itch.io

I played 4-5 times, and I have concluded that the game is thoroughly rigged from the start, playing very much into realistic loanshark conditions..! The game is ultimately a nice little physics sim showcase, but the actual game loop is nigh-impossible to complete. After figuring out how each machine worked (which took a number of restarts), I ended up speeding through making some punch cards for cider. That took me the time for the first debt collection. Afterwards, I had to make and sell 3 batches of cider at breakneck pace just to make enough to get over the $5 hurdle, plus have enough money left over to purchase new ingredients. Which I discovered isn't viable anyways. When purchasing something, if you say, bought 1 apple (punchcard apple-0001 as is listed), you will actually spend $1 instead of $0.50 as listed. Same with water. So even though you only need 1 water for 1 cider, you have to buy 4 waters to maximize your spending, otherwise you lose a quarter for every water not purchased. This means that at its most expensive, 1 cider batch = $3. This is sadly compounded by the time limit, and the next debt amount of $10.

Placing punchcards into any punchcard chamber was also finicky, as it continuously tries to go in sideways due to barely scraping the sides. Once sideways, it must be ejected then rotated, causing you to lose precious time.

So while the physics stuff is interesting and funny to play around with, ultimately it doesn't contribute to the game loop. Still a nice little sandbox though!  Good luck with your next game.

I am aware how rowing a boat works; what I meant was the actual input is all. The actual rowing backward/forward animation aside, I kept trying to press forward to "move forward". I know logically that you set it to the down key because it's "backward rowing", but it is technically moving "forward", so I kept trying to press the up key. That's all I meant!

Yeah, I hope I've learned a lesson on playtesting these kind of mechanics. I became developer-blind to the gameplay, thinking they felt intuitive because it worked how I envisioned. I definitely need to gather feedback much earlier in my development cycle. However, to do that, I need to make the games faster! Either way, thanks for giving this one a go.

Thank you for the kind words. I ended up spending more time fudging around with the physics-based stuff than I intended to, when I definitely should have been spending more time figuring how best to make things playable. If I had another week, I'm fairly certain I would have just spent more time fiddling with the map...! As it is however, the game definitely needed more work overall. Thanks for playing!

This was pretty freakin awesome! The controls are somewhat difficult, but the idea and execution is pretty good. The atmosphere was good, as well as the little frog guy. I sort of wish I could cancel eating something as I ate eyes several times, losing my in-progress bomb. But I got it in the end. I also wish that the backwards control was forward instead, as I kept trying to press forward several times as it just felt more intuitive. 

Overall, however, this was great! Good job. Hopefully your future games come out just as clean!

Just went back and checked. The poor woman asks for some poison to get rid of her competitor, but she doesn't mention anything about being able to drink potions. The controls at the beginning don't mention it either. Just looked again and it's there, I must have missed it. Even if it does mention drinking potions, it doesn't tell you that drinking them will reveal their effects. After testing, I see that you have to press space while holding a filled potion to drink it. I feel like it would be best if the ingredients reveal themselves to the player after using them in a potion, rather than drinking them. Since the NPCs don't tell you what drinking a potion does (I went through several days of NPCs just to make sure, none of them mention it) it makes that mechanic look like a bug.

Don't get discouraged by that though, if you end up fixing this after the voting period is over that'd be cool.

Howdy, thanks for giving the game a chance. I appreciate the feedback, and yeah I definitely needed to do better with explaining some things! I feel like a little diagram telling the player what machines do what might have helped. Either way, thank you for playing and giving feedback!

Howdy, thanks for playing! I know that the instructions are a little flawed and the physics ended up not really hitting how I wanted them to. Even still, thank you for trying out my game!

I ended up walking around aimlessly for a little bit. I didn't find the cauldron at first, and so didn't know what to do with the ingredients. The player ends up spawning just slightly above the viewing range of the cauldron, so I didn't even know it was there until I looped back around and stumbled across it. By that point, I had a full inventory with ingredients, and attempting to open the cauldron causes the game to crash. Upon restarting, I immediately went and found the cauldron, which now let me open it. So the bug appears to be if you have ingredients before opening the cauldron for the first time.

As for the cauldron itself, the crafting mechanic is neat at first, but having to guess the recipe for these potions is... not good. I am not going to sit here and go through every combination of ingredients before I find each potion. I only discovered the recipe for the swiftwind tonic. After crafting one and using it, the speed boost only lasted a few seconds, which I suppose is fair.

Ultimately, the game works; without these issues, I feel that you have a good foundation for a horde/wave style game. Hopefully you carry forward what you learned for the next game! Good luck.

