OverCauldron - Lonely industrial stories across the hearth

by bloodycoin

co-authored: @labete

Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.02

Fun★★★★★★★★★★2.86

Innovation★★★★★★★★★★2.58

Theme★★★★★★★★★★2.74

Graphics★★★★★★★★★★3.29

Audio★★★★★★★★★★2.95

Humor★★★★★★★★★★2.40

Mood★★★★★★★★★★3.09

Share your highscore!!!

You are a mage in a unstable economy, trying to make a living. Fill as many orders as possible to win. Every failed potion makes cauldron more unstable and takes it one step closer to exploding, so be careful.

Instruction:

Use your MICE to DRAG ingredients from SHELVES to CAULDRON. Once all necessary ingredients are IN the cauldron, DRAG EMPTY potion bottle to make a potion. If you failed, the potion will go to the pit and there will be less space in the cauldron for ingredients. If you succeed you will get points and cauldron will be empty again.

Some insights:

Some junk already floating in your precious cauldron.

Best place to bury your failed experiments - your back yard. Or... just... Why bother going there if you can get a hole right here.

Of course, no highly sophisticated potion brewing facility would be complete without your trustworthy craft supervisor - CatTail.

Be sure take notice of what potions orders are currently in demand.

Good luck and may the best brewer... erm... survive?

Credits:

Programming: Justas Tomkus

Everything else: Beatričė Kasiliauskaitė

Post-jam change notes:

* v0.02 - fixed cauldron image being in wrong place for non 16:9 resolutions.

Comments24

Pedregg5 Oct 2021, 07:41

cool, but I don't see the theme Unstable.

SayuriNyooko5 Oct 2021, 07:43

My cauldron exploded! I like this game, it's simple and understandible. Music is too sticky but fine.

AppoxGames5 Oct 2021, 07:50

Fun concept. The challenge was to remember where each ingredient was placed and then it became easier until it the cauldron exploded :)

DOMO5 Oct 2021, 08:29

Very beautiful visuals! For me, yellow items blend a bit too much with the shelves, but it only adds to the challenge. The audio loop is super sweet and didn't get old after 5 minutes of gameplay. The only criticism for gameplay is that you can't select a new item while old one is lerping into the cauldron.

bloodycoinauthor8 Oct 2021, 20:30

@domo Thanks. Regarding items - yea, I know, the solution is easy, but as it's not gamebreaking decided to not bother for jam version. Might release update some time later.

Sibi8 Oct 2021, 21:51

Yay we need more cauldron-based potion-brewing game! Sometimes I couldn't grab the ingredients because I was too quick for the game. Also I would love to have some more progression over time like unlocking new ingredients.
Got a score of 7039! I hope that's good :D

Feraligatr8 Oct 2021, 21:54

Nice variation of available recipes and charming art

bloodycoinauthor8 Oct 2021, 22:14

@sibi Definitely - more cauldrons and potions, the better! Both ingredient grabbing adjustments and some progression is planned for the future :)
That's good score, but I have seen some get over 9000 :)

XOREAXEAX9 Oct 2021, 09:07

Nice concept! :) My team and I thought about a very similar idea at first.
It may have been cool to unlock ingredients along the way but on the other hand the search aspect of the game is also fun!
The scoring system unfortunately is not very obvious - longer recipies should give more point (maybe they do?) or clearly a larger reward in some way :)
I like the retro feeling of the game :)

bloodycoinauthor10 Oct 2021, 07:19

Hi @xoreaxeax thanks for playing our game. Ingredient progression was planned from the start, but had to be cut, due to time constrains. As for scoring 2-ingredient recipe gives `100` points base, while 4-ingredient recipe gives `400` points base + extra points for doing the recipe fast enough.

Doloc10 Oct 2021, 11:31

Cute graphics (and cute cat!). Maybe if there were different ways to take (or make) ingredients it would have added more variety. Nice entry nevertheless.

Denzil Gomes10 Oct 2021, 15:58

Cool concept. I really like the look of the brewing potion animation. I did get into a sort of flow state just trying to spot the potion running out quickest while dragging so goo job on that. Cool looking cat, would've been nice if you had more time to get the cat react to the gameplay

BoxedMeatRevolution10 Oct 2021, 18:38

The cat is nicely drawn! It would've been cool if it could meow if you clicked on it haha :cat:

Overall, I found your game to be intuitive and quick to learn. One major point of feedback: I think orders that run out of time should disappear and result in some kind of penalty. This will force the player to make on the fly decisions about which order to focus on and increase player engagement.

bloodycoinauthor10 Oct 2021, 19:21

@denzil-gomes @boxedmeatrevolution Yea, we had plans, that the cat would reach into shelves, and push (like cats do) random ingredients into the cauldron (giving some time to the player to catch them). Also petting the cat would prolong the time between interruptions.

@boxedmeatrevolution Good idea :thumbsup:

Taffaz11 Oct 2021, 12:29

Nice game. Only complaint I had was I'd often try and drag the next component but it wouldn't let me until the animation had finished. Made it feel slightly clunky. Otherwise good effort.

The Sin Preacher11 Oct 2021, 20:39

Nice artwork, the cat is cute ^^. I wish the difficulty would have increase over time.

Flying Dog Fish11 Oct 2021, 20:41

Nice game. I got 8804. Gameplay is solid but gets a bit boring after a while. It would be nice if the ingredients slowly disappeared and the potion changed color when it was done instead of being ready straight away.

yodoG12 Oct 2021, 16:51

Nice art, cool sounds. Easy to grasp game play. I just wish there was a bit more to the game play. It was a bit too easy and after a while it just felt like busy work. I think there's a good amount of potential here. The mechanics are nicely implemented and there's lots more to explore.

LDJam user 26711613 Oct 2021, 00:48

Nice game! Cute art, love the cat. Wish he could help out a bit - it's tough making a witch startup! 11016 high score :sunglasses:

Eli Delventhal13 Oct 2021, 18:10

Pretty well done! Very cute graphics and understandable gameplay. I agree with @yodog that pretty quickly it felt like busy work. I also never got anything to explode, so it didn't feel very unstable to me.

MakimoPL13 Oct 2021, 19:03

Quite a nice concept you have there. It could be made into a nice alchemist adventure game, where you for instance go from village to village trying to make a living from making potions from locally available ingredients. Graphics were somewhat weird to look at at first glance (probably through intensive color palette), but I got used to it after like a minute :sweat_smile: Nice & relaxing BG tune was also a nice touch.

Nicely done! :clap:

JesusOnWheels14 Oct 2021, 19:43

There seemed to be a timed element to making each potion, but even when I ran out of time, I could still make the potions, so that felt a bit confusing. I really liked the music reminded me of the Metrod Prime 2 Torvus Bog theme. The atmosphere was really nice.

Surfa18 Oct 2021, 19:53

Visuals had an interesting style to them. Thought the background and foreground elements in the ingredients areas blended into one another a little too much. Audio was pretty good but felt like the music wasn't quite long enough so the looping was too obvious. Plus 1 for having a CAT in the game. Overall pretty decent game.