Very fun little survival/tower defense/Zelda/shoot’ em up-vania! I loved the graphics and overall tone a lot, especially the ruined city backgrounds - I always enjoy a little cozy apocalypse. The different ingredients were adorable, and I loved the idea of taking little blob guys and improving them in various ways.
All the different mechanics were quite intuitive and blended together surprisingly well. Being able to carry and place your own defenses was a lot of fun, and I particularly enjoyed making my own army of followers with the table recipe. That said, I had trouble figuring out what some of the items did, like the angel or the devil, and overall I felt like there wasn’t much reason to craft anything else besides the turret guys.
The RNG of obtaining ingredients felt a bit restrictive at times, and it was annoying to leave an ingredient behind only for it to be nowhere to be seen later, whether due to despawning or wandering off. Some way to store ingredients for later could definitely be a big help there. The slow walking while carrying an ingredient also felt a bit too punishing, considering the player wasn’t even very fast to begin with.
The Chungus™ was a cool way to combine crafting and a defensive objective, though I feel like the “defense” part never really came into play much - my character ended up getting swarmed and dying long before the enemies were able to even take a sliver off of the Chungus’s health bar. I think perhaps getting rid of the “tower defense” altogether and focusing on protecting your character could help the game flow a bit better.
Another thing that might improve replayability and help alleviate the bitterness of defeat is if all the recipes were “active” from the beginning, rather than needing to be found every time before the Chungus will allow you to craft them. I just think it’d be a cool way to "sequence break" subsequent playthroughs and reward the player for actually remembering them.
Sadly, I didn’t quite manage to get to the end due to being overwhelmed by a procession of unkillable enemies following me. However, it was fun crafting and exploring around while it lasted, the presentation was amazing, and I think this combination of mechanics has a lot of potential for a bigger game!