this game is seriously addicting, id love to see more TF visuals and some way to change what your starting kit is. id also personally love to see some form of meta-progression, as thats my favorite flavor of Roguelike
a long term goal of being able to customize your character instead of having one generated randomly for you would be nice. it can also tie in well when choosing a starting deck when that becomes available.
I've been having issues trying to run this on windows, it ends up taking a TON of CPU and Memory whenever it's open, and then the Godot Screen at te start never actually goes away, even though I can hear the sounds playing on the menu. I can't hear the menu options when thumbing over them, so I don't think I can interact at all with it.
No, but seriously. Great art and the gameplay is great too, keep up the great work!
Edit: Thought I should come back to give some explanation for what had happend in the video and some feedback.
It just looks like you can pretty much let every witch destroy herself by upgrading the expansion potion a lot. This also gets a lot worse if you keep on going.
Also I'd really love to get a gallery where you can see all the transformations you've already seen
I want to start off by saying hey, this game is really great and I'm very excited to play it! The gameplay is satisfying and challenging in a way that seems fair. If the current version was the final version, I'd be happy with it, and I am happy with it.
All that said, there's a couple things that I think could make it even better.
Number one, adding a one time use remove potion option to each rewards screen. Thinning is generally one of the most important things you can do in a game like this, and needing to upgrade a potion to tier V just to remove it is a little too much. One potion removed per shop would, IMO, make duplicating your potions a much more appealing choice since you won't eat tons of deck bloat.
Number two, relatedly, fix the bovine potions! At least in the version I'm playing (downloaded ~1 hour ago) they are PERMANENT deck-bloating negatives, not removed at end of round despite the "temporary" label. This combined with no "remove potion" option means facing them early is absolutely brutal.
The spirals and eggplants are also very strong when used by the opponent (as is charm) but they feel much less absurd because you can beat them by simply being faster, at least.
Finally, add a win screen! I saw you said it loops after 8, and I think it'd be awesome to have a quick "you rule the polycule" or whatever screen, with "return to menu" and "continue (endless)" buttons.
Like I said, this game is absolutely a blast, I've had great fun. I make these suggestions purely because I want something good to become even greater.
yeah, as it stands there are 8 rounds each with their own selection of (hopefully) progressively tougher witches, but after beating all 8 you wrap back around to round 1. Each time you wrap around, all witches will have a random number of potions in their concoction upgraded, to make them slightly tougher.
In theory you could reach a point where there's nothing left to upgrade, but I'm not sure how many rounds in you'd have to get to make that happen.
This game has a lot of potential and I'm looking forward to further development. However, in its current form there is a pretty game-breaking bug and some balance concerns.
Bugs: In every run that goes long or has a lot going on (corruption, hypnotic swirl, bulging) that I've had, there comes a point where my opponent's brew timer goes into the negatives. They cannot cast, and they cannot be defeated (their health goes into negatives). In one instance, I happened to overflow my brew accidentally with my opponent's pile going above the screen, and that caused to infinitely overflow and become unable to do anything about it. The only fix is to close the game and reopen it; quitting the run and starting a new one will keep the bug active.
I also got some weird effects when changing resolution, where the game refused to fill the screen and instead all I could do was click some very wrong button boxes. Restarting the game fixed it, and I haven't managed to reproduce it.
While we're at it, it seems that not defining the game's resolution at the beginning will keep it in a max graphics quality state where my computer will start burning up rather quickly. Perhaps setting a default windowed resolution on game open would fix this, or saving the setting somewhere?
Balance: It feels a bit like an overreach given I'm not the dev here and I apologize if it's uncalled for, but I'll leave some suggestions on how to fix these.
- Hypnotic swirl (& Eggplants): The swirl punishes you for cycling through brews quickly, but then it also makes it necessary to do so as it keeps filling your board; i.e. it punishes you for playing at all. They're quite large and with three of them on the opponent's side, they fill your board quite quickly and leave you helpless, making the only way to beat this build to either slow their brew like a madman, fill their brew with garbage first, or hit hard and fast (which won't happen early in a run and is the least likely of these strategies to work). It'd be an idea to make them single-use (in exchange for making them drop more swirls per potion and/or level), or otherwise make the swirls not permanent (in exchange for making them more powerful, as otherwise they might as well be allure potions). Another idea is to let them combine and dissolve into the background; still adding value to the opponent but not crippling the player entirely. Eggplants share a similar issue with being permanent, but don't punish you for actually playing the game which makes them a lot better to deal with, although they're still broken in the sense that they cripple your ability to play the game after some time.
- Bovine Bell & Milking Potion: This potion punishes you for not playing it and for playing it. I do like the idea of having garbage in your build, but punishing a player for getting punished doesn't seem right, or at least, not as hard as this does. Probably a good idea is to upgrade the potion already in deck instead of adding a new one? Otherwise making the milking potions not spawn more of them and instead making them considerably larger/increase the size of potions in your brew when combined could work. This still punishes the player in a similar manner, but it's much tamer.
- Yellow potions (reactive?): These seem good at a glance, but when you actually try them out, they're incredibly weak and you'd rather pick up an accelerant upgrade/potion. Having to combine them also makes them a bit rough to use. I'm not sure how to make these better, though, other than making them bigger or changing their trigger to not depend on combining.
- Potion distribution: This is particularly in regards to the Bovine Bell, but opponents with other single-use potions will see this issue as well. The milking potions are essentially garbage you have to lose a turn to get rid of, and bells being single use, means the opponent can just sift through a significantly more efficient deck with 3 less potions while you're stuck dealing with 3 useless potions. This is a very powerful effect on its own, but when combined with an opponent that otherwise only has accelerants and allure potions, makes for an opponent that can only be beat with permanent debuffs (filling their board with garbage), as they're too fast for you to do anything about it.
Besides that, getting interesting builds is pretty rewarding and I feel like the difficulty for building a deck is just right; I kinda wish you didn't have to break your loadout to fix it later though; that risk usually ends up in a dead run.
going to piggy back on a lot of what im seeing in the comments. the permanent/persistent potions (eggplant/hypno spyral) are insanely annoying to deal with on the receiving end, especially the enemy who does both + expansion potions. rather than nerfing them however, another option could be to include the corruption/conversion potions in the players starting deck. This would give the player some agency in dealing with them, while still leaving it as a viable strat for players to use.
