itch.io

yeah it's funnier that way

look ma, i made it. I was that anon btw (proof) but please keep the filename as it is :)

The game feels pretty good, the controls are responsive and the UI is well made. I played one full run with the starting character and it felt very easy, I wasn't at risk of dying at any point. Maybe I was just smart/lucky with my build, I dunno. I was admittedly a little bored by the end of the run, but that might just be because I'm not much of a VS-like lover.  I then tried out the two other characters for a bit, but I didn't play full runs with either.

The game sprites are very charming and all look cohesive together. That being said, I'm not a fan of the the VFX: they don't match the game's art style at all. I would try doing something closer to your hand-drawn sprites, the default-Unity-looking explosions and trails are kinda soulless. On that note, the post-processing effects like chromatic aberration and bloom don't fit in too well either. The environment could use a little more visual interest as well, and as others have mentioned, the sound design leaves a lot to be desired.

I would often get the wrong description when hovering over an upgrade, and sometimes the description wouldn't update at all when I hovered over to another icon.  That was the only bug I noticed.

The game looks promising overall, I have no doubts you can polish it more and end up with a very fun product. :)

The character art in the intro cutscene is pretty good, but it gets a little inconsistent later in the game (especially when the characters aren't in standing poses.) The difference between the cutscene art and the game sprites is a little jarring, as well. The background art is lacking both in cutscenes and gameplay. The dialogue is awkward and has a few grammatical inconsistencies, like only sometimes using quotes when a character is speaking. 

As for the game itself, it was boring. I was just wandering the map without much purpose while killing any vampires that showed up. Items don't have interactable prompts so I spammed E on everything I saw until I found the things I needed to progress. I ended up going in circles a lot because everything looks so similar, you should make your environments more distinct and/or add a map.  Enemies not chasing you through different rooms coupled with the player having a lot of health removes any tension from the game, it doesn't feel like you're being chased and in danger. Also, it's odd how your stamina resets when you enter a different room   

I'll be frank with you, I don't think this game is anywhere near being worthy of a Steam page. In its current state, it's far too barebones to catch anyone's attention. If I were you, I would polish the fuck out of the mansion level and then, and ONLY then, try to garner some attention. You're just shooting yourself in the foot by showing a half-baked product. Best of luck, I'll check in if you ever submit to another DD.

The little suit-up transformation sequence was cute, hope you animate it properly sometime (or get someone to do it for you.) 

I'm not sure I like the weapon subsystem as it is: I accidentally picked up a subweapon I didn't want halfway through the plant level and was stuck with it until the end. I would make it so you can cycle through the subweapons, with the ammo you pick up going to the active subweapon. 

The vertical drift as you move horizontally is a bit annoying, made me hit a projectile or two. It's not a necessarily bad addition but I don't like it very much.

The crushers are a little buggy, sometimes I get crushed when I should have lived and survive when I should've died. I also got pushed into a wall by a crusher at one point.

I don't really get the setting of the game yet, why does RoboTemplar need to kill some blobby plant dudes again?  Feels a little underwhelming, I was expecting aliens, monsters, or other robots who were threatening Earth or something.

Challenge rooms were cool, I took an embarrassing amount of time to complete the first crusher one.

Still eager to see how the game shapes up. Anyway, here's some quick art.

Fun stuff. I love the concept of a robo-paladin with a big shield, I only wish I could use it to block/deflect/absorb projectiles with it (but I get how that could go against the direction you're taking the game in.) The controls feels tight and responsive, about what you'd expect from a game like this. The art is charming in an amateurish way, I'm a fan. The demo was very easy, but that's to be expected given that it's just a tutorial. I'm eager to play some real levels of this game in the future.

P.S. remind me to never attempt this level of detail ever again!

A very promising start, the gameplay is already fun despite being so stripped down in terms of content. With that out of the way, here are my findings.

Pits are very unwieldy in this game. The player's fast movement combined with their character being instantly teleported back to the playing field makes the experience jarring, sometimes I didn't immediately notice I had fallen into a pit during combat. You should add a falling animation that takes something like half a second, that way the player can understand what's happening and get a brief moment to think of a gameplan going forward.

You can get jumped before being able to reasonably react when you enter a combat room, specifically when there is an enemy right next to the entrance. I suggest adding some sort of "wake-up" period for the enemies where they can move towards you but not attack. You could also add brief wake-up animations but I find it unlikely for you to do so given the speed of the game. 

