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A jam submission

Curse you, Toad!View game page

Alchemy dungeon crawler, explore, collect ingredients, craft potions and defeat those toads!
Submitted by Kleine Mondlied, Nevurianfull — 12 minutes, 18 seconds before the deadline
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Curse you, Toad!'s itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Audio#452.6223.167
Creativity / Innovation#572.2772.750
Visuals#582.4152.917
Overall (Fun and Playability)#591.9322.333

Ranked from 12 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

How was the theme(s) implemented?
The enemies are mutations of creatures with draconic genes. There's an infestation of Dragon Toads and Drakefly insects. The Item collection is also shown in the console UI as a Pixie dragon helping the player take the items back home.

Where did the assets come from?

Homemade graphics

Most Graphics were created by the team during the jam

Home-brew audio

Most Audio was created by the team during the jam

External graphics

Some graphics assets were downloaded or made prior to the jam

Do you have a diffrent Discord nickname?
schwarz9390

Leave a comment

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Comments

Submitted

I would love to see the continuation of this game, as I liked brewing potions! It’s unfortunate that you were unable to finish it.

Combat felt ok, when I understood that you just need to spam left-click enemies, they felt like a tiny obstacles in my way anyway. Picking up items wasn’t too intuitive, I would prefer either a click or a keyboard press without the need to hover over the item.

I loved the brewing mechanics, the step-by-step process felt nice and it would be cool to see potions which requires you to memorise more steps, and to properly prepare for that with some significant effects in the main crawling part of the game.

Here’s my play-through:

Developer

Thank you for the feedback and the playthrough! I really appreciate it!

The interaction has already been reworked in a recent update to make it more consistent, and I’m currently focusing on improving movement and input feel (things like input buffering and smoother movement).

Thanks again for taking the time to play and share your thoughts!

Submitted

I think there are too many steps in the potion brewing or maybe I missed something. It is a shame, that you ran out of time to fix the more problematic bugs, like the missing fail state for 0 HP. I walk around quite a while until I noticed, that my character should be dead after fighting a couple of enemies. Maybe I wasn´t fighting them at all? If I did, than there needs to be more feedback on hits. The music is nice and the graphics well made. The movement could feel a bit smoother and hitting the keys for every move gets tiresome after a while. But very interesting concept for a jam!

Developer

Thanks a lot for the detailed feedback, and sorry for the late response.

Yeah, the brewing process can feel a bit unclear at first… that’s something I’ve been working on improving in terms of clarity and flow in the next update.

The missing fail state was definitely an issue in the jam version, that’s already been fixed in the post-jam update. I’ve also been adjusting interaction and feedback so combat reads better, especially when it comes to landing hits.

Good point as well on movement, I agree it could feel smoother.

Really glad you liked the concept, music, and visuals though, and thanks again for taking the time to play!

Submitted

Once I figured out how to play, it was really fun. Look forward to seeing where you take this post-jam

Developer

Thanks a lot, really appreciate it!

Yeah, that’s been one of the main takeaways: once things click, it becomes much more enjoyable. I’ve been working on improving clarity and flow in the next post-jam update.

Glad you had fun with it, and thanks again for playing!

Submitted

I played a bit, got cautious not to get down to 0 hp again after the first time.

The (3?) tunes are nice and making potions is relaxing. The outdoor environment is detailed given the context, I specially like the look of both gathering spots, and I enjoyed getting rid of all the monsters in a single trip without my hps getting down to 0 after I had assembled a big enough stock of potions. 

While movement is fine it's not 100% smooth, sometimes a button press doesn't trigger a response when trying to move fast. From what I gather hitting during fights works with a cooldown but the sound effect is the same when you actually perform a hit or when you cannot yet, which is confusing.

Thanks for sharing!

Developer(+1)

Sorry for the late response to your comment!

It’s actually 6 different tunes depending on the situation and outcome, glad you liked them!

I’ve updated the game since then, addressing the death state and improving the overall interaction flow. I’m also working on making movement and combat feedback clearer, especially around attack cooldowns.

Thanks a lot for taking the time to play and share your thoughts. I really appreciate it!

Submitted

At first I don't know how to make a potion, trying to click and pressing F on everything does nothing. So I just go out to see the dungeon. The dungeon itself is great, nice visuals with cozy atmosphere and the enemy models are cool. What I don't understand though is the need to press F and left click, you can do it all with left click both attacking and interacting, or left click to attack and right click to interact. After exploring for a while and wondering when the game's gonna end I read the game description and realized that this is just a sandbox lmao. I then watched Captain Coder's playthrough and tried making potions again, turns out you have to click the potion on the whiteboard! Some onboarding would be nice. The potion making process is nice and straightforward. Nice game, needs more onboarding, the dungeons are cool, interested to see more of this polished up.