In terms of progression i would love to see some more control in how we sculpt our run. some options being providing multiple options to transform potions into, an option to add a potion w/o needing to transform, being able to use potions from our deck (but still limit the uses of the upgrades to 3 per round), or being able to remove a potion entirely.
overall a very solid start and especially impressive given the time constraint of a game jam!
also i may have broken the game, game REALLY doesnt like it when something from an opponents flask makes it into your's, there is an ice slime in my flask that alone is big enough to cause a backfire (thank you way too many blue slime)
found that this also completely bricks the game, lets you start a new run, but the opponent couldnt resolve their flask, nor could they lose
After playing some more, expansion potions are absolutely useless against any opponent that has any kind of fast cycle gimmick i.e. lots of accelerants, and it's also terrible against any comp that has compression potions. both of these let the opponent either empty or shrink their cauldron faster than you can expand it, and I say this having managed to get a run with a level 5 expansion potion in deck and a pair of level 5 accelerants, you can't cycle fast enough to outpace any kind of enemy that has the above. I'm not sure how you would solve this without making expansion stronger vs enemies that have slow cycle/cast rates at the very least it would probably be nice to have the expansion scale more smoothly at higher sizes since it's very hard to maintain expansion at a threatening size; once you get really big the potions shrink by enough per turn that the extra space is enough for the new potion thrown in
Also will second the statement many others have made that the hypnotic swirls are absolutely overpowered, as they basically combine two powerful effects of permanent spacefilling (will eventually brick you due to no more space in the cauldron) and a constant allure drain with 0 counterplay. This makes it just a vastly better slime potion that kinda also has the effect of the allure potion. imo the hypnotic swirls need to either be not permanent or hypno potion needs to be replaced with a hypno item similar to the cowbell nerf.
another suggestion would be to allow the player to choose which 3 "special" potions they have instead of automatically giving them expansion potions, as this would make it a lot easier to try out different builds
This is a pretty fun game its just that it gets kinda frustrating to play when it's both hard to get a build going and most builds will get stonewalled by a handful of enemy comps anyway so why bother.
anyway compensatory bug report for complaints: not sure if this is intentional, but if you use the drain potion to get a high level potion in hand, and then end the battle, you can then use the dupe feature to get a copy of that potion at that level instead of it reverting to it's original level. IMO this is worth just making a feature because it gives the drain potion an extra use and helps to assemble builds for some of the potions that kinda suck and need high level versions to be effective (like the expansion potion).
also compression potion could probably do with an extra effect since as it stands I don't see a use outside of as a counter to an enemy with expansion or growth potions, and I'm not sure if the blueberry slime needs to compress on cast since I used it a bit to basically no effect
so, i did a run that big on huge expansion, to interesting results. i don't have a screenshot for it but one interesting issue was that with like 5 star sized blue potions cast all at once, the opponent's ingredients would shoot out of the pot. including into MY pot, causing an overflow. this was VERY surprising. also, at some point, the potions just wouldn't trigger at all. not at zero and not when overflowing. you can see it action here
also i can only be sure of the wandering slime moving between pots. i think i remember others doing the same, i'd have to try and recreate it. edit: no, it was more than the slime. backfired and shot a couple hypnodisks into the opponent's pot
So uhhh. This happened? For some reason theirs didn't cast when it got to zero and when I casted it didn't switch to next screen. Playing on win11 firefox
Fun game, but spirals are way too strong and I wish you could more easily control your build. I like the extra layer of tactics in wanting to have your "hand" have the potions you want to get rid of and/or upgrade, but its kinda annoying to manage ngl. it would be nice if you could swap at least one for a potion in your "deck" so that you can more easily tailor your builds. The ability to remove potions and slim down your deck would be nice as well.
not quite! When you upgrade a star potion it gets dissolved - it's a higher level as normal, but it can no longer combine and doesn't take up any space. You should be able to tell what ingredients have been dissolved by the tint that shows up in the background of your concoction
yeah the reward screen is one of the rougher parts of the project - in the long term I could see me giving it a total overhaul, maybe turning it into more of a shop, but in the main time I'll try and give it a touchup to make it more stable
hey, can you please tag the download as compatible with windows? otherwise it doesn't show up for download on the desktop app (also would be nice to get a windows build for titania suit x)
Okay yeah Spirals are absolutely ridiculous, they need to not be permanent. Eggplants are much easier to deal with because they spawn one at a time and virile builds actually want more eggplant anyways.
i had to play the web version because the downloaded version would crash on the second or third level. audio was crunchier on web but i survived.
what a fun little puzzle battle game. lots of fun synergies and tactics if you have the right potions in your bag, but it takes a long time to shift your bag composition, so mostly you experience these through the opponents. maybe if there was a way to trade more potions with the opponents you've beaten and recruited into the polycule?
i love the different kink ideas and how they are expressed in the gameplay mechanics of each potion. cowbell/bovine potion is especially clever. i havern't played enough to comment on the balance but i would love to see a more substantial version of this game!
Pretty much every persistent item is way too much. The moment I find any enemy where they put an eggplant or spiral on your side you're just done with the run. The only thing that isn't too much is bovine milk cause you can at least manage it well to keep going but anyone with Eggplant or Spirals (or hell both. Both should never be a thing.) is pretty much the end of the run. You can't get anything in your cauldron to do anything and they just keep moving forward while you're crippled forever. persistent things just don't work in the quantity that they are in currently. The only time I've ever gotten past one is a single run where I had the shrinking reagent and even then it was barely possible and took forever. Other than that the game's really good and hope you keep going with it. (Seriously tone down the persistent reagents they're both too plentiful and mixing them makes it far FAR worse.)
Quite good, I'll follow this to see future updates for sure. On browser, my audio seemed to get increasingly crackly/corrupt as time went on. I also echo the desire of others for a pseudo-gallery in which we can view potion effects that we've previously seen. Even just a potion diary that lists the effect (gameplay) and effect (visual/TF) would be pretty nice. Hopeful for some additions of potion effect (visual/TF) to existing potions like the slimes. There are some minor gripes about balance but not anything you haven't already addressed in the rest of the comments.