The game isn't too hard but it could use some balancing, specifically the slime enemies. I, too, was softlocked in the room with endlessly spawning slimes. Despite constantly attacking and using my willpower move on clumped slimes, I could not thin the horde down enough.

I have some other minor nitpicks, most of which were mentioned by other playtesters: there should be a way to restart/quit to menu when you die; attacks dissipate into walls sometimes; there should be prompts for interactables.

Everything else I have to say is positive: the music is awesome, the art is charming, being able to parry melee attacks is cool, and the gameplay is quite replayable. That being said, your environments are super bland. Consider adding some visual flair. All in all, I'm eager for updates. Keep up the good work.

P.S. welcome to the robed mask-wearing protag club :3

Feels like a late 2000's ROBLOX game (this is a compliment.) The shooting feels pretty good despite its clunkiness, the mech interface looks cool, and the game's artstyle is already shaping up pretty well. That being said, there is a lot to improve on.

The movement needs a lot of polish. The player character somehow feels slow and clunky without having that feeling of weight you'd expect from a mech game: walking and jumping has no inertia, and you just abruptly stop in mid-air when you're hovering.  The choice to instantly turn the player 180 degrees when back-dashing is bizarre and completely goes against the idea of piloting a giant hunkering machine, it just feels wrong. I also got stuck on geometry a few times, being unable to move at all. 

The enemies need work. Getting to any sort of elevation trivializes the game, as none of the robots can seem to shoot upwards. All the enemies seem to do the same thing: walk towards you slowly and shoot a rocket prefab at you every couple of seconds. The exception is the spherebot, which seems to do nothing at all. I would try to make some more variety, maybe have the small walkers use guns while the big ones fire missiles.

The player's arsenal confuses me, none of the consumable items seem to do anything (missiles pass right through the bubble shield, for one. Maybe it only blocks bullets?) I don't blame you too much on this one since the game's early in development, but maybe consider making some kind of screen that explains what each item does in the future (or dedicated tutorials per item.) 

The game does show promise, it just needs love put into it. Keep it up. :)

Had a surprising amount of enjoyment playing this game seeing as I'm not a VN guy at all. The dialogue was entertaining, with both main characters having an alluring degree of insanity. I have little idea what the plot is thus far, there's a lot of exposition scattered around and I didn't have the strength to parse through it and piece together a story. Maybe I'll play the game again seriously sometime, without being in a drunken stupor. Poking around in the files was also fun, I'm excited for the torture chamber point-and-click adventure section to appear (if it isn't in the game already and I somehow missed it.) The other playtesters addressed most of my criticisms already, such as obnoxiously loud music and some awkward wording here and there, so I don't have much to say on that end. Keep it up.

Anyways, dongcopter.

Thanks for playing! A tutorial is definitely in order, but I might not have it done by next DD. I wanna implement all the core features before making it.

Cool, I'll check the VOD sometime soon.

Thanks for playing again! I made the levels smaller so it makes sense that runs felt shorter. As for the game feeling easier, that may just be a consequence of the manual letting you know what's effective against what.

Thanks for playing!

The dash feels unwieldy

Could you elaborate on this? Is it because you can slide after doing it?

Getting poisoned seemed like a death sentence

There is an antidote chem that you can use on yourself to clear most debuffs.

What's new:

• Key-based alchemy mixing (deprecated menu-mixing for the time being)
• Manual menu: lets you view information on game entities after unlocking their entries
• Persistent player data: session data and unlocks are now permanently stored
• New chemickals: Blearing Fog and Silencing Agent (latter doesn't affect anything right now)
• More gameplay balancing

What's next:

• Weapon upgrade system
• Run buffs system
• More enemies (finally!)
• Improved dungeon generation
• Visual improvements

Thanks for playing!

Hey, thanks a bunch for playing and taking the time to do this! Sorry for not replying to you last time, I had the intention of doing it but forgot... I'll address some points you made in the commentary now.

Mixing menu breaks the flow of gameplay ... you could use number keys for mixing and a corner UI to make it better.

I've received this specific piece of criticism/feedback many times. I experimented with this idea a little more shortly after this DD ended, but it felt really clunky to me. Having to take your hand off WASD to mix stuff renders you completely defenseless, not to mention you have to stretch your hand all the way to the 6 key. To me, this could only work if the time slow-down also happened when you're mixing with the number keys, but then it might still break the flow of gameplay. What do you think?

Secondary fire doesn't do anything.

That's just because the current weapons have no secondary fire, sorry.

It would be nice if rooms had indestructible environmental pieces.

