The Witch Exam by puppetmaster
Once a year, the young witches will give to appear at the exam.
This year the head witches have thought up something special.
The young witches must bring an unstable potion with the right ingredients into a stable state.

For the controls you only need a mouse or a touchscreen.
The game was created in three days completely by sammakko and me.
I was mainly responsible for the graphics and sammako for the coding.

update:
level corrected which had multiple solutions but were not recognized as valid (thx you for reporting)
| itch.io | https://puppetmaster.itch.io/the-witch-exam |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/49/the-witch-exam |
Ratings
| Overall | 930th | 3.391⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 857th | 3.328⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 898th | 3.172⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 981th | 3.281⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 693th | 3.672⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 349th | 3.688⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 729th | 2.929⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 969th | 3.21⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 86🗳️ | 39🗨️ |
The game itself was fun, until the later levels, when I got annoyed at the puzzle design. There were missing letters and you had to fill in the right letter, but there were multiple solutions. For example, IEF and the correct option was L for LIFE, but R was an option as well, which can spell RIFE or FIRE. Or DESE came up, and the answer was SPEED, but T was also available, and STEED is a word as well. Or LITH and I'm not sure what the intended answer was here. Maybe LITHE? But I put in F for FILTH. So either design levels where there really is only word possible (definitely use one of those anagram websites to verify that there is only one possible solution), or add some sort of hint text as to what kind of potion we're looking for. Anyway, that's how I ended up with a score of 9 out of 16, failing the exam. Haha, I feel like one of those students who's trying to insist the problem is not with the student, but with the test.
In other news, I loved the irony of flinging an empty flask into a potion. And I still don't know what the O object actually was, other than that it started with O. Orb?
Thanks for your detailed comment. We have unfortunately used the anagram finder only in a few levels.
Solutions that are not recognized as correct is stupid and would have been recognized in a detailed test certainly.
Thanks for your message It will be corrected in the next version and definitely also the Orb object.
It's a neat idea, and it's well executed. The graphics are pleasant and clear - which is very good here, as you need to know at a glance what you are putting into a potion.
If I have one complaint, it's that every stage has only one set solution, even though there are sometimes other viable words you could create. For, example: creating "steed" doesn't work, only "speed" does. Same with "filth" on another level - it doesn't work, even though there is no reason why it shouldn't. So the player does everything fine within the game rules, but fails anyway.
Overall, I enjoyed playing the game - good work!
There was a bug for me where I accidentally clicked menu after completing a level and then clicked continue; it dumped me back into the same level with everything already complete and no way to carry on.
We are going back and forth on whether we should show the solution or force the player to play through the exam again to pass it. We'll see which solution we decide on, probably something in between.
The menu bug is already fixed in the post jam version, thanks for reporting it.
The spelling mistakes have already been corrected, but perhaps new ones have been added. :smile:
@all
Thanks all for playing and commenting, hope you have as much fun playing the game as we had making it. :hugging: