Potion Commotion by hulien22

[raw]
made by hulien22 for Ludum Dare 51 (JAM)

Potion Commotion

Description

🧙 Play as an alchemist-magician captured by goblins and forced to make potions.
📝 Manage your table-space as potion orders, recipes, and ingredients get sent down the chute every 10 seconds.
⚗️ Try to keep up with the orders, and keep an eye out for a way to escape... 👀

How to play

Drag and drop ingredients onto filled potion bottles to add them to the potion.

potions_scene.PNG

  1. You lose lives when an order times out or when you submit the wrong potion with an order
  2. Potion orders, recipes, ingredients, or tips come from the chute every 10 seconds
  3. The cloud lets you fill potion bottles with water
  4. To submit an order, drag the order paper, and the completed potion into the goblin's hands
  5. Use the cassette player to configure your "chill beats to make potions to" - The goblins are not that evil
  6. Use the heaters to heat your potions. Potions can be heated 2, 5, or 10 seconds
  7. The mortars and pestles and be used to grind ingredients
  8. The ingredients drawer contains all the ingredients you need
  9. The bottle drawer contains empty potion bottles
  10. Drag items onto the garbage to remove clutter from your desk

Be sure to read the in-game tips.

~Have fun and embrace the chaos!~

> Play here! <

Tools

Made with Godot v3.5.1, FL Studio, Photoshop, Paint.NET

Screenshots

Screenshot 2022-10-03 173401.png Screenshot 2022-10-03 173018.png

Updates

  • 10/4/2022 - Fixed bug with dropping items into potion using touchpad
  • 10/4/2022 - Fixed bug with cloud movement on small screens
  • 10/4/2022 - Ported to web

Ratings

Overall 290th 3.808⭐ 41🧑‍⚖️
Fun 370th 3.615⭐ 41🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 439th 3.487⭐ 41🧑‍⚖️
Theme 656th 3.577⭐ 41🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 189th 4.205⭐ 41🧑‍⚖️
Audio 111th 3.986⭐ 39🧑‍⚖️
Humor 327th 3.319⭐ 38🧑‍⚖️
Mood 264th 3.784⭐ 39🧑‍⚖️
Given 53🗳️ 58🗨️

Feedback

Igor Morgun
04. Oct 2022 · 16:04 UTC
Perfect game
Mr.Deku
04. Oct 2022 · 18:02 UTC
I like the idea and aesthetics, but it was not easy to place the ingredients into the bottles :/
Trusty
05. Oct 2022 · 03:33 UTC
Liked the spam mail, felt like real life. Was a bit difficult to add ingredients but I eventually got the hang of it. Thanks!
Cha5m
05. Oct 2022 · 04:03 UTC
This game is really excellent, this reminds me of cook serve delicious except actually more interesting. I loved how you have to organize your stuff on the table, even if it got a little overwhelming sometimes. Could use more features for help keeping the table organized. Also the game felt like it moved along a bit too quick, I think 10 seconds does feel a little bit too short for this sort of game. You guys should really consider rating more games, because I think with enough visibility this game could be a strong contender for a high placement.
Stephen Kyranakis
05. Oct 2022 · 04:22 UTC
I love the art and music! I found it a bit buggy though; sometimes I was unable to click on something to move it.
She Wrote
05. Oct 2022 · 04:30 UTC
Interesting game, a bit difficult, but fun! Well done!
LDJam user 306251
05. Oct 2022 · 04:30 UTC
Everything about this game is great, but can someone help me figure out how to heat the potions? I don't see any indication that a potion's been heated now matter how long I leave it on the flame.
Hekateras
05. Oct 2022 · 04:57 UTC
This is an incredibly promising game. Core design is really good, graphics and mood are amazing, but currently the balance keeps this from being really playable IMO, and it's mainly just a few little balance things that need to be adjusted. Currently orders come in way too quick and once your table gets overwhelmed with clutter and you've fallen behind on orders, you can't really recover, at the same time as there are a few annoyances and issues that contribute to you falling behind and slow you down way too much for a 10-second average time to potion completion to be viable. So the failure spectrum of the game is really narrow, which makes it frustrating.

I have a few suggestions/requests on specific things to change:
- Make it so potion recipes, at least, can never be rotated more than a few degrees. Having your recipe go spinning upside down because you moved it across the table is both frustrating and unrealistic.
- Either slow down the time between orders (I know, I know, the theme, but this is postjam so it doesn't matter, you could even make the timing customisable in options) or make it so you never get ingredients along with the order, and only use ingredients from your drawers. Currently the clutter mechanic is more frustrating and annoying than fun. I can see this becoming an incredible potion-making game where you juggle things and brew multiple potions in parallel, but you NEED to have a reasonably clear work surface for that to work, and keeping the work surface clear can't be such a significant demand on your time or go hand-in-hand with how close you already are to failing.
- Adding ingredients to the bottle should be streamlined. It took me a little while to figure out that you need to have the ingredient next to the bottle, then drag it onto the bottle... as opposed to simply dragging it onto the bottle from anywhere on the table. Little things that slow you down like that should be minimised.