Absolutely, other people have also requested this. I'll add some pillars and stuff.

It's not clear when the room is cleared ... you could have a progress bar on top.

I agree, I'm working on sorting this out. I'm going to add a distinct "room cleared" sound effect, and I'll also add an objective display on top of the screen which will change depending on what room type you're in.

Is there a reason for [the mixing menu] to be timed like that?

Yes, the mixing menu slows time down but lets you walk around. If there was no timer on the menu, the player could stay in slow-motion forever, using it to easily dodge everything and only coming out to occasionally attack. I can make the timer last longer, but the timer stays.

Maybe you should be able to use your utility while in the mixing menu?

Good suggestion, but then again, that encourages people to stay in the mixing menu for as long as possible.  I'll try it out and see if it feels balanced.

Right-clicking in the mixing menu causes you to dash if you use your utility (if dash is bound to right-click.)

Wow, nice find. I'll try to fix it.

It gets to a point where there's a lot of down-time and you don't know where you're supposed to be going, so you could use a full map.

Good point, I should add that. It could be a fog-of-war kind of thing where you can't see the entire dungeon at once, only rooms you've visited and nearby rooms.

I expect the second level to have different enemies with different colors.

Yes, that'll be the case soon. There's a miniscule amount of content in the game right now, so it just repeats the same stuff.

I would expect healing to get rid of the poison.

That was the case for a while, but it made healing way too strong and too versatile. Instead, that functionality is relegated to purifying wash, which you make with water and healing.

If you stand still, the enemies stand still. They should move, even if just by little a bit.

Good point, I'll try that.

Really fun game ... I'll see you next DD.

I will be there for sure. You didn't find any of the cool combos you can pull off, I'm tempted to record a video to show them... Anyway, thanks a lot for being so helpful!

Hey, thanks a ton for playing!

No controller support is a bit disappointing.

Sorry, it's on my to-do list. I'll probably have it by next DD.

UI seemed to be fully readable, except on death in which case it bleeds off the sides of the screen.

I'll take a look at that, thanks for the heads-up.

I also encountered a weird bug where at one point I couldn't right-click to remove parts of a mixture for whatever reason.

It might be because you added a chemical that reacted with a chemical already present in the mixture, which consumes the two chemicals to create a product. Since the original chemical is no longer present, you can't remove it with right-click. For example: if you add water then add phlogiston, it will consume the two and create steam. Right-clicking on water or phlogiston will do nothing now since they're not in the mixture, only steam is. 

But it could also just be a bug. I'll test it a bit.

Feels like the camera is a little too zoomed in for how far away enemies are.

Noted.

I notice how far off the aim laser is from the reticle, is this on purpose?

Not really, the laser is technically right over where you're aiming but since the game is 3D and the camera is tilted back, the aim looks displaced. I can try to add an offset to the aim or something.

Drinking water hurts by default, for some reason. Guess it's to balance putting out fires.

It's just a limitation of the current iteration of the mechanics: a chemical needs to deal damage in order to apply status effects. Water has to deal damage regardless of that because some enemies will be weak to it in the future. FYI, you're splashing water on yourself, not drinking it. 

Speaking of, it would be a cool detail if water shots put out the torches on the wall.

Holy shit, you're a genius.

Hey, thanks for playing!

if you already have the fluids at the bottom of the screen, how about mapping keys to add an element? so instead of opening the menu, i'd press 333-444 and have a combination of 2 elements and i'll be ready to shoot in under a second, and i'd also be able to see this change since the fluids are showing at the bottom.

This was the way the game originally worked, funnily enough. Instead of the mixing menu, you had a little bar at the bottom of the screen that you would fill up by pressing number keys. I scrapped it because it was difficult to use and keep track of, you can read a more in-depth explanation in my reply to the OverCast dev's comment. I can try adding the number-key mixing as an alternative way of mixing stuff instead of replacing the existing menu.

 something else that needs addressing is the enemy targetting range. if an enemy has sight of me from across the room where i can't see them, then i can't prepare for it. i think this is too much for the first 1-2 rooms where the player is still learning, so i'd see about lowering their detect radius until the player is at least familiar with the game.

Sure, I'll try toning that down a bit.

they could also use better death animations, since i often times slapped a dead enemy i thought was still alive.

Absolutely, I'll get on that once I finish remodeling the enemies.

lastly, i think the first few rooms should have mandatory indestructible cover. give the player a chance to figure out enemy attack patterns safely without having to worry about dodging things. it can be as simple as a 1x1 pillar by the first door or in the middle of the room, giving the player a bit of breathing room.

