Sulphur Memories: Alchemist
A downloadable game for Windows, macOS, and Linux
The game is also available on Steam now!
Alchemist is a "traditional" roguelike dedicated to crafting, resource management and world interactivity. It's heavily inspired by the immersive sim genre.
It's still an early version and a lot will be added later.
Featuring:
- Unique alchemy system. Raw materials are refined into abstract essences, which are then used in crafts. For example, "something sinister" might be a chain from an old dungeon or a wing of a bat. "Something verdant" might be a young branch, or herbs, or moss. There is no such thing as useless loot in this game.
- Highly interactive environment. Start wildfires, rust metal grates, fell trees and push dangerous creatures into chasms. Use your creativity!
- You are smart, not strong. Overcoming the challenges requires learning, preparation and strategic thinking, not better stats.
- You progress by learning from books, rather than fighting, with an extract from the book accompanying your progress. Learn new recipes and expand your arsenal as you explore the world!
- Infinite procedural areas with a lot of hand-crafted set pieces and little stories wait for you to explore.
- Play the traditional roguelike way, with only one life, or the more relaxed way, with extra lives.
- A lot of reading, for those who enjoy it. A whole library of lore, item descriptions and dialogue. For those who don't, most of it is optional.
- Original music composed by Ridderick specially for the project. 3D sound effects.
- 64x64 tiles, soft lighting, Purkinje shift, water distortion and all other kinds of eye candy.
- Rains and storms to immerse you into the world.
- Full support for either keyboard or mouse control.
I really love feedback and listen to all of it, even if I don't always agree. I will be happy to hear your suggestions or criticism.
For development updates, you can subscribe to my youtube channel.
Differences between the free and paid versions:
The free version allows you to play either without extra lives, or with 3 extra lives. The paid (sanctified) version allows you to have infinite lives, and my sincere gratitude.
Aside from that, the "demo" version contains all the same content as the paid one.
Save files, settings, etc are all shared between the two versions. If you ever decide to move from one to the other, nothing will be lost.
Troubleshooting:
If the game looks blurry on Windows, go to Properties -> Compatibility -> Override high DPI scaling behavior. Choose "Application".
If the game crashes or freezes unexpectedly, or the graphics look weird, try changing the settings in the "Troubleshoot" tab in Options->System menu.
If the game freezes when you try to interact with horses (or takes extremely long time to load the map), go to Options->System->Troubleshoot and switch "Complex map colouring" off.
If the loot overlay stays enabled when it shouldn't, press "Alt" once. This is caused by alt-tabbing while the game is loading.
Purchase
In order to download this game you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $11.99 USD. You will get access to the following files:
Download demo
Development log
- Sulphur Memories: Alchemist 0.3.2 is out11 days ago
- Sulphur Memories: Alchemist 0.3.1 is outAug 09, 2024
- I am back, I bring a devlog, and a release dateJun 26, 2024
- A 3-year retrospective of Sulphur Memories: AlchemistAug 17, 2023
- Upcoming Steam release and name changeMay 20, 2023
- Populating the tavern, continuing the main quest, adding some snowy weatherApr 28, 2023
- A devlog about sewers. At least partially.Feb 11, 2023
- Alchemist 0.2.4 patch is released!Dec 15, 2022
Comments
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Some side thoughts:
1. I have over 200 books! It's getting tedious to scrap them all, I want a way to bulk scrap them. Maybe make the books stackable?
By the way, I think some inventory sorting function could be useful, so things are in standard order and not change when I use up something and gain more later.
2. With about 100 maps explored, the selection screen is getting cluttered. Now I really want a way to delete old locations.
3. When exploring in the mines, I have an idea: When muffled, the character can use an action to make noise (like knocking the ground), so the centipedes are attracted together while I quietly move to another position, then I can use a single potion to kill a group of them.
4. About Verdant sandals:
This equipment is useless outside of setting forest fires. And even when I'm using it to prepare a forest fire, it's still inconvenient to use.
