itch.io

Strafing around was really fun and I liked the bomberman gameplay.

REally liked all of the weapons and passive item designs. Chicken bomb was my favorite attack (cus of the sound design) and Shrapnel was my favorite passive.

Pixel art was really well done all around! the wizard fireball was my favorite one.

The two runs I played were both really fun!! -- died at level 8 in both of em

Such a sick concept!! The card deck design was really impactful and interesting for this as a really novel roguelike concept! What you made for the jam is a super impressive systems design and in a really good state! No bugs or glitches detected (besides the BSOD....)

I really liked the game loop in the end, but it took a bit of getting used to at first----

First off the CRT effect was like 80% too high imo. So im glad you made a settings menu! the main menu settings did not 'stick' when i started the run, but luckily you included a 2nd settings menu in the Edit Deck sub-menu!! So i was able to disable it again, and it worked this time.  Helped a lot for me to focus on learning the mechanics

There was a lot to absorb all at once... i think partially due to the map size. Something like a 3x3 or 9x9 would have felt like good training wheels to get used to all of the mechanics (esp the cards). I was sometimes a little confused what my next move should have been, so glowing buttons or arrows could help just make it really clear what i need to do next. I think i got it? Shunt x3 -> Mine x1 (hopefully blank) space -> Use up Operations cards -> End Turn -> [repeat]

A few other UI hurdles my eyes had to get used to: Shunt was a word i was unfamilar with, at least in the context of planting the flag in minesweeper so i wasn't immediately sure what that meant and i was afraid to click it. Also the bomb icons were the same bright white color as the numbers and gridlines, making them not stick out immediately and i had to really scan over the board to find them - so something more contrasty or with red (like the shunts) could help make them stand out?

Audio was all really good and cohesive, but I often felt confused hearing an explosion sound when I "Mined" to end the my turn. I don't know if that was a sound I wanted to hear...?
I was often rewarded with a new card so I think a different sound for successful turns would make that instantly click whether i am doing the right thing or not...

...cus since I got the blue screen ending, it made me question everything I was doing for the past 20 min and I wonder if i missed the main objective of the game completely? 😂

The music and vibes were really immersive into the vibe of the game and gave a great atmosphere... i could see this having a lot of potential as an inscrytion-like creepy/spooky narrative with the creepy character across the table genre... or some sort of grim reality-parallel to the Minesweeper game like in Planetenverteidigungskanonenkommandant. 

Overall super cool with tons of potential!! Power Shunt was my favorite part of the whole game really cool design!!

Edit: I never clicked the Read Me.... lol whoops

Very solid and SUPER polished. The music added so much from the prototype i playtested earlier! Art design is top notch, and the character writing was funny. Everything super well executed!!!

Level designs were also pretty interesting, varied, and satisfying to complete. I especially liked the secret solutions to some of the early levels with a hidden lever off-screen!

A few of them felt a bit auto-pilot though (didn't really require much aim or timing --  just spam the bombs and the clever rube goldberg level design plays itself)

The camera movements and long(ish) intro/outro animations started to feel like the game was pumping the brakes on me when i just wanted to GOGOGOGO and PLAY!!  Would be awesome if holding a button would Engine.time_scale = 2.0 (Or 4.0...) to speed things along. Skippable intro cutscenes/outros etc. Sometimes you wanna pump your fists in the air as the victory music plays, other times you wanna just go STRAIGHT into the next level without any pauses (there's kind of a delay in the timing of Generator Trigger -> light turns on ->  (long pause) -> Camera pans -> (pause) ->  Elena disappears -> camera pans -> (pause) -> Elena appears) | *disclaimer: 100% ADHD gamer note :P

Also unfortunate soft lock at the end cut things short. not sure what happened there!

