Spalchemy

I don't believe I've ever played a zero-gravity game in 2D before. I really liked the concept and exectuion here. The graphics were ok, and the sounds & music fit well with the game.

I would have liked more levels and perhaps some kind of time limit so that you'd really have to learn how to move fast.

@braudur Thanks for playing! Never played a zero-gravity 2D game? Perhaps you just didn't think of, for example, cave shooters or something like the classic Asteroids. :)

Unfortunately, I didn't think about adding more levels, so now my game structure would be awful to modify for different levels.. But hmm, a time limit or something could be doable still. I meant to have enemies and a part where the player would actually turn the gold into fuel, but I'm slow and didn't have much time anyways.

It was a decent idea, but it doesn't align with the theme very well. It seems like you saw the space station theme, made a game about collecting fuel in a space station, found that the theme was actually alchemy, then retextured the fuel into gold. The music was nice and I liked the background.

@DaFluffyPotato I agree, it doesn't meet the theme well. I kinda wanted to combine both of the themes but the actual theme turned out to be missing.

I thought that if one of the goals of alchemy was to produce gold, what if I reversed that? That there is plenty of gold but less something like fuel? I don't know, it doesn't really make sense, especially when I eventually didn't even make the fuel transformation part. On the other hand, even that would have been only one thing slapped on top, not really thematically an integral part of the game.

Hm interesting game mechanic and it actually feels fun to 'swim' through space station. Shame there are no enemies, obstacle or time limit. Game doesn't fit the theme but that isn't really that important for me anway. I liked 8 bit music and sound when you pick up gold.

Nice Entry! I really like the feel of being in zero gravity. You paid attention to a lot of details, like the super cute animation for the "swimming" like movement, different music forthe win screen and the parallax for the stars. Once I had collected all the 6 gold pieces, I did not know what to do, but found the exit quite quickly. You could show a small "go to the exit" message, which would help players figure out, what to do.

Great game!

@Laguna: Haha, I'm glad you liked those details. Although, I made those when I should have been making the gameplay more meaningful (like the other comments suggest). And to be honest, I didn't even happen to think about a "go to the exit" message although it sounds obvious now. I guess that is a downside of knowing exactly what to do and where to go..

I love these controls, very original! You should keep working on this, I feel like this would be a lot of fun with some more obstacles/enemies to work around. One small nitpick I have is that the wall are a bit sticky, the game would probably feel better if they were a bit bouncier.

Neat little thing with a neat little idea. With time I took on the rythm of the music to "swim" trough the space station. Was a little bit boring because I did not know where to go for the gold stuff.
But its a cute atempt!

Cool game !

I really enjoyed the movement mechanic even if the collisions were a bit inconvenient, the loss of velociity was pretty hard. I think if you were to keep working on it and build the level design around that movement mechanic it could become a really fun game quite easily.

The thing that bugged me the most was the relation to the theme. I see that you had a pretty clear idea in mind but it didn't really translate into the game.

Congratulations on the entry !

Hi! We played your game with Danae on this twitch channel, and now the video is available on YouTube. Feel free to check it out :)

Danae plays: Spalchemy

Had a bit of fun self-enforcing a rule of using as few strokes as possible. It would be nice to have some sort of time or energy related challenges to beat. Currently there is no challenge just the experience of floating in an abandoned space station, which isn't that bad on its own to be honest.

The other things I meant to say have already been said. It's ok.

Ha, two themes :) Cute retro graphics, and a proper ending with its own soundtrack, nice! Pity the game is a bit dull, because you can take as long as you like to gather the gold. Either a time limit, or some obstacles/puzzles would have been nice.

Also, of course flapping your arms in zero-G doesn't really work that way :D How about this for controls: you can only change direction when you are near a wall, and you can only push away from the wall?

@KorbohneD I did not want to have any arrows or pointers where the gold is. Although, perhaps it would have worked better if the world was more interesting to explore.

@Walnoot @Rakart Yes, the walls are kinda sticky. Initially, the player was just sliding along the wall without losing speed, so I put some multiplier there and went on. The bouncing would make some sense as well, except if you could only push from the walls (as suggested by thomastc).

@Aurel300 Thanks a lot! Too bad I missed it (although I was in the chat, or more precisely, I had a client connected to the chat while I was away). As I mentioned in the IRC channel, the music was just something made with BeepBox. Earlier, I have only used music generators but this time I wanted to make the music as well. In fact, the one piece of sound effect was also made with BeepBox.

@HuvaaKoodia A stroke count actually something I considered afterwards. And energy, hmm, could be interesting as well. And to be honest, the space station was not meant to be abandoned, but it became one as I didn't make any enemies. :D

@thomastc Oh wow, that kind of controls sound interesting. At least worth trying out and seeing if they work. And haha, no, I didn't really think of physical feasibility of anything, given the entire premise is quite absurd already. I just wanted the guy to move somehow but it indeed ended up looking like swimming. The little alchemist would need some huge wings to move around like that in air.

Thanks a lot for the comments and suggestions! Now I'm starting to feel bad as I haven't made a modified version (yet?). :D

Simple, but nice game! I included it in my compilation video series of all of the games entered in the Alakajam #1, if you’d like to take a look. :) https://youtu.be/QBXJYhpSjpA