That makes sense, I'll make some indestructible props.

i'd just make destroying objects faster for the player (but keep it the same for the enemies) since it's a bit weird to need to hit a box a bunch of times to break it in the starting room with no enemies around.

If you use fire or acid on the props, they break very easily. As you mentioned in your comment, the game is about using type X against an enemy that's vulnerable to Y damage: for this reason, the player's base damage is atrociously low. You deal very little damage without exploiting weaknesses, which is meant to encourage the player to actively use effective combos.  That being said, I can tweak the numbers a little more.

Hey, thanks a lot for playing again.

I feel like DoTs are still just as strong against you as before, now they're just less prevalent and you have more opportunity to negate them somewhat with healing barrels, but you're still left of the mercy of the map generation.

Maybe they are too strong, but I think this issue comes down to a lack of communication between the game and the player (which is what most issues boil down to.) You can cure almost any debuff immediately by splashing yourself with the right chemicals, e.g. water extinguishes burn and antidote (healing + water) cures poison, so making debuffs very dangerous makes sense to me: it encourages the player to actively try to get rid of them instead of waiting for them to run their course. However, since the game does not tell you what cures what, most players think that letting the debuffs wear off with time is the only option! If I make a good tutorial that teaches people how this works, I believe you'll think debuffs are much more manageable. I'll still try to tweak the numbers a little bit.

Even with the slow-down, doing alchemy mid-combat kinda messes up the pace of the game - I'd prefer having something like quickslots where you can pre-define mixtures instead of always having to clear and then re-mix when you want to change your damage type.

I agree that quickslots could be beneficial for quality of life and I'll most likely implement them, but I don't see a future where I change the base alchemy menu. It's too integral to the game, the point of the game is mixing unique combinations for specific situations on the fly, which is something that quickslots cannot perform on their own.  There's also the possibility of a Magicka-style system where you press keys to mix stuff in real-time without a menu taking up your screen, but I don't think that would work either due to two reasons: 

1. Magicka uses A, S, D, F, Q, W, E, and R for mixing—most of these keys are dedicated to basic controls in Alchemickal, so I would have to resort to number keys. To use number keys, one has to take their hand off WASD, meaning they become a sitting duck. Unless there's some very heavy time slow-down, this will be a problem.
2. Magicka only has 2 or 3 "product elements," i.e. elements that you create by combining other elements. Alchemickal already has 4 and will have many more, since combining stuff is the point of the game.  This means it would be very hard to keep track of what's happening in a Magicka-style menu, especially when you consider that some product chemicals are created from other product chemicals.

Only found two bugs in the demi: when you die, the player character's cape kinda "freezes" and moves almost detached from the character during ragdoll, and when you open the mix menu quickly after starting a run the camera can glitch out (which can vary between just going slightly-off center to moving down into the floor and keep going in the blackness below).

Noted, I'll take a look at those.

Thanks for playing.

i can’t play this lol. i spent a while learning the controls and trying to learn alchemy then entered the first room and 6 guys locked lasers on me and i exploded

That's unfortunate, I apologize for the lack of a tutorial. It'll be included in the next DD build for sure.

i don’t know the recipes, i don’t know what the spells do and when to use them,

You're supposed to experiment and figure what things do.  There will be a manual in the future that catalogues what each chemical does, but for the most part you're supposed to just play and figure it out on your own. You can infer what most chemicals do just based on their name and appearance: the fire one burns stuff, the cold one freezes stuff, the water one wets things and thus extinguishes fire, and so on. 

in this, i run out of alchemy juice so i need to flush my vial, then, while calculating how to dodge near-perfect accuracy lasers and stay away from AoE bombs, i have to figure out which weapon and spell i want next and enter it into the potion screen.

Yes, that's intentional. This is a hard game.

i haven’t seen any situations where i was able to take cover and do combat alchemy, every situation was just an open arena with boxes blocking my movement and all i could do was dodge.

That's unfortunate, you must've gotten unlucky with your level generations. There's been plenty of times where other playtesters and I use cover to hide from a barrage of lasers.

keeping enemy corpses and having them looks the same as live enemies is bad, having them restrict your movement is worse. i can’t think of any interesting scenarios that would come out of that

Agreed, I'll fix that.

i was grateful for the options settings, i wouldn’t have been able to run the game without them

Yeah, the game isn't super performant right now. I'll try to optimize more stuff.