Fun but veryyyy challenging with 1 hp!

really fun gameplay. A little hard to pay attention to the enemies and also watch the stress bar at the very far right of the screen -- some audio feedback (like a heartbeat increasing rate, or just the sound of a bomb fuse getting louder) would have helped a lot to cue me to stop moving when i was so focused on the enemy patterns

One critique for the powerup system: if it had a UI or text popup "+Power" or "-Speed" whenever you press a button, it would help player memorize the buttons faster and be more intuitive. I know it's only 6 buttons to memorize but it's hard to immediately remember everything before you start playing with zero context, so something in the gameplay to help is always welcomed as a new player

Only other note was maybe adding a visible solid barrier for the top and bottom -- the bomb doesn't actually bounce at the screen's edge -- it bounces like 20 pixels from the edge so it actually threw me off a few times not being able to predict the bounce since it's an invisible barrier

My strategy was mostly to increase bomb speed but I think I should have gone full damage instead!! Getting the win was sastisfying though cus it was actually pretty challenging! Great job

Pretty cool concept! The limited bombs made it very strategic, and since the tetris pieces are all automated, it's a pretty chill game. I couldn't master the timing getting blocks mid-air, so my strategy was mostly wait and use bombs carefully to clear any stacks with least # of bombs possible.

Has a bit of roughness around the edge, which is normally not a big deal but a couple bugs impact gameplay:

 (main one is actually instant-gameover when the tetris pieces switch from Left -> Right falling mode and instantly overlap) you can see at very end of the video [4:27]

The other UI glitch was seeing the echo tetris pieces that are stuck on screen and the yellow highlights in the middle - for a minute I thought I had to stack tetris pieces to fill the yellow squares

Overall very fun and challenging game! Nice work!

Glad you had fun! Hope  to  see some BLINGUS assets in another alchemy jam some day :)

Seriously impressive work! I also seriously lost track of time playing!! Great work all around the music, art, and game loop is all super polished and addictive! SUPER FUN

Also...helper snails?? Wizards found: 0??? I'm so intrigued but i didn't see any hints of them in my playthrough

Art design was beautiful and clean. Very clear UI and visual information all super readable. And rolling around felt GREAT - i think was the core of the fun. I found an advanced speedrun tech for early game grass-rolling :D (Hold Q and tap Shift repeatedly)

I have only more good things to say, with only minor critique on pacing; i had a flawless experience on the web build with no lag or bugs, only one tiny UI glitch:

The early game pacing was perfect, felt a good sense of progress and 'carrot on a stick' feeling of constsant upgrades to chase, but i think the mid-game big purchases could all be lowered by an order of magnitude and still feel quite satisfying/earned without feeling too grindy (100k->50k, 10k-5k etc) cus at the end it felt a tad bit grindy to get the worm egg -- not the final 100k itself, but the grind of getting the econ + apple upgrades to allow me to collect it. I think what i noticed was a change in the pacing mid-game where it just took quite a bit of time to reach my next goal compared to early game. But if i missed the whole 'helper snail' concept maybe that would have helped the pacing?

Also noticed tiny UI glitch when you get into triple digit x123 numbers on some upgrades, certain numbers (with larger width) got split into multi lines from auto-wordwrapping

Thank you for the fun experience playing! :)

lol i did not care for that last level

but overall it was very fun! great juice and feedback!!!

the tutorial for the 2nd part of the bomb throw was very hard to read in the time it was on screen. I ended up just letting it do max power most of the time and just focused on aiming

Wowwwwwwwww mad impressive! I appreciate the attached concept art and design docs. It really shows in the final result that a lot went into it!

Really fun and addictive game loop right from the start. It was so fun to gear up my golems!! I had enough money from level 1 to get a lot of rares, tho... which maybe undervalues them a bit?

Really fun watching the golems auto-battle!! My team ROCKED. The laser attacks were awesome. 

After several battles, I left feeling like I really wanted to keep playing and get more stuff! But since I had reached maxed out Rare equip for everyone, I felt like I Had reached the end of the demo so far. But if there was legendary items or more weapon types... i could easily see myself playing longer.

