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Witch is Brew's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Accessibility | #6 | 3.500 | 3.500 |
| Fun | #24 | 3.583 | 3.583 |
| Audio | #31 | 3.458 | 3.458 |
| Graphics | #32 | 3.958 | 3.958 |
| Overall | #41 | 3.399 | 3.399 |
| Controls | #51 | 3.167 | 3.167 |
| Originality | #73 | 3.208 | 3.208 |
| Theme | #123 | 2.917 | 2.917 |
Ranked from 24 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Godot Version
4.6.2
Theme Interpretation
The main character is a sentient bottle who can brew potions to modify their abilities by collecting ingredients in each level
Wildcards Used
What Year Is This?
Your game seems to come from a retro console
Discord Username(s)
null_builds
GWJ Participation Level
1
Team Size
1
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Comments
A refreshing tangent on the theme, and I do love the reduced-resolution 3D style. The level design didn’t repeat itself and both were unique. Having three levels might’ve brought the game onto another level of completeness, but that is of course easier said than done.
A great job overall!
Thanks for checking it out! There was a third level in the works but unfortunately I didn't have quite enough time to realize it.
Very fun, I loved super monkey ball but havent played it in ages so i had a great time playing this. Shaders were cool. I would love to see more on the brewing side of things, i combined the heft and lift potion and it was cool to see that occur to make the impact potion. More of that would be sweet
Thanks for playing! I planned to give each combination a unique single-use ability that would have been triggered by pouring the potion out but I didn't have time to make the level mechanics for each so I dropped it. The impact potion would have been an explosion that knocked-back enemies and broke fragile walls (the original plan was a bit over ambitious).
Fantastic job with idea and execution. The game felt very polished.
Thanks for playing!
Hey nice game, I'm not very good with physics games like this so the first climb was even too hard for me. I was playing on a laptop without a mouse though, not with a controller as was recommended. I kind of wanted some sfx in addition to the music but the music was quite captivating so it was not really necessary tbh, but could have added a bit more juice to the game.
Thanks for the feedback! I feel you there! I planned to have SFX, particle effects, and animation like squash and stretch for the ball when jumping but I spent way too long on the game's background systems and ran out of time. I definitely regret the jumps in the first level too. The player controller is geared for momentum-based gameplay but I designed the level like it was a traditional platformer and that makes it awkward to play.
Yeah now that you say that it would maybe be very satisfying to build up momentum instead of basic platforming like you said.
Really good game! I really like how the potions change the ball properties!
Thanks for playing! Building the system to do that was definitely one of the most fun things to make!
I don't know if its just me but I felt like it was really tricky and I don't know if that's what you wanted, also i think the art style would have been better if there wasn't a pixel look but over all this is a really well made and polished game
Thanks for playing! I was definitely going for a bit of difficulty encouraging players to keep their momentum but I undermined that some in the level design since, especially in the first level, I force you to stop often which resets the momentum and makes jumping harder. In hindsight, the levels should have been larger and more open with jumps falling down to lower platforms (sort of like a 3D Sonic game's level design).
Really cool game! You nailed the graphics but it would have been cool to have some more puzzle like stuff or different paths you can take with different potions. But it's just 9 days and for that time limit this looks so good and also feels pretty good imo.
Thanks for playing and agreed! That was the exact vision. These two levels were actually intended to be tutorials on what pickups did, how to dump them, combinations, etc with the next level being the full vision with branching paths but I only got it about 1/3rd done before I had to shift to the UI and submit.
The third level would have featured a branching path with a challenge for each pickup type and a challenge where they join at the end that could have been beaten by any of the three and potentially skipped if you combined certain ingredients.
Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
I found this cool game,
Called Witch is Brew!
Haha thanks for playing!
Awesome! This was very cool I like the look of the game especially the checkerboard pattern on everything.
also very good use of the tips screen!
Thanks for playing! Funny thing is the checkerboard is just the Kenney prototype texture I use when I'm developing a level but I really liked how it looked against the sky and just decided to keep it in.
First of all, my eyes hurt badly when I launched the first level. You thought about many different settings to gain accessibility points, but you didn't include an option to disable filters. Similar to other players' experiences, my jumps weren't registering at crucial moments (it seems the sphere is sometimes not considered 'on ground' even when it is). Also, I soft-locked myself by pressing 'F' on the first potion, which forced me to restart.
Thanks for the feedback! Do you know what part of the visuals were causing the pain? Was it the brightness (I was worried that white would be an issue) or is it the pixelation itself? There isn't actually a screen shader, the game just runs at a really low resolution and I didn't think about the pixelation being a problem but if that's the case I can look into adding an option to match the display resolution in future games.