EDIT: I really dislike games that start in full screen. I know it's a harmless thing, and you have a setting to disable full screen, but it still irked me upon opening the game. It's just one of those personal issues, but it really does take me out of the game's ambiance almost immediately.

Well, it is a brew game alright! I lost the first 5 customers because I had no clue how the game worked at all. The little booklet in the bottom left didn't do much to alleviate that. I eventually figured out how the game cycle worked, and after that, I was able to get mostly 'OK' ratings. I got one perfect rating, though, so that was fun. I think if the game had a better explanation, as well as more descriptive UI, the game loop would be much easier to understand. A lack of sound also hurts the game, but not having that is understandable.

Ultimately, it works! Good job.

(Edit: itch.io posted my comment twice. I deleted the other. My bad!)

I believe there is a bug with the sign next to the potion pit, as there doesn't seem to be any listed ingredients or ingredient effects whatsoever. Luckily, I didn't need to guess the potion for most of the customers, as your introduction of ingredients along with the requested potions made their intended effects clear enough. However, when I got to the potion licensing customer, I was unable to move forward as I have no idea how to achieve the desired effects. If that single bug hadn't been present, the game would be perfectly fine.

The ominous tones of some of the customers was really quite interesting, and it made me feel like the game could really go somewhere! And besides the spelling mistakes and a little cringe, your dialogue is fine too. Hopefully your next game comes out smooth! Good luck.

Edit: I also have to say that starting in full screen made me almost quit out of the game. I hate games that start in full screen. The lack of a way to get out of fullscreen was also not my style. It's somewhat just a personal preference, but it really diminished the opening ambiance for the game...

This is pretty great! I played 5-6 rounds,got some items, but ultimately died. I failed to understand how the card keeping works in the beginning, but I eventually figured it out. The tutorial probably mentioned it, I likely just skipped past that part on accident. I'm also pretty sure I skipped over how to see recipe effects, but I eventually figured that out as well. Perhaps if the hover time for the tooltip was quicker I would have seen them sooner.

All in all, this was good! I died a number of times due to lack of intelligence, but I eventually got it. 

It's a solid game, though I couldn't figure out how to get the 'good' ending, assuming that's not what the 'secret' ending is. I got both the bad and secret endings. I used up all the potion vials too, but nothing happened. I fed people chaos potions, poison, and I even fed someone the cure potion. Overall, I think you did alright. (Also, the button to skip the dialogue was 'Q', not 'A'.)

Hopefully this gave you the experience to make your next game even better! Keep trying.

This is pretty good! I got through easy and normal, but hard mode got me quite a few times before I gave up. The AI seems to unlock their king-variant pretty fast and once that happened, anything I did failed to make a difference. I've seen the tips, but I only saw the one about tall slimes being strong against warriors, which seemed to repeat every time. Though, I may have simply missed the others. I wish the tips stayed on the screen longer, or that the game would scroll through these on the main menu or something so I could just see all the hints.

Other than that, the game is basically a knockout! Great job.

Tried for 10 minutes to get your game to work; P does nothing. Spam-pressed every key on my keyboard, clicked around the entire workshop, including pressing P while looking at everything, clicked on the cash register (crashes you), and tried making potions without an order. I couldn't get an order to show up at all. While the art is nice and the music is music-y, I am afraid to say that I cannot progress.

In the tutorial text wall when you click begin, the text also flows off the screen and the button is nearly entirely pushed out of the window bounds, and full-screening didn't help that. This is definitely one of those cases of needing more time and polish. The atmosphere is nice, though! Hopefully your next game comes out clean! Good luck.

As commented already, no matter what you do the eye will get you. Hiding under the bed doesn't do anything. I was able to craft a potion in the ~10 seconds you have before the eye killed you, but nothing happened. I tried offering the potion to the eye, I tried going under the bed with the potion, but ultimately the eye still kills you. Further, dying and going back to the main menu breaks the "Good Luck" screen, it doesn't go away after clicking the ready button.

Overall, while the graphics are nice, the game being broken doesn't help. Hopefully your next game comes out clean! Keep going.

Sorry dude, I couldn't get your game to work at all. I loaded all the ingredients for a beer into the machine, attempted to leave a mug exactly under the faucet, filled it up to the max with water, and attempted to right-click the machine from every angle imaginable. It doesn't produce any brew.

The overall art style is good, lack of sounds sucks but I get that it's the last thing people tend to think about. It looks like you really just needed some more time to fix the issues with this one.