This game is very very fun. Would be fun even without the NSFW aspect to it but it's great either way. I do get some compatibility issues in Win11, though, if I download the game I just get a black screen with some sound. If I play the game in the browser it works but the sound gets worse over time almost as if the sound is stacking or something? strange. I'd love to play a more fleshed out version of this, though, it truly is great!
Upon playing some more, I notice a couple more things. Notably, yeah, the Spirals and Eggplants probably need some tuning-down. More specifically, when they show up in as high of concentrations as the enemies have them in, they're very quickly overwhelming, to the point of being unfair. The same excessive amounts also applies to the Cowbells, although that's to somewhat of a lesser extent, since they are single-use. At that point, your only hope is to get them to overflow, and do all that to themselves instead.
I find that the Bulging potions are relatively fair on the player's side, since you don't get them in as high concentrations. I imagine the same goes for the Hypnosis Potions, but I never got any to show up, so I don't know. Although, they are generally just better than the eggplants, since they give a passive Allure bonus alongside taking up space. I feel like making the Spirals not be persistent, like a variant of the Slimy Potion with some bonus Allure tacked on, would be good.
Also, speaking of Slime, I feel like it might be good to make them not "pop" upon hitting max level or something like that, since their entire purpose is to be space-blockers, and it kinda defeats the usefulness of using a bunch of Slimy Potions if all the slime they drop gets merged and liquefied.
And a minor thing: It would be nice to see the other witch stay on screen a bit after winning the level, so we can see how our last brew transformed her.
Anyway, sorry if it feels like I'm being overly-critical, or backseat-devving (if that's a thing), I just really like the game, and would love to see it improve.
oh no no, I appreciate all the feedback folks have been giving!
This project being on a deadline, I didn't get a lot of time to really fine tune the balance, so there's definitely some potions that are more powerful than they should be and some that are less - and probably a fair number of opponents whose loadouts need to reined in. Once judging is over, I'll probably see about giving the balance of everything some more tweaking. The point about getting more time to bask in your victory is also a very good suggestion.
A Suika Game-like roguelike? That's an amazing concept, and combining it with expansion is also great! I also love how you handled the between-round deck upgrades, although I think that giving some way to actually remove items, rather than just swapping them, would be nice. Perhaps a random selection of three out of a small number of possible end-of-round transformations? That way, you could add "remove" or other options like that, without having to overload things.
I love how you can (hypothetically, never got that far myself) have such variation in decks just based on the goal of "get points faster than the opponent" and "if either person overflows, their own effects apply to themself." Like, the slime items are very interesting, particularly in how Rose Slime and Wandering Slime synergize.
One thing I'd complain about: The eggplant potions seem a lot more powerful than other, similar items, like Slimy Potions or Expansion Potions, since they add permanent useless ingredients to the pot, rather than the others which go away after some time. Maybe making the eggplants semi-permanent would be a good fix?
Also, random thing, but it'd be great if Reactant Potions (the yellow ones) actually did something better when at higher tiers. Like, only being able to activate ingredients of tiers equal or lower to theirs? As it is, trying to level them up is actively detrimental.
Oh, right, and the actual porn aspect. Love that too! I'm a big fan of expansion, the only reason that I didn't mention it before is because I'm usually too busy planning out my potions to look at the girl on the other side. I love how you do the clothes-ripping, though. Top notch work there. I don't know if boobs expand only based on Bovine Elixirs, or whether that's related to Expansion Potions too, like the thighs/butt expansion. One thing I'd like to see, would be a settings toggle for certain transformations/growths, like cowgirl or dick growth. You could keep the items themselves around, just not make their effects register on the witches.
I'll be watching this for updates once the jam's over, and definitely will be giving this a good rating once the jam's over too.
Edit: oh, also, forgot to mention: The terms at the bottom of items like "inert" and "permanent" could use defining somewhere, maybe in the tutorial?
I really hope this game develops more even if it may've simply been for a game jam! I'm *so* enjoying it, bewbs or not. Honestly can't even focus on them since I'm trying so hard to plan out a course of attack and future planning for the left-over potions lol
(I hate the hypnosis and eggplants, I wish they didn't stay despite overflowing. Should have an overflow limit by certain rounds or something.)
After playing a bit more, I find the spiral and eggplant potions to be a nightmare to fight against, also the bovine is kinda crazy. Amazing game eighter way, love it sooo much.
Windows 11, using Opera GX for the web game. Itch.io app seems to be having trouble when downloaded, so i will try your suggestion. Sorry if it is a bit discouraging. ^^"
It's no worries, these kinda' platform specific issues are just always a headache to debug
Sorry to hear you're still having issues. Is your PC particularly low end? I wouldn't have thought the game would be that performance intensive. Other than that, perhaps it's a problem with Godot on Windows 11? Someone else was also reporting problems from a Windows 11 device...
Sorry, I know this isn't a particularly helpful answer, but I can't really think of another reason for it 😔
huh. in that case maybe it is something to do with Window 11 then?
I am using an early release version of Godot 4.4 for this project - maybe it's not fully compatible with everything yet? I'll try to update the project once Godot 4.4 is fully released, maybe that'll fix it
Alright so, this game is REALLY good, honestly it's super fun, I unfortunately do have to echo what others have said, milk is simply too powerful, not just when the opponent has it, it's too strong when the player has access to it aswell, it simply creates a spiral that is impossible to get out of, I even managed to get myself in a game where both me and the opponent were stuck in the milk spiral, and at that point absolutely nothing was happening, I wasn't able to attack, and neither was my opponent.
But I want to make it clear that I love this game already! Outside of glitches, that is the one problem I have with the game. I find this is one of the best of these types of games! Good work!
The bovine witch is way, way too strong. I can't win because no matter how many bovine potions I drag out, there's an infinite number taking their place. In deckbuilders - which this can be considered to be - cards whose only purpose to bloat the deck, i.e. do nothing but occupy a slot, are already very strong. It's very easy for such cards to spiral out of control. Adding a downside to playing the card or discarding it makes those cards even more powerful and difficult to deal with. By making it so you can't reroll the potions away, you've put them into impossible and broken territory. There's literally nothing you can do. You can't reroll, you can't discard them because an infinite number fill their place, and the more you try to get rid of the more are added to your deck because they duplicate every time they combine. The only way to win is to just not play, and reload the game as soon as you see three bovine potions on your shelf with an empty cauldron, because it's over.