I would LOVE to play a polished postjam version of this.
🎤 hulien22
05. Oct 2022 · 04:58 UTC
Thanks all for playing the game and leaving feedback!
Let us know if you make it to the end of the game! :smile:

@killerb You can heat the potions by putting them on the candle heaters (they start off on the left side, but you can move them around if you want). The potions will change colours after periods of time - sometimes it might be a bit tough to see the colour change since we use random colours, but you can use the puffs of smoke to help count the seconds
LDJam user 306251
05. Oct 2022 · 05:13 UTC
@hulien22 Thanks for the quick response. I didn't realize you needed to DROP the potion on the candle heater. I was just dragging them over with the mouse button still held down. I'll play it some more after work today! :smile:
nataku92
05. Oct 2022 · 06:16 UTC
The artwork is great, and the cutscenes slides in the beginning were particularly charming! I really like the different mechanics (heating, grinding, shaking). Does get a little overwhelming with the frequency of items (having the trash just be anywhere off the table might make it easier to tidy up).
Cedric86
05. Oct 2022 · 21:02 UTC
A bit difficult but very entertaining. I really liked the chill music in the background to the absolut chaos on the alchemy desk :D
Great entry. Well done.
robin_schmitz
05. Oct 2022 · 21:10 UTC
You guys made an incredible game in that short time period. Very impressive and a lot of fun to mix the exotic ingrediences together :mushroom: :gem: :palm_tree: :) I especially enjoyed to use the mechanics of shaking and heating the potion, somehow felt very natural and fun. The biggest challenge for me was getting to know the different ingredience, especially crystals and ground crystals and keeping my desk clear. Looking forward to your upcoming projects, keep jamming! :tropical_drink:
Redneb
05. Oct 2022 · 21:16 UTC
Cool idea. I liked the mechanics of collecting water. And the fact that objects feel weight when dragging (burner and mortar). Everything is very cool.
Ayelen Maldonado
05. Oct 2022 · 21:37 UTC
I enjoyed a lot playing this game. The only difficulty was on palcing the ingredients on the bottles, sometimes it gets messy.
thedude3600
05. Oct 2022 · 23:49 UTC
Nice game! It gets really cluttered really quickly which adds to the frantic feeling of being overwhelmed with orders! Good Job!
Mooptychunk
06. Oct 2022 · 01:47 UTC
I liked it a lot! Discovered that I have a very difficult time reading upside down. I love learning about my own weaknesses. 5 stars!
justabread
06. Oct 2022 · 11:22 UTC
Such a sweet concept with great art! However the instructions were only on screen for half a second or something, so it was hard to understand what to do. I also wasn't able to remove a potion from the candle.
puyo
06. Oct 2022 · 12:51 UTC
I could really relate to the messiness of the workspace, as I was neglecting throwing anything out. Well done!
BayLock
06. Oct 2022 · 12:56 UTC
Really cool concept, but i got a little confused as what was my objective and what was my clue or hint. It really got messed up when things got cluttered up on my desk. I think if you can remove the 10 second rule from the game it would be really fun to play. Other wise really great game for a jam.
GordienkoGames
06. Oct 2022 · 13:19 UTC
Hey, I played your game on the stream - twitch GGame86

How do I submit my order?

Please give my game a try if you have some time!
KatBoo
07. Oct 2022 · 11:52 UTC
Ah, shame. Embed link not working for me (Chrome)

Error:
"WebGL not available"
Kabura
07. Oct 2022 · 16:02 UTC
very cute game :D took me a little to understand that the order has to be placed in the hand too, but the little tips that are provided are super useful! :)
Druvsaft
07. Oct 2022 · 16:11 UTC
This is a cool idea! Very stressful once a lot of orders are coming in, especially trying to organize your recipes! This must be the first game where I felt like 10 seconds wasn't *enough* of time, usually it's felt very long, but not this time! Managed to make some potions, but then I got overrun! This would be a really fun co-op game, kind of overcooked but potions, how about a post-jam project? :wink: Great job!
🎤 hulien22
07. Oct 2022 · 19:12 UTC
@katboo you can try the windows build if you don't have support for WebGL / WebAssembly in your browser
🎤 hulien22
07. Oct 2022 · 19:16 UTC
Thanks for all the feedback everyone, has been super useful and we really appreciate it!!

