Wow, thanks a ton for playing and taking the time to write such detailed feedback!
This game was originally made for a different game jam (Major Jam 7: Wild) in a little over a week, and I really overscoped the it. That’s why some of the mechanics might seem half-baked. Also, that was the second time ever I made 3D models for a game and the first time I did texture painting. In hindsight, a lot of the time that went into that could have gone into developing the game, but I always have the urge to have all the assets be made by me.
I originally planned to make a separate game specifically for this jam, but life got in the way and I didn’t have time. However, I still wanted to submit something here, so I decided to submit the two games I made for smaller game jams during 2025.
Thanks for telling me about the UI issue, because I wasn’t aware of it. I tried to test the game at different resolutions, but I have a 1080p display, and I could only test it at resolutions lower than that. It was working properly, so I assumed the same would be true at higher resolutions. I’ll have to test it in some way and fix it. Having the info displayed over items in the inventory was something I planned but forgot to add (or maybe it worked before and I somehow broke it later, I don’t really remember).
The idea for the potions was to have different effects when combining different ingredients, but there wasn’t enough time during the original game jam for me to add that, so I just ended up making it so that the effects simply stack. If you combine the purple ingredient (jump) with the yellow ingredient (speed), you just get a single potion that gives you both jump and speed. I’m not happy about it, but it is what it is. I just didn’t want the time it took me to implement the mixing system to go to waste, so I went with stacking effects. The potions don’t stack in the inventory when you mix ingredients in a different order due to an error on my part. That should be easy to fix, though, and will most likely be fixed in the next patch.
The general idea for the game was to have one intended solution, but also not prevent the player from coming up with their own solutions. So, for example, even though the intended way is for the player to first solve the blue temple without any potions and grab the bow so that they can kill the enemies and get ingredients for the potions to solve the rest of the temples, instead they can just sneak past enemies, quickly pick up the ingredients, and skip all the puzzles in the blue temple with potions (especially if they don’t know how to solve them the regular way).
Before I submitted this game to this jam, I wanted to fix a few minor bugs and annoyances, but in the process I broke the behavior of the arrows and the alchemy table. I did this on the last day before the deadline, and it was New Year’s Eve, so I didn’t test the game properly before submitting. That’s on me.
In the original version, crafting was just unintuitive, but in the latest version it was straight-up broken. Crafting potions alone worked fine, but it had problems when mixing them with different things. Sometimes it wouldn’t give you arrows, sometimes it wouldn’t apply proper effects, and worst of all, the arrows didn’t work half the time and didn’t apply the effect they had to the object they hit.
Yesterday, I discovered these bugs, and I was most likely working on the patched version while you were actually playing the game, because I saw your comment when I was uploading the updated version. Had I started working on it a little earlier, maybe you wouldn’t have had to experience half of the frustration.
Another thing that adds to the confusion is that the idea in my head for the crafting of the arrows was to have the player spill the potion onto the arrow. I didn’t have time for that. Then I came up with the idea that after adding the ingredients to the alchemy table, the player would dip the arrow into the fluid. I implemented that, but didn’t have time to add an animation showing it, so it ended up being really confusing. I will also definitely fix the places where you can get soft-locked.
Thanks again for playing the game and giving so much valuable feedback! Also, thanks for completing it even though some parts were frustrating, it means a lot to me!