I can only really see two ways to balance that witch and make it fun to play against and not a reload-fest. Either make it so the potions are removed when played, or make it so you can reroll them. As is, you're literally playing against the clock, and the witch gets the exact potions she needs way too often. It doesn't help that you only get two alternate potions before facing her, and 9 times out of 10 the potion you get will be completely useless. I've only beaten the bovine witch once, and it was by a complete fluke in the fact that I got the bovine potion so I filled her deck before she could fill mine.
Another issue is that the starting potions you get honestly aren't that strong. The expansion potion has its moments, but the only time you can use it effectively is when the witch's cauldron is already almost full, otherwise using it is an active detriment as it makes it easier for the witch to combine potions - especially apparent with the second witch with her instant-cast potions. I can also swear that the enemy witch's potions shrink. I've had many a time the cauldron is about to overflow, and all I need is one expansion potion, then the potions she has inexplicably shrink.
I've found that the game is ironically more stable on the web version. To be more specific, while playing on the web version I noticed that as the game progress the sound gets more and more bitcrushed. So I tried a local version, and was able to play through three witches before the game white-screened, and crashed (and I was still experiencing some bit-crushed sfx issues). Yeah it's consistently white-screening on me, I can't play past the yellow-potion witch.
really cute little game, though I ran into a funny bug where when a yellow elixir went off and triggered an orange and pushed my readiness into increasingly negative points of potion readiness, so I could never clear my cauldron; it also seems to have made me immortal, 'cause I also wound up with negative hearts, too...
The Npc all way seem to have Rng on there side . and 4 time the second person played nothing but cow bells and could not win and i could not lose . and i seen a few time that the npc seem to start with better potion than the player
I really wanted to like this game, but dealing with the opponents is so frustrating. The Bovine witch is just too strong. By the time the witch gets down low on health, I've got too much bovine to deal with and then she heals back up and I still have a deck of bovine that grows exponentially. The witch that reduces your potions levels is so annoying as not only does it make getting momentum going take so long but then since half of your potions are all about increasing the opponent's potions, then having the opponent's potions be used and disappear by the yellow combining potions makes it take so long to overflow the opponent's flask. So you cant just focus on alure as they red potions get reduced, then you also cant focus on blue as the opponents potions get used by their yellow.
That's really two core things about this. The blue potions you're given at the start are severely underpowered (they only have one use, and the majority of witches are never in a position you can use them effectively) and some of the witches are just hell to deal with. The bovine witch in particular I've only ever gotten past once, using the bovine potions she has against her. But given the potions you get are complete RNG... It's basically not worth trying to face the bovine witch without the bovine potion. If you get to her without it, you're basically guaranteed to end up with a full deck and a guaranteed loss.
It's really sad, because I know there's a good amount of content past the bovine witch... But I don't get to see it, because it's impossible to get past her.
The slimes you get from Viscous Fluid seem wrong. It says they're temporary, but they persist through being infused and they persist in the post battle screen where you can put them in one of the slots (but if you do nothing happens). The second definitely seems like a bug.
I feel as the player you run out of potions way too quickly in higher levels. The cow witch ability seems much too OP in comparison to the items you can use as the player (or I have really bad RNG after an hour of play). The opponent should have the ability to run out of potions same as the player to give a proper balance. Otherwise very enjoyable and different game.
Hope you don't mind my asking, but what do you mean run out of potions? Your potions should be automatically replenished once you've played every ingredient in your supply. You can actually what ingredients you still need to play to reset by clicking on the satchel next to your active items.
The cowbell is definitely kinda' crazy tho, I won't lie - probably warrants a nerf. You can actually find them yourself too though!
It's a problem with the cow potion specifically. As long as the cow potions regenerate themselves, the deck won't reset. The cow potions add a new potion whenever they combine (including higher level ones), so each potion is effectively worth 5 or 6. It's not realistically possible to avoid combining them long enough for the deck to reset, and of course once one pair combine it chains through a bunch of them.
I'm not really sure how to change it without losing the interesting part of needing to avoid combining them. Maybe put a limit of 3 in the deck at any time, or add a rule that maxing out their combination (to where the bottle breaks) removes all remaining ones from the cauldron and the deck.
EDIT: I didn't realize this until I was playing with slimes so I could actually play around the bovine elixir - even if you don't combine them it looks like they keep getting shuffled back in the deck. The bovine potions should definitely get removed from your deck once you play them and only get added back in when combined.
Ah the reset is the problem then with the cow potion. I ran 4 straight games against that witch and once the cow potions started going into my inventory they multiplied and the normal potions I had would not show up so I would just have to restart or wait to be defeated.
I'll have to mull it over a little - they're intended to kinda' spiral outta' control, but I wonder if there's a slightly less punishing approach I could take...
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this game is seriously addicting, id love to see more TF visuals and some way to change what your starting kit is. id also personally love to see some form of meta-progression, as thats my favorite flavor of Roguelike
a long term goal of being able to customize your character instead of having one generated randomly for you would be nice. it can also tie in well when choosing a starting deck when that becomes available.
I've been having issues trying to run this on windows, it ends up taking a TON of CPU and Memory whenever it's open, and then the Godot Screen at te start never actually goes away, even though I can hear the sounds playing on the menu. I can't hear the menu options when thumbing over them, so I don't think I can interact at all with it.
I have the same problem on firefox on linux
Nice game! :D
https://imgur.com/a/ttHUwou
No, but seriously. Great art and the gameplay is great too, keep up the great work!
Edit: Thought I should come back to give some explanation for what had happend in the video and some feedback.
It just looks like you can pretty much let every witch destroy herself by upgrading the expansion potion a lot. This also gets a lot worse if you keep on going.
Also I'd really love to get a gallery where you can see all the transformations you've already seen
I want to start off by saying hey, this game is really great and I'm very excited to play it! The gameplay is satisfying and challenging in a way that seems fair. If the current version was the final version, I'd be happy with it, and I am happy with it.