I think it should inherit the nettle protection from tall boots, as provided by verdant blessing.
If it needs to be buffed, then either give it better utility for preparing the fire, or give it some other utility.
For preparing the fire, it could either be buffed to grow tall grass in a larger range (3x3), or be able to overwrite non-flammable plants like spearmints and foxgloves.
For other utility, it could give hp recovery. Maybe heal 1 hp for every tile of tall grass planted. If that's too much, you can make it heal with a probability.
5. Roses hurt!
Currently rose deal 1 damage when passing through, and no equipment can block this damage. The pathfinder also doesn't try to avoid it. I think this needs to be fixed, either make tall boots block that damage, or make the pathfinder avoid it.
Now I've (almost) completed the game, it's time for me to write a review.
(spoiler warning)
TLDR: Overall, I think the update is great, and still needs polishing. Some balace still need tuning.
1. Centipede and Ghoul droppings are too weak, and don't match their strength.
Centipede drop only gives 1 poison when distilled. For comparison, a toad drops a slime gland, which also gives 1 poison when distilled.
I suggest buff the centipede drop to 2~3 poison.
Ghoul drop gives 0.4 sanguine when distilled. For comparison, a Leech pouch gives 0.5 sanguine when ground in a mortar.
The ghouls are rather frightening, I suggest change them to give sinister instead. Compared to the abundant spider silk (0.25) and fiend powderbox (0.4), and another frightening monster Chimaera (1), I suggest they should give 0.6~1 sinister.
2. Efreet and Centipede show the design intention that I should avoid them, but in practice, they have high speed, and there is often not enough space to sneak by, so I have to kill them. This way I'm no longer outwitting my enemies, instead I'm brute forcing them with my vast potion supplies, and this feels a little wrong.
I suggest add 'dashing' equipments, which can help with sneaking past these enemies. Dashing could work like "the stardust", speed up movement but cost hp every move, and maybe accumulate fatigue so the player can't dash indefinitely.
3. Exploration of T3 fey lake is almost identical to T2 forest, aside from the fairy and the moat.
I hope the forest can have some new threat than the T2 forest, rather than having the riddle be the only difficult part. Maybe some normal creatures like bears? Or some mystical fey creature?
4. Where is the sulfur? So far I have only seen sulfur in a variant of T1 farm, and nowhere else. I hope there are more sulfur later.
5. Flame spire have some rooms with wooden barrels, that start to burn very soon after I enter the map. It's as if they are in chronostasis before I entered the map, which breaks the immersion. I think they should either be burnt at start, or simply not flammable, or be locked well and have no efreet inside.
This save has 2.5 years, and have hoarded a huge amount of items. I have 2k gold, 8k fuel, 1k metal, 12 complete map and 6 unexplored T3 zones. I also have enough materials to make 20 elixir of youth.
Although there is no time contraint, I still try to optimize in-game time usage, and use this to estimate potion costs.
The T3 maps:
Sorting in difficulty, I think it's Spire = Mine = Grave >> Lake. The lake riddle is not taken into account, because the tree trunks give a huge amount of reward without needing to complete the riddle.
I have completed 3 Spires, 5 Mines, 5 Graves, 4 Lakes (but failed all the riddles).
The forest part of spire:
The forest is all burned, and I need to avoid the Efreets. The good part is, the forest is all burned, so the vision is clear, and I don't need to worry about being ambushed around a corner. There is usually enough space to maneuver around them, and I can destroy burned trees to create paths when in need.
It's relatively easy to reach the spire without needing potions. However, the forest have some good materials, and to collect those, I need to kill some Efreets. The rule of thumb is, use a frost potion whenever it could kill 2 Efreets or more.
The magmoss is useful, it's a good source of telluric.
The scorch leaves is less useful, it can be refined into either lawless or volatile, but neither are important.
The smoulderfly is simply not worth gathering. It requires hushing sands to gather, but only gives 1.5 volatile, which is already abundant. I suggest buffing it to 2~3 volatile, and maybe make it take sorting instead of grinding.
