Play game
The cave of Alchemy's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Metroidvania | #2 | 4.000 | 4.000 |
| Enjoyment | #3 | 3.722 | 3.722 |
| Overall | #5 | 3.778 | 3.778 |
| Design | #6 | 3.667 | 3.667 |
| Presentation | #14 | 3.722 | 3.722 |
Ranked from 18 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Engine
Godot Engine 3
Team/Developer
Polanski
External assets
All music and SFX
Reference info
Lolmatyc#7164
Leave a comment
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
Comments
Nice entry, i liked! The art, sounds and mechanics very good, maybe a little instructions about the mechanics of the elements, i find great the air effect in the fire, great job!
Wow, this is great! I love the presentation, the foreground really pops out against the background and it feels like a nice marriage between more traditional 8-bit graphics and modern innovations. The powers are also super cool and unique (and I really enjoyed the implementation of the aiming line). Despite the map being as large as it is, I was actually surprised with how well you led me to the next destination, that was also really well done.
I don't have a lot of feedback to give, everything felt pretty smooth. But here goes.
- The Earth power-up was cool but a bit difficult to use. I think some sort of freeze/time slow-down similar to how Ori handles this type of ability may have helped, as it stands I personally was never really able to get used to it. This made that spike maze more difficult than enjoyable.
- I was unfortunately unable to get the downloaded version of the game to work and so had to play it in a browser. You weren't wrong that it would be better as a downloadable. I'm not holding this against the final product, but I also wasn't able to finish the game cause I kept clicking out of the window and dying. =/
Overall super great job, I'm truly impressed!
Really cool game overall. I liked the obit almost atari simple style and the music and sound design is amazing. The core mechanic is also great using the diferent elements to solve puzzles but sadly i couldnt get far after gaining the earth hability, dont know if it was me but that part with the spikes and then enemies raining over you was just really hard for me to complete. Overall great entry but a little bit hard. :)
Pretty cool retro entry :D
I like the way you made elements powerups for traversal, it was so cool to create those ascending air currents by using the air elements on the fire hazards.
While i liked it as well, i felt the earth grapling hook thing was a bit harder to use especially when you have to leap from one grapple point to another quickly, which brings me to my other only issue i had, the checkpoint hearts are really far appart so this made dying quite punishing :o
Other than these, i still had fun regardless, i like the light and particle effects you made, it pairs really well with the sprite style you went for.
Plus gotta love that early NES style cover art so cool !
Overall good job :)
Thank you very much!
I agree that the game is quite punishing, it is somewhat what I intended, but the grapple is quite challenging at first, and I didn't want to do that.
I do want to keep working on this game, and I'll be sure to make the first interactions with the elements less agressive to the player 😝.
The difficult is part due to the lack of time. I wanted to make it a full experience, so I had to make it longer by increasing the difficulty, but I may have made it too difficult 😅.
I really like the idea of combining elements. Also, the art style is cute. Do you know the meaning of the Chinese or Japanese characters? Every time when I am losing health there is a character that appear on my head that says "Poor", really made me lmao hahhhhhh
Thank you! 😃
I don't know what they mean for the most part, just one that I used for fire that I knew that it meant fire, but for the rest I just googled 'X kanji' and hoped it meant what I wanted 😆.
My friends were watching me play this and also laughed at that as well.
Really fun! It reminds me a lot of Noita. The scrolling to change spell was a bit annoying, but that's only because I'm on trackpad. Great game, good job!
Thank you very much! I hadn't heard of Noita, but after seeing some gameplay, I can see why my game can give similar vibes! 😊
This is exactly what I thought when I first loaded it up.
Great atmosphere in this game! Stunning menu and introduction.
Not being able to jump when walking down stairs was a little frustrating at times, especially when trying to avoid a skeleton :)
Great music and soundscape!
I think the pixel style with rotating particle effects works really well.
Maybe a bit too hard for me. I'm not a great platformer player. Too many things trying to kill me all the time :D
I'm glad you enjoyed, I will take note of the down stairs thing for the future!
My intention with the particles was to make them all kind of symbol and kanji related, glad you liked it! 😀
I love the concept of the game, nice environment, and the use of the power to modify and use surronding is great, I cannot finished because when you got earth ability it's really dificult to me understand how to use it, the learning curve for this hability is rought, I tried several times but it beat me. maybe the limit time for that hability is making it hard to use. but overall I really enjoyed. Nice game.
Thank you!! 😃
I agree that the earth is the hardest element to master, but it is worth it! Once you master it, you can flow thorugh the map!
