Witch of the Warren by krummja

[raw]
made by krummja for Ludum Dare 49 (JAM)

Description:

Potion-making is part art and part science. For one bunny witch, this is a lesson that comes with both its dangers and potential riches.

In Witch of the Warren, you will play through a short story about the witch Mochi as she attempts to fulfill the potion requests of Mrs. Bunnerby. If you are perceptive of what she's after and have a steady hand at potion brewing, you may just come out unscathed! But if not... well, these concoctions can be fairly unstable.

Good luck.

How to Play:

In this game, you will experience a short story that consists of dialog between the protagonist, Mochi, and her client, Mrs. Bunnerby. Mochi will take Mrs. Bunnerby's order -- be sure to take note of what components of the potion Mochi mentions, as you will need them when it comes to selecting your ingredients!

When you get into Mochi's potion shop, the game will proceed in two phases:

  • In the first phase, selection of ingredients, you will choose five ingredients from Mochi's shelf. When the five correct ingredients are selected, a "Start" button will appear.

  • The second phase is brewing. During the brewing minigame, the center of the preparation circle will pulse with arcane energy. Every few pulses, the preparation circle will offer up an ingredient by showing its symbol. When that happens, quickly select the appropriate ingredient from the preparation circle.

A success will cause the potion to react -- but fail too many times and the danger of potion making will be clear!

Ratings

Overall 1171th 3.184⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Fun 1334th 2.789⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 1195th 2.868⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Theme 911th 3.368⭐ 21🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 687th 3.675⭐ 22🧑‍⚖️
Humor 717th 2.944⭐ 20🧑‍⚖️
Mood 868th 3.306⭐ 20🧑‍⚖️
Given 25🗳️ 11🗨️

Feedback

ELVEVERX
05. Oct 2021 · 00:37 UTC
I found the mix of 2d and 3d to be interesting.
MissMyu_
05. Oct 2021 · 10:19 UTC
It took me a little time to understand how it works, and I'd suggest making the "start" button a bit bigger as I missed it the first time, but once I got it it's a fun game. Maybe you could put short instructions on the itch.io page so people understand how to prepare the potion quicker? A few bugs especially to restart the game, but that's to be expected in a jam game.
🎤 krummja
05. Oct 2021 · 13:32 UTC
@missmyu Thanks for the feedback! I added some instructions as you suggested. They were originally supposed to be in the game, but... well, best laid plans and all that. Glad you enjoyed it!
ljol3
06. Oct 2021 · 00:58 UTC
either I'm dumb and cant figure out how to deduce any hints there are as to what ingredients to mix, the game is actually just guess and check, or the instructions were in the opening story that I ended up skipping because the text scroll was WAY too slow

but I love bunnies +1
LDJam user 245740
06. Oct 2021 · 01:20 UTC
@ljol3 The hints are in the story sections! Our apologies for the slow text. It was one of those things we meant to get to, but didn't.
fabula_rasa
06. Oct 2021 · 01:24 UTC
Great interpretation of the theme! Incidentally, we also made a game about an unstable witch brew :grinning:

I really like your art and the way you describe the potions in the dialogue. Poor Mrs. Bunnerly sure has a lot of problems. Very cool! The first time I saw the explosion-in-the-face animation, I actually laughed out loud.

I would suggest two small readability improvements:
1. Move the "next dialogue line" button to the corner of the actual chat bubble. It's really slight and at the edge of the screen - it took me a while to locate.
2. Make the "Start" button that appears after you gather the ingredients bigger, and maybe give it an actual background. Right now it's very poorly visible, and I bet some can even miss it completely.

I enjoyed the game overall, but it seems to me that some ingredients are a bit buggy. Feather and flower especially were for me quite easy to missclick and tended to register as "bad", even though it seemed that I clicked properly on them. Maybe it's the browser's fault? I'm on Firefox, and I wasn't playing in fulllscreen.
Robert Li
06. Oct 2021 · 05:50 UTC
I thought I have to choose things that can help Bunnerly speel and make potion out of them. It's hard!!!
One more thing. When i quit the game and came back, the dialogue disappeared.
Martta
06. Oct 2021 · 12:11 UTC
Nice game! I really like the idea that the solution is hidden in the text, kind of reminds our LudumDare 48 game. Nice job! The graphics and sounds were nice :) As others have mentioned, the text is little bit too slow and if you skip it then you might miss the hints and there is no way to check the hints again. I dont know it was a bug or if I was just too slow, but it seemed like that no matter what I did for the 2nd potion, every ingredient would fail.
Martta
06. Oct 2021 · 12:12 UTC
Btw. you could add some images to this Ludum Dare page and maybe screenshots to itch.io page too, it make the game page look more interesting. :)
Martta
06. Oct 2021 · 12:13 UTC
Is the source code somehwhere available?
🎤 krummja
06. Oct 2021 · 15:41 UTC
@martta Thanks for the feedback! Yes, you can visit the repo for the project [here](https://github.com/krummja/Ludum-Dare-49/tree/master/Assets/LudumDare). I do ask that you excuse the mess that is my code for this project - even by game jam standards, I think there's a lot "wrong" with how I approached things (which was very instructive, of course!).
Sibi
07. Oct 2021 · 23:05 UTC
Yay another potion brewing game :) It's so fun to see the different interpretations of the same setup. I really liked figuring out which ingredients were needed. Would be great to get some kind of feedback and maybe some hints so you don't have to start over if you didn't fully understand the message the first time. Also the text could appear a bit faster so I don't have to wait so long to read the lovely story but that might just be me.
Violetta
10. Oct 2021 · 12:14 UTC
Good job! It`s made me call to my memory about making potions in Skyrim. Graphics is very pretty in this game. May be you should add more ingredients for making potions in the future.
pdotjpg
11. Oct 2021 · 15:53 UTC
I like the visuals, idea and core gameplay idea very much, but unfortunately the very slow text speed and the lack of a feedback/hint system really put me off of playing the game when I had missed a clue.
kurrik
17. Oct 2021 · 01:06 UTC
I wished there was more of a feedback loop when selecting ingredients, and not being able to skip the text animations was a little frustrating, but I really liked the concept of the game!
matthewlacker
17. Oct 2021 · 17:42 UTC
I like the concept, my main issue was the text scrolled too slow.

A nice change might be:
-Click the "next" button once: Skip the typewriter effect, all text in box appears

-Click the "next" button again: Advance to next text box.
Maximus
17. Oct 2021 · 20:02 UTC
Good game but as others have said, the text is to slow.