All that said, there's a couple things that I think could make it even better.
Number one, adding a one time use remove potion option to each rewards screen. Thinning is generally one of the most important things you can do in a game like this, and needing to upgrade a potion to tier V just to remove it is a little too much. One potion removed per shop would, IMO, make duplicating your potions a much more appealing choice since you won't eat tons of deck bloat.
Number two, relatedly, fix the bovine potions! At least in the version I'm playing (downloaded ~1 hour ago) they are PERMANENT deck-bloating negatives, not removed at end of round despite the "temporary" label. This combined with no "remove potion" option means facing them early is absolutely brutal.
The spirals and eggplants are also very strong when used by the opponent (as is charm) but they feel much less absurd because you can beat them by simply being faster, at least.
Finally, add a win screen! I saw you said it loops after 8, and I think it'd be awesome to have a quick "you rule the polycule" or whatever screen, with "return to menu" and "continue (endless)" buttons.
Like I said, this game is absolutely a blast, I've had great fun. I make these suggestions purely because I want something good to become even greater.
does this have an upper limit? I got to 24
yeah, as it stands there are 8 rounds each with their own selection of (hopefully) progressively tougher witches, but after beating all 8 you wrap back around to round 1. Each time you wrap around, all witches will have a random number of potions in their concoction upgraded, to make them slightly tougher.
In theory you could reach a point where there's nothing left to upgrade, but I'm not sure how many rounds in you'd have to get to make that happen.
This game has a lot of potential and I'm looking forward to further development. However, in its current form there is a pretty game-breaking bug and some balance concerns.
Bugs:
In every run that goes long or has a lot going on (corruption, hypnotic swirl, bulging) that I've had, there comes a point where my opponent's brew timer goes into the negatives. They cannot cast, and they cannot be defeated (their health goes into negatives). In one instance, I happened to overflow my brew accidentally with my opponent's pile going above the screen, and that caused to infinitely overflow and become unable to do anything about it. The only fix is to close the game and reopen it; quitting the run and starting a new one will keep the bug active.
I also got some weird effects when changing resolution, where the game refused to fill the screen and instead all I could do was click some very wrong button boxes. Restarting the game fixed it, and I haven't managed to reproduce it.
While we're at it, it seems that not defining the game's resolution at the beginning will keep it in a max graphics quality state where my computer will start burning up rather quickly. Perhaps setting a default windowed resolution on game open would fix this, or saving the setting somewhere?
Balance:
It feels a bit like an overreach given I'm not the dev here and I apologize if it's uncalled for, but I'll leave some suggestions on how to fix these.
- Hypnotic swirl (& Eggplants): The swirl punishes you for cycling through brews quickly, but then it also makes it necessary to do so as it keeps filling your board; i.e. it punishes you for playing at all. They're quite large and with three of them on the opponent's side, they fill your board quite quickly and leave you helpless, making the only way to beat this build to either slow their brew like a madman, fill their brew with garbage first, or hit hard and fast (which won't happen early in a run and is the least likely of these strategies to work).
It'd be an idea to make them single-use (in exchange for making them drop more swirls per potion and/or level), or otherwise make the swirls not permanent (in exchange for making them more powerful, as otherwise they might as well be allure potions). Another idea is to let them combine and dissolve into the background; still adding value to the opponent but not crippling the player entirely. Eggplants share a similar issue with being permanent, but don't punish you for actually playing the game which makes them a lot better to deal with, although they're still broken in the sense that they cripple your ability to play the game after some time.
- Bovine Bell & Milking Potion: This potion punishes you for not playing it and for playing it. I do like the idea of having garbage in your build, but punishing a player for getting punished doesn't seem right, or at least, not as hard as this does. Probably a good idea is to upgrade the potion already in deck instead of adding a new one? Otherwise making the milking potions not spawn more of them and instead making them considerably larger/increase the size of potions in your brew when combined could work. This still punishes the player in a similar manner, but it's much tamer.
- Yellow potions (reactive?): These seem good at a glance, but when you actually try them out, they're incredibly weak and you'd rather pick up an accelerant upgrade/potion. Having to combine them also makes them a bit rough to use. I'm not sure how to make these better, though, other than making them bigger or changing their trigger to not depend on combining.
- Potion distribution: This is particularly in regards to the Bovine Bell, but opponents with other single-use potions will see this issue as well. The milking potions are essentially garbage you have to lose a turn to get rid of, and bells being single use, means the opponent can just sift through a significantly more efficient deck with 3 less potions while you're stuck dealing with 3 useless potions. This is a very powerful effect on its own, but when combined with an opponent that otherwise only has accelerants and allure potions, makes for an opponent that can only be beat with permanent debuffs (filling their board with garbage), as they're too fast for you to do anything about it.
Besides that, getting interesting builds is pretty rewarding and I feel like the difficulty for building a deck is just right; I kinda wish you didn't have to break your loadout to fix it later though; that risk usually ends up in a dead run.
going to piggy back on a lot of what im seeing in the comments. the permanent/persistent potions (eggplant/hypno spyral) are insanely annoying to deal with on the receiving end, especially the enemy who does both + expansion potions. rather than nerfing them however, another option could be to include the corruption/conversion potions in the players starting deck. This would give the player some agency in dealing with them, while still leaving it as a viable strat for players to use.