Hey, thanks for playing. I'll try some other shades out.

Hey, thanks for playing.

Main menu should have music just so you can adjust its volume correctly.
There needs to be a tutorial (e.g., a series of rooms where the controls are written on the ground).

I'm working on those, hopefully I'll have them by next DD (I'll definitely have a tutorial.)

The game is way too dark.

I agree, I plan to add more props with light sources to help alleviate that. If that isn't enough, I'll raise the environment brightness.

Mapping something as important as dash to shift feels bad, it should be right-click or spacebar.

You can remap your keys.

Enemy corpses turning into physics objects is awful, they both get in the way and make it hard to tell when they die.

I'll try making them lighter so they impair your movement less.

There needs to be some signal when all enemies in a room are dead.

Technically there is one already: the music fades from the combat version to the calm version whenever you clear a room. But yes, a proper indicator would be good.

 Enemies locking into you and not being able to dodge it without dash/cover feels awful.

Don't know what you mean by this, if you could dodge everything by just walking then there would be no challenge. There's also ways to stop/stun enemies, such as freezing the bomb enemies.

The gameplay isn't fun. There was great care put into the art and assets, but it doesn't match the quality of the gameplay experience.

I disagree, I think the game is fun (if not a little repetitive right now.) However, you do need to know how to play effectively for the game to be satisfying, so I don't blame playtesters for thinking the game is not fun since there's no tutorial yet. 

What's new:

• Balanced the game's difficulty, i.e. made the game significantly more forgiving
• Replaced all placeholder content with either my own work or properly licensed alternatives
• Implemented settings and pause menus; expanded run stats menu
• Overhauled a variety of visual effects; remade and textured a few models in higher quality
• Add lots of new sound effects
• Redesigned graphics for nearly all menus
• Fixed bugs and optimized some code

Hmm, that isn't intentional. I think I know what's causing it: slowing the game's time down means I also have to reduce the time between each physics update, otherwise everything would look choppy. The increase in physics updates coupled with the slower player movement speed means the game manages to register the collision between the barrel and the player, hence the player being stopped. I can probably just reduce the radius of the barrel collider and call it a day. 

Ah, I see. I'll look at that too.

I see, thanks for letting me know.

I already fixed this one in the experimental build, the fix will be up in the next DD build. Nice catch anyway!

I'm not sure what you mean by that. Chokepoints in the rooms themselves or the hallways?

The way that enemies attack each other over friendly fire is hilarious and adds to the chaos.

I'm glad someone caught that, I love seeing one of the triple-laser dudes accidentally hit a bomb enemy and then get blown to smithereens seconds later.

Also, the main way I abuse time slowdown is by cancelling time slowdown before it runs out, since then I can immediately enter it again with the time reset.

There actually is a cooldown to the mixing menu, however it only triggers if the timer fully runs out. I think I'll make the cooldown cumulative, meaning it grows with the more time spent in the menu and triggers whenever the menu closes.

It's a known issue, the bullet projectile has some wacky collision. I'll try to improve it.

Hi, thanks a ton for playing!

When doing alchemical mixes, I could not always decrease one component by using right-click

You might be trying to remove a chemical that was used in a reaction, i.e. used to create a chemical that you can't select normally. If a chemical isn't explicitly listed in the sidebar (e.g. x1 water) then it cannot be removed directly, you have to clear the mixture.

 A couple of times, I got trapped in rooms with no apparent enemies and red laser gates blocking the exists, basically ending runs and forcing me to commit suicide. I could hear exploding enemy ticking, but I could not figure out where the enemy was.

I've had that happen a few times, usually there's one remaining enemy that's trapped on a few props.  I'll look over the enemy handling code regardless. Also, I'm planning on adding a visual indicator that points to the last two or three enemies in a room to avoid this kind of situation.

Would it be a bad change to make exploding enemies immune to physics? Or make them "heavier" against outside forces, or something

No, that's a fair suggestion.  I'll make them heavier. I've also been pinballed by the bomb guys like that, made me laugh my ass off.

I do not know how I did it, but in one run, I somehow got two instances of the player character.

Interesting bug, sounds like a cool power-up. I'll investigate it.

Yes, the video works. Nice catch, I'll fix have it fixed for the next DD.

I think melee'ing with freezing would have worked in the small room where I encountered 3 enemies during my medium difficulty attempts, which would indeed make it a skill issue on my part (I did not think of combining melee and freezing)

Told ya. Don't feel bad though, the game is all about dying lots of times until you learn what's effective and what isn't (like you pointed out before.)