Inside the spire:
My biggest problem with it, is the rooms with wooden barrels. They start to burn soon after I enter the floor. When I reach the rooms, I usually see them burn in front of me.
In my opinion, they should either have already burned up before I come to the spire, or be entirely immune to Efreets. Maybe the barrels and chests should be made of metal, or some magical crystal that can be collected for later use.
In the spire, there is usually no longer enough space to sneak around the Efreets. I simply use frost potion to kill all of them. The rule of thumb is, use a frost potion whenever it could kill 2 Efreets or more, and also if a single Efreet is blocking the path.
On average, I use about 20 frost potions each spire.
I also tried using Corpselight potion against Efreets, because the potion description says "freeze all nearby creatures", but it seems to have no effect on them.
Pirate graves:
These are mostly fine imo.
The Ghouls are designed as need to be killed. Each cost 3 fireballs, or 1 black fire + 1 fireball.
The ghoul drops are underwhelming compared to their strength.
On the ground, it's possible to cheese them with crystal potion. I can use a crystal potion on each ghoul and then push them into deep water.
Sometimes, it's possible to crystal a ghoul and put it in a side room. If it has lost track of the player, it will stay dormant and not try to break open the doors. Not having to kill it can save some potions.
The 3 sarcophagus can be solved with the whisper candle, but I always drink a phoenix potion before opening it, just in case.
Mines:
The entrance has renewable sources of glacial water. However, I find it not worth to go there again just for that water.
The mines require having hushing sands active almost all the time. I also use restlessness to make hushing sands last longer, and use food instead of calming infusion to recover health.
The centipedes are deadly. They have 130% speed, and deal 4~6 damage on bite. After the bite, there is also a 50% slowdown, which makes it hard to either continue sneaking or retreat.
There is usually not enough space to sneak around them. With muffled footsteps, they act similar to Efreets, but are somewhat harder to kill.
Sometimes there are very tight corners which blocks most of vision. A centipede can be very deadly in this case.
It's possible to leave some of the centipedes alone, but they usually guard some treasure and valuable ore behind, so I still kill them.
Killing each takes 1 fireball + 1 embers. A single black fire potion can also do the job, and becomes the best option when it can affect 2 or more targets.
The bottom floor has lots of pits. It's possible to use crystal potion + push to kill centipedes. The wyvern is no more difficult than the fort one, so it's just a piece of cake.
When exploring the bottom floor of water variant, I noticed a problem: When I cling to a wall with gecko potion, deep water have no movement penalty, but shallow water still have movement penalty. I think this needs to be fixed.
Fey lake:
The lake can be passed through costing 2~3 floating potions. There's nothing interesting about the lake itself.
The forest is almost identical to the T2 forest. There are no additional threats. There are additional resources, the mandrake and the resources in tree trunks. The fairy dust and strange drinks are all useful materials, and if I fully explore the map, it can give far more than 4 map fragments.
The fairy riddles are very difficult for me. So far I have tried 4 times, and no success. Some riddles are clear enough that I'm confident of the answer, but some are vague, and I need to guess and end up failing. Maybe I need to ask ChatGPT for help?
I'm not asking for a nerf to the riddle difficulty, I just hope there's nothing important locked behind them in
The hotbar is a huge QoL improvement, now I can't live without it. Unfortunately it only has 10 slots, which is not really enough for late game builds.
It partially solved the frequent equipment switching problem, by making the switching easier.
There is a cheese with repeatedly turning lights on and off to trick bats. It already existed in old versions, but the hotbar makes it actually viable.
The ability to unequip potion in also very helpful, especially when combined with the hotbar. It has prevented misclick many times.
New Items (and changed items):
1. Black fire:
This update buffed its damage, and added 2 types of enemies that can be affected by it: Ghouls and Centipedes. Black fires now deal about 1.8x damage of fireballs at 2.4x cost, which makes it a direct upgrade.
While this sounds like less cost-effectiveness, it can make good use of oppertunities when a single potion can affect multiple targets. The spread is still hard to use, but it's good enough without the spread. Overall I think it's well-balanced.