---

🧪 On the topic of dropping items in the potion bottles, the way the code works is that it checks if the potion bottle is underneath the *mouse pointer* when the item is dropped - we did have plans for having some custom mouse cursors that would have helped to make this clearer, but unfortunately ran out of time..
Erukolindo
08. Oct 2022 · 15:29 UTC
This game gets very chaotic very quickly and I like it. The only problem I had is that the dragged item still has collision. As a result trying to put an ingredient in a bottle is awkward because you keep pushing the bottle away. Meanwhile the orders and other items that drop onto the table have no trouble stacking up on top of one another.
Lukuluk
09. Oct 2022 · 17:50 UTC
First the good feedbacks :stuck_out_tongue: -> the mood, art, interactions and ideas are really nice! I like the way how items are in a mess ^^

And here is some (hopefully constructive) feedbacks:
When I started, my first reactions were that upside down notes too hard to understand and items come on the table at a too fast pace!
And after playing a while, I think that perhaps the problem is somewhere else: since the game has a chill vibe, with soothing interactions and visuals, perhaps it's the time pressure that create a dissonance.

But with items being dropped every 10 seconds, if you don't give the player a reason to move on... Perhaps some of these ideas:
- making it easier to make potions
- and instead of dropped items every 10 seconds, having just 1 new order every 10 seconds (and after a while, 2, then 3 orders?), and the order being easy to identify (like displayed in a panel on the top-righthand corner).
- removing the collision of an object with the other ones when it is being dragged (ah, Erukolindo says that too)
Lukuluk
09. Oct 2022 · 17:52 UTC
Also I didn't understand for a while that you had to put the ticket it one hand and the potion in the other :grimacing: perhaps you could have some visual clues for that?
mypalmike
10. Oct 2022 · 07:41 UTC
Fun game! Hard to keep up with the pace.
Gonzalol
10. Oct 2022 · 08:15 UTC
Great game concept, I liked the art and the mechanics but the gameplay it's a little bit confusing.
Some thoughts:
- Amazing intro, congrats.
- It have some great ideas but it's too much information in too little time.
- I couldn't figure out how to deliver a completed potion
figadei
10. Oct 2022 · 12:27 UTC
Nice vibes! Loved the potion aesthetics and the comfy beats. The chaos was really fun. The volume starts turned on but the switch displays "off" so you have to click twice before it starts working properly. Also the rotation made it a bit too hard to read sometimes. I loved the chaos and I liked the little radio you can use to change tracks! I found the graphics were also fitting and well drawn. Nice entry!:)
TinyLittleStudio
11. Oct 2022 · 14:22 UTC
Honestly this is a very good submission. The visuals look really good and I personally love the handdrawn aesthetics. The concept itself is fairly simple yet very well executed. If I had to criticise I would say the notes rotating makes it a bit difficult to read them. Also when trying to put something into a bottle the ingredient moves the bottle. But that is just nitpicking. Well done!
Papaver
11. Oct 2022 · 23:40 UTC
The game looks gorgeous! Making potions is fun. I like how the explanation and tips are dropped on the table and that we explore the game like this. Dragging everything to the bin is somewhat annoying, but that got better when I switched to a regular mouse. ;)

Although I liked the drawings at the start, restarting the game was a bit slow. And I restarted a few times before remembering what the end goal of the game was. I made it to the end eventually.

It was funny to see how the mess on the table got bigger over time, not unlike my desk sometimes. ;) Sometimes it was a bit hard to get an ingredient into the bottle. I think this game would be very nice with a touch screen..

Very neat game, congrats! :heart_eyes:
Steve7411
13. Oct 2022 · 07:56 UTC
Really fun mechanics that could be made even better in a post jam version!
VPhyre
17. Oct 2022 · 00:33 UTC
Interesting game concept. The graphics are very well done and the sound is perfect. I felt a little confused about the gameplay, the visual elements seem to work at first but then things seem to get disorganized easily (I don't know if that was the real intention). But overall I think it was a good job!
Ismael Rodriguez
18. Oct 2022 · 23:54 UTC
Very nice. Love the artwork and overall mood. It gets a little crazy before there's time to learn anything which feels overwhelming. Very fun once the game is understood. I wish there was some sound effects. Good job overall, congrats yall!
Molpe
19. Oct 2022 · 23:01 UTC
I was pleasantly surprised there actually is an ending! Great idea for the game, nice music, love the story telling (especially the ending with the tiny hat :angel:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8piqzu1ktE