Developer (1 edit) (+1)

Thanks a lot for the detailed feedback, really appreciate it!

The game really needs some onboarding as it’s one of the weakest parts right now. The alchemy system is fairly straightforward, but since it isn’t introduced clearly, I’ve noticed players end up mostly stumbling upon the system by blindly interacting with everything in the room.

Good point as well on the interaction. I’m going to rework it to make it more consistent and intuitive.

I’m glad you enjoyed the dungeon and atmosphere, though.

Thanks again for taking the time to try it out!

Submitted

Interesting mechanics. Took me a while to figure out how the brewing system works, but once you do it makes sense. You take damage from enemies, but don't die when you reach zero.  I spent some time after making all available position to try to kill all enemies to see if that would trigger a win screen, but it does not seem to be one.

Instructions say to turn right with R, which is a typo since its actually E, like all other game :P

Thanks for the game!

Developer

Thanks a lot for the feedback, really appreciate it!

I’m glad the alchemy system clicked after a while, but I’ve consistently seen it needs more onboarding, so that’s another point I’ll address on the post-jam polished version. The death issue has been fixed in the post-jam version, so that will be seen when uploads are available again. I’m currently working on a little rework for the alchemy system and tying the win condition to it!

Also, sorry about the typo; it’s fixed now.

Thanks for trying out the game!

Submitted

Very colourful and pretty game! Just noticed death is not implemented for the player xD I found it a bit hard to navigate back to the potion area though! 

Really good work though :) 

Developer(+1)

Thanks a lot, really appreciate it!

The death issue has already been solved in the post-jam polish build. I’m also looking into the navigation issue. Glad you liked the visuals!

Jam HostSubmitted

I loved the idea of interactive / timed crafting that this one aimed to do. Fantastic art and assets! The music was also a bop! Great work. Thanks for sharing it.

You can watch my playthrough here: https://youtu.be/tXv81OWKnEQ

Submitted

Not a bad concept at all. Cozy vibe, which I always enjoy. I liked the mechanics of the potion brewing and the separation of that process with the gathering of parts. Movement was responsive enough and the level was well laid out in that I could navigate it by memory quite easily.

However, I am not sure if the game had an end goal or a larger goal to work towards. Making potions was a core mechanic, but it wasn't framed as the final goal.

Developer

Thanks for the feedback, really appreciate it!

Yep, we focused the core loop around potion making, but in this version, it’s not really framed towards anything beyond making potions for the sake of making potions (ᵕ—ᴗ—).

We’ve been thinking about ways to better tie that together, like having a specific objective that uses the alchemy system, maybe brew something that lets you deal with the toads and actually finish the game.

Glad to hear the mechanics and exploration felt good, though!

Submitted

I get the vibe of what you were going for, even if you ran out of time to implement everything you wanted to. The idea of collecting ingredients and then making potions is a good base for things. I could see like a fuller realization of this game where you brew a potion that opens a portal to another area with more ingredient types or something like that, progressing that way.

Good music and good art style, I like the enemy designs.

It took me a little bit to get used to the controls and what would actually interact with things but I made a few potions for fun.

Seems like you had a game you wanted to make and then decided afterward it had dragons in it, huh? :) It's fine, I'm sure a lot of people do that with themes.

Vaguely made me think of the game Potion Craft: Alchemist Simulator.

Developer

Thanks for your feedback, really appreciate it!

Yeah, the idea was originally closer to an atelier / Potion Craft-style alchemy system, but due to time and design constraints it ended up a bit more simplified, almost like an Overcooked-style interaction loop. Still fun to play and much more manageable to implement. Potion portals for new areas sounds like a really cool direction!

We’ll definitely rework the interaction system post-jam to make it more clear and consistent.

And whoops, you caught us there (´∇`’’). We started thinking about the game before the theme was announced, and then went “dragons!” afterwards, kind of like the Aliens! meme.

We’re glad you liked what we have, even in its rough presentation as it is right now.

Submitted

There is no way to get back to the menu or quit the game?
Also, it was very hard to find the way back to the door if you got a bit far.
Otherwise the music was nice and the toads quite funny

Developer (1 edit)

Thanks a lot for the feedback, really appreciate it!

You’re right, currently there’s no way to return to the menu or quit from within the game. I realized too late before submission. The navigation issue is also very fair. The goal was to create a forest-like, maze-y feeling, but it would definitely benefit from stronger landmarks or just a straight-up map to make it less confusing.

Both points are noted for a post-jam update.

Really glad you enjoyed the music and the toads though, that means a lot!