itch.io

 The troubleshooting was mostly just sifting through useless guides/Q&As. Also because every source on my pc's spec was vague about the graphics name/spec/gen, I still don't actually know since it's 1 of 3 very different ones and I just used the archived manufacturer files that encompassed the whole pc build. Though thank the heavens for some random guy who gave succinct cmd prompt lines which fixed dism/cbs before attempting to fix the pc.
 
The launch bug...not much since that's just potato intel graphics, but maybe add a persistent and more thorough settings menu. The game always opens at max resolution, and it'd be nice to be able to tone down the particle effects and animations like bubbles, spirals, and such. The reduced particle effect could just be a singular bubble that expands briefly before popping, lots of entities spawning and erasing is a breeding ground for some to become permanent if the process gets interrupted. The wavy text is probably the easiest to turn off, which I'm sure is why hover descriptions add so much strain. Don't know why hovering on the refresh does, maybe because of the little animation it does? Holding potions is more a physics problem which is...a huge ask to optimize to say it lightly! A more specific ask would be a 'clear effects' button in the pause menu, since sometimes a transformation is applied poorly and the game really struggles from after that. Which gets cleaned a bit after clearing the level, but there's a subtle change in the minimum strain from then on. The spirals only really become a problem because...they're kind of op and you're more likely to have at least half your pot filled with a dozen or more of them before you clear the level. So the shear quantity of spirals become a problem when they all individually spin.
 
Another optimization is to put all the transformations into a buffer zone. Like a 'combo' counter or something where it'll hold all the effects until after the potions settle down, then applies it either sequentially or at once depending on how the coding handles transformation. Though if you go that route, you'd also have to include an after battle break so that we can actually admire the sprite's transformations since it currently skips straight to the 'shop' menu upon winning. The shop is also a great point in time to clear up the cache a bit and should overall keep the performance in peak condition throughout a run. Stuff like double checking if all the potions and transformation have been cleared, as well as freeing up prior sprites from remaining cached since it'd be rare to get identical sprites. It'll add a loading time, but it'd also speed up the game.
 
I'm also going out on a limb and guessing that the honey block has extra/redundant checks since the other slime blocks don't crash my game. Honey will crash my game if it collides with something at heavy strain moments, even if it's not the honey block being dropped in.  Probably not much of a difference for others, but when you're already throttling the line even slight spikes become more obvious.