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Alchemy's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Creativity - How original is the idea? | #4 | 3.833 | 3.833 |
| Overall | #8 | 3.250 | 3.250 |
| Presentation - How does it look/feel? | #10 | 3.333 | 3.333 |
| Entertainment - How enjoyable/replayable is it? | #12 | 2.583 | 2.583 |
Ranked from 12 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
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Comments
neat concept and impressive use of fennel/tic80, was satisfying to advance up the tree and player sprites
Loved the graphics and sound, but like others I had a hard time understanding what was going on, even after reading some explanations. I was able to make it about half way up the tree, I think, before I'd get bumped back down to jesod. I also managed to get the player sprite misaligned on the hex grid for awhile, which added to my confusion. I think the concept is great, though.
Having dealt with creating graphics with a limited palette, I’m really impressed with how the sprites turned out in this! They do NOT look like 16-color sprites.
With a few more tweaks to make it clearer why things are happening I think this could be really solid!
Nice, took me a couple of tries to get the hang of it, but it was pretty fun once I did.
I really like the way that your movement options get more powerful as you get further and it becomes more important that you avoid certain sephiroth.
I like the idea of tying the game into a substantial body of historic outside lore. The presentation is appealing, but some kind of pithy in-game summary of the goal and how to move could be helpful. I was happy when my avatar turned into a peacock and crushed when I lost it all to go back to level 2...
I just updated the game guide on the README.md.
Nice game! Good presentation and idea.
Took me a loong time to understand what was meant by balancing the tree (I thought it meant that two halves of the tree have to be balanced). I didn’t really understand the explanation:
Thank you! The explanation could be more clear.
In the next version there could be some indication of the balance on the tree and by highlighting the counts that are in risk of becoming unbalanced.
Neat game :) Balancing the tree more sense once I read the instruction!
So, like, I did not understand this game at all. It looks kinda cool, but the hexagonal movement was hard to pick up, and then the rules for what turned into what was tricky.
I am, admittedly, not familiar with alchemy.
Yeah, the game would benefit from a short user guide on how to play.
Game objective:
The objective is to collect the things on the game board in such a way, the you always have at least the same amount of things for the lower level as for higher levels – otherwise you slip down back to a lower level, and lose the things collected above that level.
You win, when you reach Keter – the topmost Sephirah. This is a Lisp Game Jam submission done in 10 days, and I did not have time to do many things, like announce the victory on reaching Keter.
Movement:
The basic movements are up and down arrow keys, and the A, S, X, Z keys for diagonal movements. On Yesod level you can wrap around the board edges, and on Tiphereth level you can move sideways with left and right arrow keys.
I’m aware that this is a 10 day entry, I also participated in the jam.
So how do I move things to a higher level in the alchemy paths?
The game board is randomised without any checks on movability, so it can happen that you are stuck in the beginning if you are surrounded by the dark hexagons. Just start a new game in that case.
For advancing, you need to first collect two diamonds or gems for the Malkuth level. Then you start to get moons for the second sephirah, which is Yesod. When you have three gems and two moon, you start to get Hods (Mercurius) on the boards and so on.
I just added more information about the symbology and philosophy on the game page, that acted as inspiration for this game.
Oh, so I’m collecting them, rather than moving them? That makes a lot more sense now.