Witches Brew by delauraen

Story
Experience a day in the life of a freshly graduated witch who recently found an ancient scroll that can summon a demon! Gather your ingredients and explore the swamp, bring them back to your cauldron to perform the spell to bring forth an all-powerful demon!

Gameplay Controls
- [E] to interact/pickup objects
- [E] to dismiss dialog (only the first narration section so far)
- [WASD] to move
- [Tab] will open your inventory and minimap
- [Escape] to close the game at any time

Credits
- delauraen - programmer, designer
- catharticmeat - level designer, audio, generalist, frog enthusiast
- meanttobri - writing, narrative genius
- Main game theme, pickup noises done by catharticmeat!
- Frog.ogg by egomassive License: Creative Commons 0
- MagicCauldronBubbling.mp3 by katzlbt License: Creative Commons 0
- River in Forest Ambience.wav by bennathanras License: Attribution NonCommercial 4.0
- ambienceforestaustriaw4telthunderlightrain.wav by magedu License: Attribution 4.0
Updates 5/15:
- New version 1.03 available to download via itch!
- Fixed some gripes about collision
- Added some realistic movement/head bobbing
- Added rain and clearer skybox
- Added an easter egg (good luck!)
- Refactored dialogue system for the narration (more to come later)
- Updated some visuals!
| WitchesBrew1.02 (Latest) | https://delauraen.itch.io/witches-brew |
| 1.03(PostJam) | https://delauraen.itch.io/witches-brew |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/witches-brew |
Ratings
| Overall | 862th | 3.316⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 1085th | 2.842⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 1112th | 2.658⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 335th | 3.974⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 97th | 4.053⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 161th | 4.053⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 37🗳️ | 11🗨️ |
You maybe should put invisible ramps around the carrots, a got stuck on them many times.
I had plans to implement some type of puzzle at each 'collectible' but simply ran out of time.
In the next few weeks I will be putting some time in to put in a little more polish and make it a more playable experience so keep an eye out 😊
There are even butterflies flying around! Cute!
I have trash sense of direction (part of why it's harder for me to play 3D games) so I appreciated the hints a lot:

For some reason I was expecting I shouldn't be able to walk on water, but then it turned out to be completely legal x) It made exploration easier, but I am not sure if it's supposed to be like that?
The end made me chuckle x)
**Overall**: I feel like with this vast and pretty place you have an option to make a bigger game, filling up the space with points of interest, things to interact with (to learn more of the lore, or take more quests, etc), more story/stories, like our journey of trying out different spells and getting silly results x) There are a lot of things you could do with this!
*Nitpicks*:
* It would be nice if text disappeared when you click a mouse or a button, because when game loaded, I had about 1 second to read first batch of text and then it was gone and I was like 3_3
* The sensitivity in-game is a bit too high, the mouse moves too fast (I have 500 dpi set on my mouse for context)
* To be honest, main background music felt a bit too distorted for me and didn't fit the visual atmosphere :( I don't want to insult the composer but this just doesn't work for what I am seeing in game, I would expect this music in uhm... Did you play "Digger" game? I actually loved it a loooot as a kid (https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digger) Well, I think this music would fit in *there*, but not in *here* >_<
Edit: I noticed you opted out of graphics, are these assets from someone else? I see three people listed in description, but only one person in LD list 3_3
At the end I was hoping for something else to happen, like the frog attacking, exploding, or letting you know that this whole experience was just a dream or anything more than just a win state. Then again, these game jam time limits are crazy! :)
- I had it so you could walk thru the water but it felt weird, I added collision but then realized I should have made the height higher so you can't just walk across it xD
- I agree, I didn't really know how to do a proper dialogue system so I just went with trigger events and should have figured out a way to dismiss/skip text. I believe the first ones must be based on load time so I overlooked it completely. Since then I found that there's an open source plugin I could have used (version 2.0 probably!)
- Mouse sensitivity I didn't really think about, I think this is just default but maybe it's related to some of the way unreal implements the firstPersonPlayer (since it plays similar to a shooter in the tutorial) I'll check this out in a future session sometime
- We were going for a more eerie/creepy vibe with midi. Initially I had asked @catharticmeat to procure some sfx but then he came up with a few of his own tunes that I liked. It might have worked better if we had a few different tracks so it wasn't constantly looping? I haven't heard of digger but I'll have to check it out!
As for assets I did use a marketplace pack since I was focused on greyboxing everything first (I'll add some pics for the devlog!) so the art wasn't created by me but I created all the landscaping and used some megascans for foliage and whatnot. I put together the POI's and @catharticmeat helped detail it by building out the cauldron/hut/cave/swamp areas.
I credited some friends who I asked for some specific jobs (writing the dialogue and helping with audio and some level design) unfortunately they don't have accounts or have really entered gamejams before which is why they aren't tagged but I'm pretty sure I locked them in for next time around as they had a lot of fun seeing the process evolve!
Hahaha who knows maybe there will be another ending soonTM 😁
I didn't have any issues with controls or collision, so the search for the ingredients went by very quickly and smoothly.
I only there was more of a challenge aspect to it! Even without tricky puzzles or riddles to solve. Like having to go through a small maze for one of the ingredients, or finding an obstacle like a boulder and going back to find a tool or magic scroll to get rid of it. Could be an option to expand on the game in the future!