Yeah I figured that soft lock would come up. I intended to fix it by making all pickups respawn when you dumped a potion but got sidetracked trying to make a 3rd level that ultimately didn't make it into the game. In hindsight, I should have just implemented that since it probably wouldn't have taken more than a couple minutes.
I'm not sure exactly what's causing the jump issue since neither I or my testers encountered it but I'll do some digging and figure it out before I do another rigidbody platformer. I used the same jump state machine before so I'm guessing it's the floor detector code I had to write custom for the rigidbody this jam.
Yes, it was pixelation itself (I thought it's a filter tho)
Gotcha! I'll see what I can do to make that an option in future jams, thanks for letting me know!
I experimented using a screen shader for a different jam last year but I found that lowering the project resolution is easier to setup and you don't have to worry about the shader messing with the UI so I've been doing this since to get a retro effect. One of the recent Godot snapshots added an option to scale the 3D scene independently of canvas layers with pixelation (you could before but not with pixelation) so I'll look to use that and add an option to disable the downscaling since that's easier to change in game than the entire project resolution.
I really like the graphics and the ui,kinda look like super mario 64. Gameplay wise the controls felt a bit stiff.I couldnt get past the 2nd potion but its still a nice game.
Thanks for playing! I agree, the controls definitely weren't quite right with this one. I'm using an actual rigidbody for the player and was having trouble finding the right physics settings to make it responsive enough for jumping without making it feel floaty. It might have been easier to use a characterbody instead and just fake the visuals to look like it was a simulated object.
Strongly reminded me of monkey ball. the style is really cool and it’s well put together, would have loved there to be more levels.
I would note that the rails probably should have been a bit wider as when facing head on it’s a bit difficult to recognise them and judging where they end wasn’t easy
That's exactly what I was going for! I actually had a 3rd level about 1/3rd done that would have introduced weighted buttons and moving platforms but ran out of time to finish it.
Agreed on the rails! I had that feedback from my testers too and meant to add orange indicators at the start and end of the rails so they stood out better.
Cute game and brings me back with that artstyle. I played with keyboard and it worked well for me. Good job :)
Thanks for playing, I'm glad you liked it!
Very cool shaders, the shader of the rift at the end of levels was cool af. The way the potions were introduced was pretty smart. The shadow was also really useful. The main menu was a little bit confusing because mouse inputs weren't working, but just using the arrow keys worked fine. Oh and the tips at the end were brilliant.
I never encountered the issue with the jump not working. And the game actually saves. Very neat.
Yeah the mouse was working on the menu Saturday but I did something Sunday that broke it and didn't notice until a while after submission, oh well!
The rift at the end is actually super easy to do. You just need to check a couple boxes in the standard material to enable stencils; though, I did have to do a couple things with custom shaders to mask the effect to the portal's shape.
I'm glad you liked it, thanks for playing!
The game seems nice, but I'm terrible at it xD, though sometimes it felt like the game didn't register my jump. Seems fun but I didn't get very far, nice aesthetic though!
Thanks for letting me know! I'm not sure off hand why the jump seems to be acting up for some but I'll definitely check it out!
Cool jump and run with a variety of different obstacles. Unfortunatly the jump button does not always work (played with keyboard), and that was not a cooldown thing, somtimes i could jump tree times in a row, somtimes i pressed the jump key three times and nothing happens (even on flat ground).
Just a personal preference: I dont like pixelised shader on 3D games because it's hard to look at and make me a headache and some times motion sickness.
Thanks for the feedback! That's not a bug I encountered, I'll have to look into why the jump isn't resetting. It's actually not a shader, I'm just running the game natively at 256x224 so I can look into including an option to change the render resolution in future games. Thanks for checking it out!
Great game! just wish the controls were clearer to the me I didn't know I could dump my potions until I beat it
Thanks for playing! I had actually planned on adding some text hints to the game in certain spots but ran out of time at the end. I might update it post jam if I'm not too busy since there was a lot more I had to cut for time
Really enjoyed the style and aesthetic, it's a pretty fun 3D platformer. I didn't really understand the mixing mechanic, every time I gained a Power up and pressed X or B on my Xbox controller it would just remove the power up and I'd have to restart the stage to get it again.
Yeah I could have explained better - the potion is made as soon as you pick up the first ingredient (and remixed when you pick up a second). The dump potion button is just for if you don't want that potion anymore or if it has a side-effect you don't like. Thanks for playing!
This was super fun and I love the retro look!
Thanks for checking it out!