In terms of progression i would love to see some more control in how we sculpt our run. some options being providing multiple options to transform potions into, an option to add a potion w/o needing to transform, being able to use potions from our deck (but still limit the uses of the upgrades to 3 per round), or being able to remove a potion entirely.
overall a very solid start and especially impressive given the time constraint of a game jam!
also i may have broken the game, game REALLY doesnt like it when something from an opponents flask makes it into your's, there is an ice slime in my flask that alone is big enough to cause a backfire (thank you way too many blue slime)
found that this also completely bricks the game, lets you start a new run, but the opponent couldnt resolve their flask, nor could they lose
After playing some more, expansion potions are absolutely useless against any opponent that has any kind of fast cycle gimmick i.e. lots of accelerants, and it's also terrible against any comp that has compression potions. both of these let the opponent either empty or shrink their cauldron faster than you can expand it, and I say this having managed to get a run with a level 5 expansion potion in deck and a pair of level 5 accelerants, you can't cycle fast enough to outpace any kind of enemy that has the above. I'm not sure how you would solve this without making expansion stronger vs enemies that have slow cycle/cast rates at the very least it would probably be nice to have the expansion scale more smoothly at higher sizes since it's very hard to maintain expansion at a threatening size; once you get really big the potions shrink by enough per turn that the extra space is enough for the new potion thrown in
Also will second the statement many others have made that the hypnotic swirls are absolutely overpowered, as they basically combine two powerful effects of permanent spacefilling (will eventually brick you due to no more space in the cauldron) and a constant allure drain with 0 counterplay. This makes it just a vastly better slime potion that kinda also has the effect of the allure potion. imo the hypnotic swirls need to either be not permanent or hypno potion needs to be replaced with a hypno item similar to the cowbell nerf.
another suggestion would be to allow the player to choose which 3 "special" potions they have instead of automatically giving them expansion potions, as this would make it a lot easier to try out different builds
This is a pretty fun game its just that it gets kinda frustrating to play when it's both hard to get a build going and most builds will get stonewalled by a handful of enemy comps anyway so why bother.
anyway compensatory bug report for complaints: not sure if this is intentional, but if you use the drain potion to get a high level potion in hand, and then end the battle, you can then use the dupe feature to get a copy of that potion at that level instead of it reverting to it's original level. IMO this is worth just making a feature because it gives the drain potion an extra use and helps to assemble builds for some of the potions that kinda suck and need high level versions to be effective (like the expansion potion).
also compression potion could probably do with an extra effect since as it stands I don't see a use outside of as a counter to an enemy with expansion or growth potions, and I'm not sure if the blueberry slime needs to compress on cast since I used it a bit to basically no effect
absolutely adore this game! also i broke it in an interesting way if you want info about it :3
oh please do share! Love hearing what builds folks have come up with (or potentially what bugs they've found)
so, i did a run that big on huge expansion, to interesting results. i don't have a screenshot for it but one interesting issue was that with like 5 star sized blue potions cast all at once, the opponent's ingredients would shoot out of the pot. including into MY pot, causing an overflow. this was VERY surprising. also, at some point, the potions just wouldn't trigger at all. not at zero and not when overflowing. you can see it action here
also i can only be sure of the wandering slime moving between pots. i think i remember others doing the same, i'd have to try and recreate it.
edit: no, it was more than the slime. backfired and shot a couple hypnodisks into the opponent's pot
Thankyou for the bug report! A few folks have encountered this issue - I will be investigating the cause for the post-jam update I'm working on
if you survive past 100 rounds, the NPC should "collapse from exhaustion" or something and you auto win to prevent Softlocks
Also the game needs more player choice, The RNG very frequently puts the player in unwinnable scenarios
cant wait for the next update :
Fun game, but spirals are way too strong and I wish you could more easily control your build. I like the extra layer of tactics in wanting to have your "hand" have the potions you want to get rid of and/or upgrade, but its kinda annoying to manage ngl. it would be nice if you could swap at least one for a potion in your "deck" so that you can more easily tailor your builds. The ability to remove potions and slim down your deck would be nice as well.
it seems like if you upgrade a star potion then it disappears? not 100% sure but that would be kinda unfortunate...
not quite! When you upgrade a star potion it gets dissolved - it's a higher level as normal, but it can no longer combine and doesn't take up any space. You should be able to tell what ingredients have been dissolved by the tint that shows up in the background of your concoction
they mean in the winning screen. If you try to upgrade a star potion in the winning screen (exchange, upgrade, duplicate) it disappears
ah, ofcourse! Very sorry for the misunderstanding
yeah the reward screen is one of the rougher parts of the project - in the long term I could see me giving it a total overhaul, maybe turning it into more of a shop, but in the main time I'll try and give it a touchup to make it more stable
hey, can you please tag the download as compatible with windows? otherwise it doesn't show up for download on the desktop app
(also would be nice to get a windows build for titania suit x)
ah, very sorry - I didn't realise that's how that worked. Should be fix now.
I'll see what I can do regarding Titania Suit X, it's been a while since I've touched that project.
Okay yeah Spirals are absolutely ridiculous, they need to not be permanent. Eggplants are much easier to deal with because they spawn one at a time and virile builds actually want more eggplant anyways.
i had to play the web version because the downloaded version would crash on the second or third level. audio was crunchier on web but i survived.
what a fun little puzzle battle game. lots of fun synergies and tactics if you have the right potions in your bag, but it takes a long time to shift your bag composition, so mostly you experience these through the opponents. maybe if there was a way to trade more potions with the opponents you've beaten and recruited into the polycule?
i love the different kink ideas and how they are expressed in the gameplay mechanics of each potion. cowbell/bovine potion is especially clever. i havern't played enough to comment on the balance but i would love to see a more substantial version of this game!
Pretty much every persistent item is way too much.
The moment I find any enemy where they put an eggplant or spiral on your side you're just done with the run.
The only thing that isn't too much is bovine milk cause you can at least manage it well to keep going but anyone with Eggplant or Spirals (or hell both. Both should never be a thing.) is pretty much the end of the run. You can't get anything in your cauldron to do anything and they just keep moving forward while you're crippled forever.
persistent things just don't work in the quantity that they are in currently.
The only time I've ever gotten past one is a single run where I had the shrinking reagent and even then it was barely possible and took forever.
Other than that the game's really good and hope you keep going with it. (Seriously tone down the persistent reagents they're both too plentiful and mixing them makes it far FAR worse.)
Quite good, I'll follow this to see future updates for sure. On browser, my audio seemed to get increasingly crackly/corrupt as time went on. I also echo the desire of others for a pseudo-gallery in which we can view potion effects that we've previously seen. Even just a potion diary that lists the effect (gameplay) and effect (visual/TF) would be pretty nice. Hopeful for some additions of potion effect (visual/TF) to existing potions like the slimes. There are some minor gripes about balance but not anything you haven't already addressed in the rest of the comments.
could you maybe add a sandbox area so you can see what potions do and be able to change the size of the witches
This game is very very fun. Would be fun even without the NSFW aspect to it but it's great either way. I do get some compatibility issues in Win11, though, if I download the game I just get a black screen with some sound. If I play the game in the browser it works but the sound gets worse over time almost as if the sound is stacking or something? strange. I'd love to play a more fleshed out version of this, though, it truly is great!
