Looks awesome, I played around for it a while and I figured out the potion crafting for the most part, still a little foggy on a couple parts (like when exactly a slot or the whole circle gets overloaded) but I feel like that's okay, maybe intentional. Knowing the exact rules would make it feel less "alchemical". And I get the feeling that I'd start to get a sense for it eventually.
I couldn't quite figure out what to do with the inverted elements however, though I don't think that's necessarily a failure of the "experimentation" mechanic, trying random stuff to see what happens is fun. I think the limitation was my access to ingredients.
Experimenting too much results in wasting a lot of ingredients and charcoal, which then results in not having enough money for ingredients the next day. I would spend the first couple days trying to make high-value potions to save up money to buy a bunch of ingredients so I could experiment more. I think that dynamic is actually pretty cool, balancing running your shop with attempting to fulfill this mysterious entities' request for aberrations, but I never seemed to be able to amass enough ingredients or money to experiment as much as I wanted without going broke.
I like that you're in the dark with what you're supposed to do, but I think having more access to ingredients, either cheaper or selling them in larger stacks, would really help encourage players to fool around and figure out the more nuanced parts of the game.
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Thank you for playing my game and for the thoughtful feedback!
I think you raise a really good point! And I think respecting the player's need to actually "waste" ingredients in figuring stuff out by being more generous about it is a simple change that would have big positive effects! (Edit: I've just implemented single items in the shop with quantity between 1 and 3 for a small bump in price in the dev build and I think it does in fact make a world of difference, so thank you again!)
Unfortunately I only had a playable build on the second to last day and had no time to get any playtesting feedback. I'd like to prioritize that in future jams but I'm still glad I actually managed to finish one :D :D :D
Anyway, if you liked the game, I will likely update a post-jam version with some bugfixes, more polish, and certain balance changes like this! Stay tuned :3
Also it's not intended to be confusing when things explode--it happens when too much energy is produced (more than 3 in a slot or more than 7 in the center) but with how elements react when you use multiple reagents in the same reaction it can be a bit hard to tell what the end result will be. I had intended to convey that better with vfx particles representing the energy moving from place to place in the circle, but I ran out of time!
Yeah I think VFX could be perfect for this. If elements are reacting poorly like you're saying, you could show some colored particles clashing together before exploding or something.
Also, you obviously do a lot more 2D in UE than I do so you so you may already know this, but I recently learned that right clicking on imported textures and clicking "Apply Sprite 2D settings" or something like that really sharpens them up in unreal. Especially for lower resolution images like pixel art. But this might not even apply here, I just thought I'd mention it because it's something I learned this Jam.
oh yeah that feature is a must-know for 2d games in unreal. i didnt realize it existed until i watched cobra code's fantastic tutorials on the subject.
And yeah, I actually downloaded a plugin to add niagara particle support to widget BPs, but i didn't have time to learn or implement them unfortunately.