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Clapchemy's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Cleverness | #1 | 5.000 | 5.000 |
| Theme | #233 | 4.000 | 4.000 |
| Playability | #258 | 4.000 | 4.000 |
| Artistic Style | #401 | 4.000 | 4.000 |
Ranked from 1 rating. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Judge feedback
Judge feedback is anonymous.
- I like the idea of mixing in ingredients to make different spells. Unique concept to present it through the clap. I definitely lost all my health and realized I could just stand there and kill the boss slowly as there was no death penalty. Slowling down the gameplay may help newer players get a hold of the concept before too much is happening at once.
Did you include your Game Design Document as a Google Drive link?
Yes
Seriously... did you include your Game Design Document?
Yes
Is your game set to Public so we can see it?
Yes
Tell us about your game!
Control an alchemist who, to use spells, first has to assign materials to his gauntlets and clap to cast them. Gather new resources to be able to create new formulas by killing enemies, destroying objects or just by finding them.
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Controls:
Move using the "WASD" keys
You can Dash using the space key.
Use the Tab key or the mouse right button to open or close the alchemy menu
Open the Notebook sub-menu by clicking the notebook icon in the alchemy menu.
You can scroll between assigned spells with "Q" or "E" and using the mouse wheel.
To cast a spell, just left click.
I made so the player can't die despite loosing all the health, just so the user can test and play with the spells and don't have to start each time. The enemies are a bit ruthless...
Extra Notes
This is my 4th game, this time everything was done by me, no resource or asset from the store, and it shows...
For this project I had to learn many new things for the menus, sub-menus, enemy behaviors, projectiles, hitboxes, items...
Behind the curtains everything is duck-taped but seems to work properly.
Overall, although I was able to do most of what I wanted, I found that trying to implement too many things in such a short time can be quite a puzzle to assemble.
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Comments
Great game! The boss was overwhelming since it spawns enemies, and has turrets, so the difficulty curve spikes very quickly before I was used to the game's controls, which made it very difficult.
I liked the experimentation to find new spells! Switching to the right spell felt overly difficult, I often had to pause mid-fight to switch out to a new spell. It felt like there was just not enough space for the spells I wanted to use. Some of the spells felt pretty useless, though it was cool not realizing what bonfire did until the room went dark! It would also be useful to be able to switch between selected spells with hotkeys, maybe a 1-9 hotbar of spells would work better?
In terms of pacing, it was a bit overwhelming to get two turrets + boss + infinitely spawning enemies + a dark room all at once. I think it would teach the player better if some of these were spaced out more, like a single room that is dark to teach the player the usefulness of bonfires, before putting it all together.
Discovering different ingredients was cool, though the third option only had 1 choice. There were a bunch of spells and it was fun to experiment with them. Perhaps 2 options each, 2*2*2 = 8 spells, would have been more approachable?
On a technical note, it looks like the projectiles and attacks all had full collision which meant the player would often get trapped between four enemies or get knocked around by bullets, which felt a little unnatural. I went from 100% to 0% health and punted into a wall because of this, where I figured out that the player did not die.
I didn't use Dash at all, and didn't really get the purpose of some of the spells (the wall-creating one mainly).
Well done for a solo project! I hope you learned lots of things.
Hello! Thank you very much for playing!
About switching between spells, the Hotbar idea.. actually I don't know how that could go past me, is just so obvious. You can use the mouse wheel or "Q" and "E" to switch between the 4 possible spells you can have at the same time.
The wall can block the projectiles, so you can dash in, create a wall and dash out again to attacks through it. In general I just created some spells to see what I could make, I had more in mind, but I don't know If I could make it for the submissions or make something "useful".
The unfairness of the enemies was so obvious that I had to make the player immortal or you could have a very bad time trying anything. I didn't like that either.
Nice Game! Love the idea of making different combos in the middle of battle, but wouldve loved if every combination made something (obviously since this was a game jam its fine). Great idea just needs fleshing out
Yeah, too many combinations! The spell dictionary had over 50+ entries, but no way I was able to make those many spells with my experience in this time frame.
Thank you very much!
I really like the concept, and it was fun clapping my enemies to death and mixing different elements to see what happened
Great Game! Beat it at 0% health! P.S. might not want players to be immortal.
I didn't do a proper work with the enemy behaviors and I was more interested for players to tests the alchemy formulas to get more spells, so I left it in this "immortal" state for now until I go further with the Project if I find the motivation.
Thank you very much!
I was a little confused, if making a tutorial is too complex maybe write some instructions in the game page. I was able to find the recipe for “bonafire” and then I could span fires, but that didn’t affect the tree. What am I doing wrong?
Should I add the recipes in the description, or let the player play with the combinations to find them?
I have no idea what to do in the game or how to play it.
Need more info at the start and to hold the players hand a bit to play it.