Looks clean, plays clean. Was pretty fun even if I didn't get -that- far (this is a good sign!). Only thing I'll say is, I was confused about the left-click at the start of the game. I didn't understand that I didn't have an ability yet (the meter still showed and made a sound, which confused me).
Is the minimap supposed to say "str_you" over where I'm located? Or is that a string that wasn't translated?
I love how the skeletons go ham when you hop on them, it's just funny to see.
Honestly this feels like a demo to a pretty good game! If this ever had a follow up, I'd love more variation in the visuals of the world itself (like the level tiles), as well as the music.
Thank you very much, I really appreciate that you warned me about these little details. I've already patched the 'str_you' thing, it should correctly show the english translation. And yes, it is where you are located in the map 😄.
As for using the mouse when you have no abilities, I've made it clearer when you have no abilities. A text sign will show up warning you when you have no abilities, and I have removed the usage of mana and sfx in the same situation.
looks really nice, but playing on laptop and no idea where my mouse is so didn't get very far without a mouse wheel :) looks and sounds great from what I have seen so far though.
Ohhh, a laptop without mouse is definitely not confortable to play this game. I'm glad you've liked what you've seen so far 😀.
simple and very cool art, nice music to listen to, congratulations man
Thank you 😁
At first, like most of us, I was 100% confused. I feel there should have been a more elaborated tutorial on how the abilities work. cuz I had to look in the comments to truly understand how the game truly worked. Maybe you could make a tutorial level to prepare everyone for the open world?
Anyways, this game is pretty awesome. The exploration, neat. The magic, neat. The soundtrack, soothing enough for a game that wants you to explore at your own pace? NEAT!
This is truly what I would like to call, a "calmvania". A game that has it's gentle difficulty curve that also convinces you to calm down and gently grind through.
Despite the weak tutorial, this game is still a game to enjoy. :)
Yeah, the intention was to make it a 'explore at your own pace and not in a hurry' type of experience, and I am glad that I achieved that 😁.
If I continue developing the game, I will add a more detailed tutorial, as it is the most demanded feature, and the worst point of my game as it shows. I thought that a small area to learn was going to be enough, but maybe it's too 'cryptic' for newcomers.
Thank you for your review! 🥰
No problem, can't wait to see how your game turns out. :)
Enjoyed it! Really nice overall, the controls were smooth and the art was consistent. I personally liked that there wasn't an explanation of the elements and that you had to figure out what they did, but that might just be me lol. I only got the Air and Fire elements, so I'll probably come back to play more because I'm admittedly curious what the others do. I don't really have any worthwhile critiques right now, but if I find anything when playing again I'll reply here, great job!
Thank you very much, really!!
I'm on your team about not having an explanation, as I tried to use the language of videogames to explain how to use each element. It's my first time reaching this approach, but so far I think that the players are getting it 😁.
You have yet to unlock my favourite one (green!), and I can asure you that it is worth it, it is very satisfying to master, and it changes the way you move quite a lot 😏.
I'm so glad to see so many great Godot projects!
The game is beautiful andvery polished for one month only! Congrats on this submission!
But I got very confused with how to play, all I managed to do was walk around, I didn't quite get how the mouse click works, neither how to use the power I found, also the green squares are a mistery for me.
Thank you for your input! I've made a small update to make it clearer how to change elements and use them when you unlock a new one.
You basically have to aim with the mouse to where you want to interact, whether it is an elemental block or an enemy. Different elements have different effects on elemental blocks, for example, using the air element on a fire block creates a tunnel of hot air that elevates you.
I leave discovering the rest of the interactions to you 😉.
I really liked how you implemented the theme into your game. The mechanics are great, but they complicated enough to the point where I think you should have had some kind of short tutorial or note on how to use each when you first collect them. It took me longer than it should have to realize how to use the mechanics, but once I figured it out, the gameplay was much better. Good luck!
Thank you very much for playing 😀!
My intention was to make the game a little puzzling with its mechanichs, guiding the player though colors and controlled environments when first learning. I tried to make each room where you unlock an element a 'short tutorial', by forcing the player to use the new mechanichs to continue, and making the player face an enemy that can only be defeated using said element.
However, I do agree that I could have added more hints to overcome certain scenarios 😝. If I continue working on this project, I surely will expand on the tutorials aspect.
No problem! I knew I needed to provide some information in-game to explain what might not be obvious. I considered a guided tutorial, but I knew it would take a big chunk of time, so I decided to just have text in the background of the rooms where players can easily read it. I think it was the simplest way to relay that information and despite it being so simple, i felt like it was pretty effective for my game.