Also worth a mention i love the wizard shopkeeper vine animations :D And the music loops are excellent. Shopkeeper song has a great vibe that makes it feel really inviting to tinker your golem squad

A few other notes during my playthrough:

- credits cant be exited even after it gets to the very end "Thanks!", so i couldnt include it in my video cus i had to relaunch
- different colors (red chest glow?) for the enemy golems so i could watch my team more clearly -- sometimes i couldn't tell if i was winning or losing
- UI/UX of the shop was a little cumbersome only because I couldn't click to buy from the 'shopkeeper view' which felt most natural. I wanted to click and drag them to my inventory.
- Maybe potential for player influence besides just watching?
- Also the end of battle felt a bit anti-climactic since it immediately kicks you back into the shop. Some fanfare would have felt great just for a moment before going back to shop.

Overall amazing work, super fun! Congrats to the whole team executing this level of complexity!!

the art style and color-based-combat in a black &white world is a great style!! pretty interesting core combat mechanic concept! 

but i couldn't figure out how to utilize it correctly... could never figure out how to actually damage with blombs on the primary color guys.

love the world-building and characters!! Really stylish art and appealing characters. When I got to town, I really wanted to talk to all the background characters, they're all very interesting. Art and characters are all 10/10 for me

the music was also 10/10!! Love the chiptunes and instrumentation. every song had a lot of character and fit the tone perfectly

the combat is also very unique as well, but maybe too difficult or i didn't understand something. The main thing i noticed it's hard to tell the depth of the enemy projectiles and I got hit a lot. Also the door attack didn't have much time to react. I also could not figure out how to actually deal damage with the Shock spell... it would only tickle the enemy's HP doing like 2 damage per round.

Overall very cool game!!! I wanted to play more but unfortunately i got stuck pretty early on!

it was challenging because i ended up being the biggest threat because my bombs could take out the base... so you have to be precise! i got to 100 which i felt pretty happy with!!

really nice game 

Yep you can submit late!

can you reach out to me on discord for submission instructions?
@tracyshoehorn

definitely! it can be used creatively however you like

im sorry what part are you confused by?

haha yes go for it! 

i guess i should clarify the rule more, cus to me video game violence is not NSFW in the way...other stuff is :P

don't give up!

i believe in you

Nope you're totally fine! You're allowed to remake/recolor the sprite to your style

 you can be creative with how you use it, and can even remake it in your own style!

Submissions open from December 23rd 2025 at 10:00 AM to January 23rd 2026 at 12:00 PM

You're free to use any engine! Or no engine at all! totally up to you

Other game jams will sometimes have a theme like "You Only Shoot Backwards" or "Rewind Time" -- but Alchemy Jam doesn't have this kind of constraint, only the animated asset that wins in the vote -You can make any kind of game with it!

Definitely recommend going back to check out previous jams to see how people used the asset in different ways

On December 16th (one week before the jam starts), there will be a vote for the asset that looks like this:

After everyone votes, the winner will be the "THEME ASSET" for the jam, and everyone uses that asset in their games

Beyond that, you create everything yourself or source free/licensed assets to use

Sorry that the wording is confusing there. I extended Alchemy Jam every winter because of the holidays

Instead of the normal 8-day jam, this one's extended to a full month from Dec 23rd to Jan 23rd.

Not mandatory!

You're allowed to recreate the asset in a new style or even in 3D! 

Just try to make it clear that it's based on the theme asset

Love the creative use of the prompt and great character design! I also loved the music... and couldn't help but move-along with the beat of the bass strings, Curse of the Necrodancer style. It kind of worked because sometimes I had to be super careful and pixel-perfect. I think the hitbox was a little punishing cus it seemed to be very sensitive about how much overlap it could have with your hat before it triggered. just a few pixels smaller would have felt a lot nicer. Overall this was really awesome  though. THe sensitive spike hitboxes made the stakes feel even higher haha. Overall really fun and the 5-ish minute playtime to victory felt short and sweet. Great job!

the aesthetic and atmosphere is soooo good, it gives me some vibes like the liminal space in the hallways of Severance the show. When I went through the door and saw the colored vases and then the inkwells... i was like 'ooooh what's gonna happen here?' expecting a big puzzle twist, but I didn't quite find one 

I'd love to see what kinds of puzzles there could be if the keys/doors had some color coded mechanic instead of brute forcing through keys to open (that's just the optimal path i did -- there may have been a way to detect which key to use and i missed it?) 

