Ludum Dare 50: The Alchemist
You can play the game at: https://idaedalusi.itch.io/the-alchemist
The Alchemist was a game that I created with two other people during Ludum Dare 50, which is a game jam that runs for just 72 hours.
The Alchemist is a realtime card game where you play as an alchemist who is scheduled to die. The player has to combine cards to brew potions to either drink or throw at Death
In this project I was sole designer, sole artist, and one of three programmers.
During the first day of the jam while playing testing, I realized that there was a flaw in our current design. The original design was more of a combo seeking game. It had no time limit, no decision making, nor any mechanical depth, which meant that the player was just waiting for the game to end.
So as a quick pivot I changed the design to have cards with multiple different effects depending on which number is highest. The cards can either buff players or delay Death. I also added a time limit with a score tracker and simplified the combos to just 4 different stats.
This means that the player must juggle between healing themselves and decreasing Death’s damage or pushing Death away while trying to maintain enough cards to actually finish potions.
One way to maintain cards is to drink a potion that generates cards, however another way is the Draw button in the bottom left corner. Pressing the button gives the player one card and then goes on cooldown. Giving the player an additional thing to keep track of
This pivot worked well as we ended up placing in the top 12% of almost 3000 entries. Although with a little more time we could have balanced the game to be a bit more forgiving.