the Greatest Alchemist Remake | Donut Dog Games

Play: the Greatest Alchemist

About a year go, I published an article about the Greatest Alchemist, which was the first game released for this blog. I made it exactly as I had imagined in my head and it wasn’t much fun.

So, immediately I started thinking what should be changed to make it fun. I knew that I would come back to this game one day. In the meantime, I worked on other games.

Well, that day has come.

Okay, so what is different?

The original game was made in Phaser, now I moved to Godot, because I like Godot better, however the consequence of that decision is that the game size increased about 10x. That’s a lot. We are not talking about critical sizes, but still… sounds insane, right? The difference makes me think, that I should probably make web games in Phaser.

The main reason for the change is user interface.

In the old version, you had items menu at the top and at the bottom. You could have either categories or items, but not both. It was an interesting idea, but not very useful.

Now, you have only one menu at the top. First line - categories, second line - items.

In the old version, whenever you would click on the item, it would be added to the cauldron (middle) and that would trigger reaction of all elements that were already there. Which was exactly how I wanted. Apparently, this was no fun. If you already had 4 elements in the middle and would add 5th, which would trigger reaction, you had no idea which elements reacted, so you couldn’t reproduce it.

Now, if you add element into cauldron nothing happens.

There are two ways to create to create new elements.

One options is to drag one element onto another. If they reaction, new element appears. If they don’t react, they just push each other away.

Second option is, you add multiple elements to the middle and click on the mixer. Mixer works fast with 3 elements, but, if you have more than 5, it takes forever. More elements you add, slower it gets. It’s not an accident, this is done on purpose so people would use it sometimes, when they feel stuck, but not all the time.

In this version, the background colors are different, but that’s not important.

Old version had zero animations, this have a few, which hopefully make game feel more friendly.

I redid maybe ~50% of the artwork, mostly changing colors, but there are a few new icons.

I added 100+ new combinations and 32 new items. No new categories. So in total we have:

• 40 categories,

• 2000+ combinations,

• 700+ items.

We still a bit shy from 800 items.

I tried to keep most of functionally and buttons of the previous version.

What’s missing?

There is no options to delete single item. The size of left menu is limited and I didn’t want to make buttons minuscule. It’s not great, but I don’t think it’s a big tragedy.

I also thought about implementing hint system. When you run out of ideas, you could click hint and get suggestions for a new combination. Maybe it could be paid, like 2$ for 10 hints. I don’t know. For know it’s not implemented.

How long did it take me to make this game?

I started working on it during the last week of June, so in total it took 8 weeks or 2 months. To be fair, there is not much code, but I was working through heatwave, which made me extremely unproductive. I think, under different conditions, I could have made this game in 6 weeks or maybe even 5.

Is this the final version of the game?

Probably not.

I could spend a month or maybe two just coming up of new combinations.

I would like to improve the art (still).

I would need to rework categories. Reworking categories is a bit like optimizing code: it’s good for the game, but doesn’t feel like progress. It also takes a lot of time.

Have you tried the Greatest Alchemist? I think, it’s good. Or at least better than before.