There's mystery, intrigue, and a TON of appeal here. I was super interested to know more about this world of locked doors....  the music definitely makes me think "something strange is going on in this universe" and i'm here for it. Great job!

Who's ready for the next great vandalism-themed mario party spinoff? :D Unless this is true cartistry... and we're being hired by the clients to decorate their cars? Cus I used the 'peek' mechanic but couldn't find any impact and I think the patrolling guy went to sleep. But the threat of a stealth mechanic is interesting and the camera motion was smo.O.th!!

This was very fun and overall well done!! I'm not sure about the scoring though haha. 3 levels, 3 strategies. First was drawing almost the entire thing in focus mode before i realized my mistake lol. If there's ever a record for LOWEST score i might take the prize with 0.05%. That brings me to round 2 where I'm not sure if that's 0.05% or 5% after all, cus round 2i did carefully tracing and still only scored 0.75%. Round 3 was the scribble strat and I got 0.48! 

Super well done and I enjoyed it all

Awesome concept! it's cool how a simple twist like "what if you bought upgrades with keys instead of gold coins" already feels like an interesting world. Loved the little hamster character and the intro cutscene. Gameplay felt like a standard idle TD but I think I wanted a little more like the kind with active clicking +1 key per click, or deal damage to enemies by clicking on them too.

I ran into some problems at first building two cannons on the left and then discovering there's a right side being attacked... I think it should be a bit more forgiving so I could recover without game over right away. Most TD games you lose a life per enemy that reaches... so if I lost 3/10 lives instead of Game over, i could have adapted and kept going into level 2!

Then that brings me to the technical aspect which was the main problem replaying. I think a few variables weren't getting reset: the central key level stayed, and the cannons I built became unclickable spots. Eventually all slots got blocked and the game ended as soon as the monsters spawned.

I'm very impressed @tbleazy got to level 20!? Now I'm curious what is the optimal build order to get past the first few lvls

Wowwww that was awesome!!! Combat and spellcasting felt so visceral and you were right about the haptic feedback making it feel extra juicy. I loved the way the fireball had a acceleration kick to it, you could feel the impact. The time stop and dash also felt super powerful. Movement felt really good overall, maybe wall slide felt a little tricky and you'll see a few parts I got clipped into a wall for a moment (was able to get out with dash eventually). One other visual suggestion cus this kaizo'd me the first time 😂

Great job this is suppper polished and a great assortment of level designs. Interesting, satisfying, and challenging. And a very impressive variety in such a short amount of time. Spikes, multiple monsters, dash-platform challenges, wall jump segments, secret reward areas... it had it all! The maze at the end where I died was really intense. I think one thing that would make this instantly 100x better, at least for level 1, is create abundant checkpoints because it was quite a lot to get sent back to a full reset. I wanted to keep progressing!!! but I felt unsure I would get as far as I did again, so I stopped the video there. I do love platformers and this was a lot of fun but I'm not a kaizo player haha. Amazing work!!!! Can't wait to see where you take this

First 5 min review. love the visuals and the transition effects! I keep forgetting that first thing to do is check the shops and buy some equipment. Longsword is the way! I didnt get a chance to try an armor one instead. But man getting pwned by a slime before I figured it out made me feel like a weakling! Felt good to get revenge on a rat at least in my next run. Still didn't make much progress because I got softlocked at the small hut. I'll definitely try again and see if i ccan bypass the hut or if it was a key location. Very well done and felt so authentic to the dungeon crawler genre! Great work

WOww intro cutscene and a full game loop & ending!! is very very impressive . I loved the art style and concept for this... roguelike lockpicking??? Very creative and interesting. The sound design is excellent and satisfying. I reallyy wanted to complete the game but I began getting a bit bored of the lockpicking loop by the 3rd fairy. Once I ran out of magic spells and had to brute force the lockpicks, it made me craving more decisions/game mechanics as as player

But as a whole the game was super charming and well crafted, gg wp!