mix ingredients to get x" mechanics since Wiz 'n Liz back in the Sega Genesis days :). I agree with some of the other commenters regarding the controls, but overall I enjoyed this - very charming art style, and the music worked well with it :)
Pincushion
04. Oct 2021 · 22:07 UTC
This is a pretty big game. There's a lot to uncover. There's lots of entertaining text, which was my favourite part, and tons of combinations. Nice looking shop too. I found the music to be really repetitive. I wish ingredients came by more easily. I think the controls are intuitive, but the font is sometimes hard to read.
GuinyTime
06. Oct 2021 · 07:47 UTC
I love alchemy games, but I feel a little uncomfortable with the keyboard design. The fact that I had to press numbers to interact on a large keyboard while also pressing Y/N to answer conversations didn't seem very antagonistic (just my feeling)
moi93101
13. Oct 2021 · 10:14 UTC
Why no mouse control ? :sob:

This is really difficult to play so (without mentioning that it seem that some keys don't works with my layout)
Khadia
13. Oct 2021 · 10:50 UTC
Great job on the art and music and writing, as well as the code, all in compo! Wanted to mouse click at first but given that there was no time pressure, I thought the keyboard controls were fine. The only difficulty I had was with the font being inconsistent and a bit hard to read. Impressive compo submission though! I was sad to disappoint so many customers (the BBB is getting a lot of reports about me), but I imagine this could be a fun little game if you get the chance to add depth to it later on. Well done!
Jonathan Lorenz
20. Oct 2021 · 09:38 UTC
I liked the art style and the mood, but unfortunately I didn't managed to sell anything to customers. I succesfully brewed 1 potion, but it was never asked to me. The rest of the mixes I made resulted in failure. I think the game could benefit from a first tutorial phase where you lead the player to each actions he must made, step by step. Good work overall!
Itzemii
20. Oct 2021 · 10:17 UTC
Very nice mood. I like the feeling your game creates (with your text, the graphics, what the player can do). The music does fit, might be a bit less punchy/ more background in the long term play. The controls felt complicated, as for each single thing there was another key - for a production game a simpler control (i.e. using same keys for similar/ same things) would help. I did not really understand how to find out the right mixtures, the book did not help me, everything, except first mixture were failures. Still, I'm impressed about what you made in a game jam.
Ve_ret
20. Oct 2021 · 12:30 UTC
Cool music and graphics, but it was difficult for me to figure out how to control your game
fabula_rasa
20. Oct 2021 · 13:12 UTC
It was inevitable - my shop exploded in my face, burying (I assume) both me and my latest customer under a heap of barely identifiable rubble ;).

I love the amount of imagination that went into this project. Ingredients, potion names and descriptions were all enjoyable to read, and I was constantly wondering what crazy thing will I get to brew with next. I covered half of A4 paper with notes and found quite a bit of recipes even on my first run. Finding proper recipes and experimenting is very enjoyable. Well done!

The controls felt unnecessarily complicated at first, but I found that you get used to them fast. I would make those letters that signify ingredients bigger / different color / on a background (similarly to those letters near base ingredients), as they are poorly visible, and I was mostly just singing the alphabet song to myself to locate the ingredient I wanted :grin:.

I found it a bit strange that I can put only one potion on sale and that the previous one I put there just disappears (doesn't go back to the table). I'm also not sure what the function of "for salve" shelve is anyway. No customer ever bought a potion from there. Some leftover mechanic you didn't have time to fully implement, I assume.

A small layer sorting bug as well - if you get enough potions on your table, the customer torso clips in front of the potion.

![Screenshot_3.jpg](///raw/732/a2/z/48465.jpg)

Impressive work for a compo!
🎤 kristinamay
20. Oct 2021 · 16:52 UTC
@fabula-rasa wow - thanks so much for going through and taking all those notes and playing the game so much! I appreciate the detailed feedback. I'd be so curious to see your page of notes - you've probably played it more than anyone else (including me?? perils of a game jam :P ). How many potions did you discover? And yeah I didn't have time to fully implement for sale - I had a whole monetary system where customers would sell you ingredients and stuff but I had to pull most of it out when I was down to the wire. Again - I appreciate your giving it such a thorough go. I spent so much time writing all of it, so this makes me really happy.
🎤 kristinamay
20. Oct 2021 · 16:54 UTC
Also, if anyone's interested in seeing more details about the potions and ingredients that you didn't get to, you can always just read all the info in [this file](https://github.com/kristinalustig/ld49/blob/main/gameContent.lua).
CodeRaurus
20. Oct 2021 · 17:03 UTC
Nice game! I like the catchy music and the pixel art. UI and controls were pretty confusing. I feel you could replace a lot of the keys with a simple mouse click. It would also be cool if you started with few more ingredients or the first customers would ask for potions you can make.
Quite a lot of content for a compo game, great job!
LDJQ
21. Oct 2021 · 04:14 UTC
The art has a lot of style to it, and the music fits well in the background.

I mainly struggled with the controls because the UI hints were often either covered or had poor contrast.

I never managed to sell a potion in my thirty minute playthrough.
I did come close, but I hadn't put the potion up for sale.
This happened because the sprites cover each other on the shelf which made me think you could only have one potion for sale at a time.
fabula_rasa
21. Oct 2021 · 11:15 UTC
@kristinamay I counted, and it seems I didn't discover all that many - 17 in all. Not even 1/5 of all possibilities! And sure, no problem, here are the notes :grin:

![IMG_20211021_141033.jpg](///raw/732/a2/z/484ca.jpg)
Truedat
22. Oct 2021 · 23:03 UTC
you too have beautiful pixel art in here. awesome!!!