Electricity looks really powerful.

Indeed, that's why it has a slower ammo regeneration speed.  However, it seems more powerful than it actually is due to the current enemy roster. The game will have all sorts of enemies beside robots, which means that electricity won't arc so neatly between crowds. All it takes is one insulator to stop the lightning chain. 

Woah, that's a lot of feedback. I'm glad you're finding the game more fun after trying it again. I did end up recording the video you requested, you posted your new replies while it was rendering/uploading. I don't think you need it anymore, but here it is regardless. It has some commentary to help explain what's going on.

I found a (software) bug:

The link is dead, could you reupload the file or describe the bug?

Does using the plasma on the blast explosion enemy cause reflection and harming the player? While using it on the gas explosion enemy insta-kills that enemy?

Plasma causes lightning arc on any hit enemy, it just builds up faster on robot enemies (all enemies currently in the game.)

I have not yet been able to reliably visually differentiate the two types of exploding enemies, especially in darkness, but I might figure that out eventually. The color of their "eye"? Red for blast explosion enemy, yellow for gas explosion enemy?

Yes, red is explosive and yellow is poisonous.

What are the differences between the floors? I do not know if I have found any difference between floor 1, 2 and 3 so far.

None thus far, the latter two floors are there to just extend the length of the demo a bit. You could clear a floor in 1-2 minutes even on harder difficulties.

How do I pause the game during combat?

Pausing is not implemented yet.

Hey, thanks for the feedback!

I noticed that not all elements regenerate at the same rate ... I'm not sure if this is intentional, as I couldn't see a reason why it shouldn't be universal

It is intentional. Plasma and larva provide exceptionally powerful utility to the player, with the former allowing you to easily apply a mixture to an entire crowd of enemies and the latter being one of the only ways to heal yourself. The slower regeneration speed is a way to bottleneck that utility.

Status effects on the player is really strong, as they last for a very long time and I couldn't find a way to get rid of them.

The status effects are very dangerous but can be easily removed if you use the right chemicals on yourself: water extinguishes burning and purifying wash (water + larva) cures poison. This isn't communicated at all so I don't blame you for not knowing.

Damage output of the player feels generally very low, even with reagents

That's mostly intentional, the player's base damage being abysmal forces you to exploit the alchemy weakness of the enemies--you can one-shot three of the four enemies in the roster if you use the right chemical combo. However, I think you're right and I could bump the base damage up a tad.

There's generally not much info is given on what each element does (apart from the obvious guesses you can infer), which is fine if you want players to figure it out but in my opinion the game is way too fast paced for that.

Agreed. The plan is to make logs for chemicals, weapons and enemies which the player can unlock and read.

Yeah, I've had quite a few reports of crashes. I'll get right on that. Thanks for playing!

Thanks for playing and thanks for the feedback!

I do not understand why I can select "nothing" in the loadout screen when starting a game

Why not? If the player wants to handicap themselves for an extra challenge, so be it.

The music is loud when starting the game. Can I change the audio volume in-game? How do I pause the game? 'P'? 'Esc'

Sorry, I haven't implemented those things yet.

Is the UI for alchemy slightly buggy? Should the top-most "water" peripheral one-sixth circle-piece bar be present?

Yes, that's intentional. What's happening there is that you're mixing water (blue) with larval excretion (green) to produce purifying wash (yellow,) a chemical that can only be produced through this chemical reaction.  

  Is there a way to quickly clear all ingredients/reset? 

Yes. Pressing TAB will dump the entire mixture whereas right-clicking on a chemical will remove one instance of that particular chemical. For example: suppose your tank has 3x water. If you right-click on the water icon, the mixture will be reduced to 2x water; if you press tab, all the water will be immediately disposed of.

Now I died very quickly to exploding enemies in the first room.

An easy way to dispatch of them is to use frigor essence, i.e. the ice chemical. You can very easily freeze the mines, which inhibits their explosion attack.

I do not understand this game. A lot of it seems really polished and nice, but other parts seem only slightly polished or even confounding.

Apologies for the confusion, I didn't have time to implement tutorials and/or documentation so the game is very difficult to pick up right now. One of my main goals for the next DD is to implement a thorough tutorial to avoid further confusion.

Thanks for playing and thanks for the feedback. On the utility slot comment: the final game will provide an upgrade tree per weapon, with each node modifying behavior in some way. The doubling-as-a-grenade concept is already in the works, what you're seeing right now is just the base behavior of the weapon.