Upon playing some more, I notice a couple more things. Notably, yeah, the Spirals and Eggplants probably need some tuning-down. More specifically, when they show up in as high of concentrations as the enemies have them in, they're very quickly overwhelming, to the point of being unfair. The same excessive amounts also applies to the Cowbells, although that's to somewhat of a lesser extent, since they are single-use. At that point, your only hope is to get them to overflow, and do all that to themselves instead.
I find that the Bulging potions are relatively fair on the player's side, since you don't get them in as high concentrations. I imagine the same goes for the Hypnosis Potions, but I never got any to show up, so I don't know. Although, they are generally just better than the eggplants, since they give a passive Allure bonus alongside taking up space. I feel like making the Spirals not be persistent, like a variant of the Slimy Potion with some bonus Allure tacked on, would be good.
Also, speaking of Slime, I feel like it might be good to make them not "pop" upon hitting max level or something like that, since their entire purpose is to be space-blockers, and it kinda defeats the usefulness of using a bunch of Slimy Potions if all the slime they drop gets merged and liquefied.
And a minor thing: It would be nice to see the other witch stay on screen a bit after winning the level, so we can see how our last brew transformed her.
Anyway, sorry if it feels like I'm being overly-critical, or backseat-devving (if that's a thing), I just really like the game, and would love to see it improve.
oh no no, I appreciate all the feedback folks have been giving!
This project being on a deadline, I didn't get a lot of time to really fine tune the balance, so there's definitely some potions that are more powerful than they should be and some that are less - and probably a fair number of opponents whose loadouts need to reined in. Once judging is over, I'll probably see about giving the balance of everything some more tweaking. The point about getting more time to bask in your victory is also a very good suggestion.
A Suika Game-like roguelike? That's an amazing concept, and combining it with expansion is also great! I also love how you handled the between-round deck upgrades, although I think that giving some way to actually remove items, rather than just swapping them, would be nice. Perhaps a random selection of three out of a small number of possible end-of-round transformations? That way, you could add "remove" or other options like that, without having to overload things.
I love how you can (hypothetically, never got that far myself) have such variation in decks just based on the goal of "get points faster than the opponent" and "if either person overflows, their own effects apply to themself." Like, the slime items are very interesting, particularly in how Rose Slime and Wandering Slime synergize.
One thing I'd complain about: The eggplant potions seem a lot more powerful than other, similar items, like Slimy Potions or Expansion Potions, since they add permanent useless ingredients to the pot, rather than the others which go away after some time. Maybe making the eggplants semi-permanent would be a good fix?
Also, random thing, but it'd be great if Reactant Potions (the yellow ones) actually did something better when at higher tiers. Like, only being able to activate ingredients of tiers equal or lower to theirs? As it is, trying to level them up is actively detrimental.
Oh, right, and the actual porn aspect. Love that too! I'm a big fan of expansion, the only reason that I didn't mention it before is because I'm usually too busy planning out my potions to look at the girl on the other side. I love how you do the clothes-ripping, though. Top notch work there. I don't know if boobs expand only based on Bovine Elixirs, or whether that's related to Expansion Potions too, like the thighs/butt expansion. One thing I'd like to see, would be a settings toggle for certain transformations/growths, like cowgirl or dick growth. You could keep the items themselves around, just not make their effects register on the witches.
I'll be watching this for updates once the jam's over, and definitely will be giving this a good rating once the jam's over too.
Edit: oh, also, forgot to mention: The terms at the bottom of items like "inert" and "permanent" could use defining somewhere, maybe in the tutorial?
I really hope this game develops more even if it may've simply been for a game jam! I'm *so* enjoying it, bewbs or not. Honestly can't even focus on them since I'm trying so hard to plan out a course of attack and future planning for the left-over potions lol
(I hate the hypnosis and eggplants, I wish they didn't stay despite overflowing. Should have an overflow limit by certain rounds or something.)
cool game!
can we get starting loadouts? maybe unlocked through experience or by defeating the opponents you get their deck
That's definitely the kinda' feature I'd be interested in pursuing in the long run ^^
Maybe something like how Wildfrost handles it, where you're offered a semi-random selection to choose from 🤔
*Nods in agreement*
The best feeling there is in this place: finding new recent stuff
After playing a bit more, I find the spiral and eggplant potions to be a nightmare to fight against, also the bovine is kinda crazy. Amazing game eighter way, love it sooo much.
The game still doesn't want to run when downloaded.
Have you tried downloading directly from the webpage? And what OS are you on? Otherwise I'm kinda' at a loss for why it'd be giving you trouble
Windows 11, using Opera GX for the web game. Itch.io app seems to be having trouble when downloaded, so i will try your suggestion. Sorry if it is a bit discouraging. ^^"
It's no worries, these kinda' platform specific issues are just always a headache to debug
Sorry to hear you're still having issues. Is your PC particularly low end? I wouldn't have thought the game would be that performance intensive. Other than that, perhaps it's a problem with Godot on Windows 11? Someone else was also reporting problems from a Windows 11 device...
Sorry, I know this isn't a particularly helpful answer, but I can't really think of another reason for it 😔
My PC has 24GB ram, and is quite fast, so it is fine on that end. Just the sound acting weird
There is one last issue i noticed : the potions displayed on the shelf during the shop events don't match the ones grayed out in the bag.
huh. in that case maybe it is something to do with Window 11 then?
I am using an early release version of Godot 4.4 for this project - maybe it's not fully compatible with everything yet? I'll try to update the project once Godot 4.4 is fully released, maybe that'll fix it
Ok, so i did as you suggested : the game works, but the sound is crackling and slowed.
Alright so, this game is REALLY good, honestly it's super fun, I unfortunately do have to echo what others have said, milk is simply too powerful, not just when the opponent has it, it's too strong when the player has access to it aswell, it simply creates a spiral that is impossible to get out of, I even managed to get myself in a game where both me and the opponent were stuck in the milk spiral, and at that point absolutely nothing was happening, I wasn't able to attack, and neither was my opponent.
