Runestone Alchemist by good.enough

made by good.enough for Ludum Dare 58 (JAM)

In Runestone Alchemist, play as the nephew of the Grand Royal Court Alchemist, starting from scratch, and trying to build his way up. Although our hero likely leads an engaging and entertaining life outside of his plain laboratory, you're only there for the hard part... To graduate each rank of the court alchemists, you have to craft a unique list of runestones. Figure out how the runestones work through trial and error or sheer dumb luck, and if you have the patience, you may end up surpassing even your uncle and becoming the new Grand Royal Court Alchemist. For your convenience, please see the quick diagram that you relied on in school.

Controls: Mouse

Some Mechanic Tips: The core mechanic is learning how to combine the runestones in your rune forge. Take your time, starting of with basic stones, learning as much as you can about how each catalyst works. There's no easy way to understand it. It's magic after all... The runestone inspector in the palace will give you tips in exchange for runestones.

Link	https://goodenough.itch.io/ld58-nephew
Link	https://github.com/good-enough-venson/LD58-Nephew
Original URL	https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/58/runestone-alchemist

Ratings

Overall	684^th	3⭐	25🧑‍⚖️
Fun	696^th	2.717⭐	25🧑‍⚖️
Innovation	355^th	3.304⭐	25🧑‍⚖️
Theme	511^th	3.478⭐	25🧑‍⚖️
Graphics	642^th	2.913⭐	25🧑‍⚖️
Audio	419^th	3.043⭐	25🧑‍⚖️
Humor	448^th	2.857⭐	23🧑‍⚖️
Mood	678^th	2.935⭐	25🧑‍⚖️
Given		13🗳️	24🗨️

Feedback

Tesseract

Oct 07th · 02:07 UTC

Haven't played it far yet, but the ldjam.com embed cuts off the "To stream" button which lets you get past the opening scene. The web link does work.

Tesseract

Oct 07th · 06:01 UTC

A challenging puzzle game. It took me a while to figure out how to complete an order - I expected it to complete when I left stones on all the platters, but you need to pick them all up and take them to the castle.

The long delay getting hints made things harder - even after completing the first order, the inspector sometimes tells you he doesn't have time for you. After finishing the game, I looked at the source code to see what was actually going on, and I appreciate the logic behind it.

okEly

Oct 11th · 18:30 UTC

Nice graphic and audio

Wishes

Oct 11th · 18:33 UTC

a bit confusing but fuun

Loulou

Oct 11th · 18:46 UTC

Nice game, but I haven’t managed to finish it, the inspector didn’t want to help me :(

🎤 good.enough

Oct 11th · 18:52 UTC

For all you who don't manage to finish the game, I should have explained a bit better, but I don't really expect you to. I have only actually completed it once without using the cheat code, and that took way more time than I'm expecting anyone to put into this. If you graduate past Court Alchemist, I'm proud of you and really thankful that you stuck around with my hard game so long! The main point of the game is to mess around with an overcomplicated combination puzzle until you go crazy. I intentionally obscured the mechanics so that you could get that "aha!" moment when you figure something out. I like that kind of game.

Melomaner

Oct 11th · 21:51 UTC

I collected all the runes, but I don’t understand what’s supposed to happen next :) Overall, it’s a fun puzzle — I really enjoyed figuring out the stone connection patterns.

🎤 good.enough

Oct 11th · 21:57 UTC

@melomaner You have to take them in to the castle and talk to the guy.

nuzcraft

Oct 12th · 13:38 UTC

Interesting puzzle game! I think giving me a couple hints for the first combination would have helped me get started instead of just clicking. I liked being able to throw stones back into the stream.

dasMaichen

Oct 12th · 21:47 UTC

First I didn't know what to do and throw all the stones into the river :D. But after I figured out nice puzzle game. ^

LeReveur

Oct 19th · 21:41 UTC

I spent a (very - as in "litteraly hours") long time on it, but gave up with the order needing a blank stone. I understood very less of the alchemy process, just decoded the numbers and the use of some colors in the process (f.ex blue catalyst = sumup origin+right pigeon), got 5th blankest stone, and then… Even with the (light) help of the inspector I couldn't get further.
The pixel-select on the place holders at the borders were neither of help.
Good job anyways, I saw that you got an intersting idea and made it with deep thinking, but way to much difficult to understand

darianifakina

Oct 23rd · 16:48 UTC

Interesting work, like it!