Absolutely Phenomenal. I am incredibly excited to see where you guys take this game going forward!
All the conditionals for each potion, and how they change slightly as the days advance is so damn cool.
The idea of cursed items that carry over across multiple days opens up the potential for some lovely lewd, longish-term puzzles. Simply being able to observe how some curses might advance on a character from day to day would be cool too.
I imagine more characters start to clue in on what is going on and start coming specifically equipped to deal with potion effects (similar to the bra of holding), Or maybe they start obstructing obvious tells of what you need to use, so you gotta figure it out using other context clues (maybe this'd add too many layers of complexity to the gameplay, tho), Either way resulting in small, self-contained arms-races using alternate or more potent versions of them. And you gotta keep track of those.
All that up to a REASONABLE degree, of course, there's only so much you can realistically do before spontaneously combusting from scope-creep (which I imagine would be inevitable depending on how deep you go with this game, lol).
Wahee's art is just great, I'm impressed at how versatile the assets are to portray diff characters. The paper scribbles are quite charming too, in all honesty, even if they are just placeholders. Maybe if you ever get around to some reality-bending-type of dungeon creature, they could retain that aesthetic as a nod to the early days of the game.
By all means, I appreciate the lose states here not being about speed, and more about failing to complete specific tasks. There are proper places for timers but the lack of one here lends itself incredibly well to allow the more puzzle-oriented approach.
In terms of issues. Hmmm:
- This one I'm sure will be solved as definitive assets are made: I quite love how the potions have piping leading into the mixer, it's such a neat touch that defo helps communicating which are active. Same with the items being on shelves and you are able to move them around
As it stands, the UI can get a bit messy, especially with ongoing dialogue, as the dialogue box will either be covering the potions rack or the item shelves. Granted, the gameplay isn't really 'active' whilst you are reading something, which is good, so you could argue it's more of a personal peeve.
In games like these, the dialogue is usually isolated to the character viewer or any other area not covering any gameplay element (Va11halla and Papers Please comes to mind).
Maybe the window area could be shifted just slightly to the left (squishing in the potions a bit, to provide some negative space on the item's side so the scroll can show up without ever covering up any items. Only issue then would be cool scenes like the Octo guy, that cause the text box to move entirely to the left side, but maybe it can count as an exception since the whole idea is covering the screen anyway.
Alternatively, the counter can be extended vertically a bit to provide some blank space at the bottom of the screen for a more traditional, horizontal text box to show up. I've made a lil doodle explaining what I mean by that (as well as a whole lot of other things that came to mind cuz I lack restraint!).
Potion bottles organized in an organic fashion, maybe with related effects adjacent to each other; coin jar on the right side to perhaps make it clearer it is involved in an item related puzzle; red button for flushing undesired mixes (has a pipe going downwards, thru the counter)
Of course, it would also have a handful of tradeoffs - namely slightly less screen space for the lewd goodies! and also the text box being like this is a tad less unique than the vertical one you already have. So I can't argue it'd be the end all solution either ;P. Just a mere suggestion.
- The trash button as it currently functions is a bit redundant, as new combos mixed in simply overwrite mixes that are already inside the bottle anyway.
I assume future gameplay might involve stacking more of the same effect (like 2-3 portions of boob potion into the same mix), so it might be important for the bottle to remember what goes inside of it every time you hit mix. Maybe there needs to be some visual tells here, like the color of the fizzing during mixtures or simply some overlay icons.
Maybe then, the trash button can operate as a sort of 'eject' button you can hit to flush down the current mix.
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Well holy shit, I apologize for the insanely lengthy comment! I just caught this release out in the wild and it wholly surprised me with all the cool little ideas going into it. If it just shows how much I liked it, hahaha.
It has the potential to be a great classic, or a neat little gem (scope and all that, haha), but I just know it will be excellent nevertheless.