But I want to make it clear that I love this game already! Outside of glitches, that is the one problem I have with the game. I find this is one of the best of these types of games! Good work!
The bovine witch is way, way too strong. I can't win because no matter how many bovine potions I drag out, there's an infinite number taking their place. In deckbuilders - which this can be considered to be - cards whose only purpose to bloat the deck, i.e. do nothing but occupy a slot, are already very strong. It's very easy for such cards to spiral out of control. Adding a downside to playing the card or discarding it makes those cards even more powerful and difficult to deal with. By making it so you can't reroll the potions away, you've put them into impossible and broken territory. There's literally nothing you can do. You can't reroll, you can't discard them because an infinite number fill their place, and the more you try to get rid of the more are added to your deck because they duplicate every time they combine. The only way to win is to just not play, and reload the game as soon as you see three bovine potions on your shelf with an empty cauldron, because it's over.
I can only really see two ways to balance that witch and make it fun to play against and not a reload-fest. Either make it so the potions are removed when played, or make it so you can reroll them. As is, you're literally playing against the clock, and the witch gets the exact potions she needs way too often. It doesn't help that you only get two alternate potions before facing her, and 9 times out of 10 the potion you get will be completely useless. I've only beaten the bovine witch once, and it was by a complete fluke in the fact that I got the bovine potion so I filled her deck before she could fill mine.
Another issue is that the starting potions you get honestly aren't that strong. The expansion potion has its moments, but the only time you can use it effectively is when the witch's cauldron is already almost full, otherwise using it is an active detriment as it makes it easier for the witch to combine potions - especially apparent with the second witch with her instant-cast potions. I can also swear that the enemy witch's potions shrink. I've had many a time the cauldron is about to overflow, and all I need is one expansion potion, then the potions she has inexplicably shrink.
I've found that the game is ironically more stable on the web version. To be more specific, while playing on the web version I noticed that as the game progress the sound gets more and more bitcrushed. So I tried a local version, and was able to play through three witches before the game white-screened, and crashed (and I was still experiencing some bit-crushed sfx issues). Yeah it's consistently white-screening on me, I can't play past the yellow-potion witch.
huh, that's odd. what OS are you on?
Windows 11 64-bit.
hmm, I'm on Windows 10, but I wouldn't have thought it'd make that much of a difference...
really cute little game, though I ran into a funny bug where when a yellow elixir went off and triggered an orange and pushed my readiness into increasingly negative points of potion readiness, so I could never clear my cauldron; it also seems to have made me immortal, 'cause I also wound up with negative hearts, too...
yeah the balancing is pretty awful, board instantly got flooded with spirals and eggplants and i had no way to get rid of them.
The game doesn't load when downloaded through the Itch.io app and on the website, it suffers from slowdowns.
The Npc all way seem to have Rng on there side . and 4 time the second person played nothing but cow bells and could not win and i could not lose . and i seen a few time that the npc seem to start with better potion than the player
I really wanted to like this game, but dealing with the opponents is so frustrating. The Bovine witch is just too strong. By the time the witch gets down low on health, I've got too much bovine to deal with and then she heals back up and I still have a deck of bovine that grows exponentially. The witch that reduces your potions levels is so annoying as not only does it make getting momentum going take so long but then since half of your potions are all about increasing the opponent's potions, then having the opponent's potions be used and disappear by the yellow combining potions makes it take so long to overflow the opponent's flask. So you cant just focus on alure as they red potions get reduced, then you also cant focus on blue as the opponents potions get used by their yellow.
That's really two core things about this. The blue potions you're given at the start are severely underpowered (they only have one use, and the majority of witches are never in a position you can use them effectively) and some of the witches are just hell to deal with. The bovine witch in particular I've only ever gotten past once, using the bovine potions she has against her. But given the potions you get are complete RNG... It's basically not worth trying to face the bovine witch without the bovine potion. If you get to her without it, you're basically guaranteed to end up with a full deck and a guaranteed loss.
It's really sad, because I know there's a good amount of content past the bovine witch... But I don't get to see it, because it's impossible to get past her.
The slimes you get from Viscous Fluid seem wrong. It says they're temporary, but they persist through being infused and they persist in the post battle screen where you can put them in one of the slots (but if you do nothing happens). The second definitely seems like a bug.
Temporary is intended to mean they only last for the duration of the round, but the post battle screen is definitely still a bit jank atm 🙇
I feel as the player you run out of potions way too quickly in higher levels. The cow witch ability seems much too OP in comparison to the items you can use as the player (or I have really bad RNG after an hour of play). The opponent should have the ability to run out of potions same as the player to give a proper balance. Otherwise very enjoyable and different game.
I'm really glad you enjoyed it!
Hope you don't mind my asking, but what do you mean run out of potions? Your potions should be automatically replenished once you've played every ingredient in your supply. You can actually what ingredients you still need to play to reset by clicking on the satchel next to your active items.
The cowbell is definitely kinda' crazy tho, I won't lie - probably warrants a nerf. You can actually find them yourself too though!
It's a problem with the cow potion specifically. As long as the cow potions regenerate themselves, the deck won't reset. The cow potions add a new potion whenever they combine (including higher level ones), so each potion is effectively worth 5 or 6. It's not realistically possible to avoid combining them long enough for the deck to reset, and of course once one pair combine it chains through a bunch of them.
I'm not really sure how to change it without losing the interesting part of needing to avoid combining them. Maybe put a limit of 3 in the deck at any time, or add a rule that maxing out their combination (to where the bottle breaks) removes all remaining ones from the cauldron and the deck.
EDIT: I didn't realize this until I was playing with slimes so I could actually play around the bovine elixir - even if you don't combine them it looks like they keep getting shuffled back in the deck. The bovine potions should definitely get removed from your deck once you play them and only get added back in when combined.
Ah the reset is the problem then with the cow potion. I ran 4 straight games against that witch and once the cow potions started going into my inventory they multiplied and the normal potions I had would not show up so I would just have to restart or wait to be defeated.
ah, yes, I see what you mean now
I'll have to mull it over a little - they're intended to kinda' spiral outta' control, but I wonder if there's a slightly less punishing approach I could take...