2. Unruly flame:
Its damage is too unstable and unreliable for main dps. I had a try at it, but it can't even reliably one-shot ghouls. At this price, it's not very useful.
3. Rime potion:
It's now in a strange position. Currently it's used only in the spire, but it's unlocked very early, and the spire is a late game T3 map. So there is a very long time, I have unlocked rime potion but have no need for it.
4. Chaos potion:
For the drinking and applying part:
When I want to apply a buff on myself, in most cases, only 1~2 of the buffs are needed. The chances of rolling the needed buff is low. For drinking, it's a little better, because it can give healing, but this usually results in overflow, so it's not useful either.
For the throwing part:
It's possible to use this as a damage potion. While there are many different thrown potions, a good number of them deal damage in some way, so there's a good chance to deal some damage.
However this has some problems. The first problem is the rift potion. You can accidentally exchange your position with the target. So it's only useful when fight a single enemy. Otherwise you may end up in the middle of a group of enemies, or dangerously close to a strong enemy. The second problem is immunities. Some enemies can be immune to some of the potions, reducing the chance of dealing damage.
I've tried using chaos potions to deal with single centipedes in the mines, but the result is far from ideal. It usually takes more than 6 to kill each.
The cost of the potion is not trivial. Overall it's still not useful.
5. Poison gloves:
The passive effect is very useful. It allows curing rot effect, which is useful for the ghouls in graves.
The melee effect is somewhat useful. I can now kill bats in 1 hit, which needs less turning lights on and off.
The poison cloud buff is useless. All major threats in T2 and T3 maps are immune to poison.
6. Restlessness potion:
This potion multiplies player speed by 1.15x. This is not useful for sneaking past Centipedes and Efreets, because the player has no way to tell when the extra turn will occur.
The main use of it, is to pair with hushing sands and gecko potion, so these potions last longer.
The loss of calming infusion is actually not a big problem. Calming infusion often results in healing overflow, so it usually heals less than the theoretical 60 hp. Food from richardo is cheap enough to be a good alternative.
7. Dream catcher: This is rather helpful, as it can generate lots of high tier materials. Holy, Sinister and Semipiternal are all very useful.
8. Phoenix potion: This seems to be a specialized potion for solving the pirate grave. I usually keep a few in inventory, but not use them often.
9. Whispering candle: This item reveals some interesting lores. I have tried listen to them in each type of map. They are mostly useful in pirate graves, to steal the secret from the pirate. In other places it's mostly just cool.
10. Potion of blood transfiguration: This potion is more expensive than fireball, and fireball can do its job nicely.
11. "The Stardust": The Fey lake area gives tons of fey essence (hundreds), so I can brew lots of them to sell. Still have nowhere to spend that much money though.
12. Shadowbane potion: It's throw effect is useful at clearing densely packed shadow clouds. However, it's also ok to just rush through the cloud, it only costs 3 hp.
The drink effect lasts too short to be useful. I think it should be at least 40 turns to be a worthy alternative.
13. Kingsblood: Works as intended, but not useful outside of unlocking their locks.
Kingsblood can be used to fool the living armor of the T2 mansion. However this doesn't work in practice, as 15 turns is not enough to loot the main treasure. I can use 2 potions, but it's no longer cost-effective this way.
14. Floating: Works as intended, but no use outside of the fey lake. Duration is too short for other use cases.
I haven't used either potion of recollection or discord. I think discord could be useful when it's affecting 2 ghouls or centipedes, but haven't tried yet.
Richardo T2 shop adds something useful in late game. The important goods are: Metal sun symbol, ivory dice, ink, black feather. Bloodstone and black quartz can be useful, but I found them not cost-effective.
It's getting tedious to check the shop every in-game day. I hope the T2 shop can have bigger capacity and restock slower.
Loving all the changes, you put a lot of work in and it shows. I'd say hostile creature diversity would be something nice to work on. Having the same couple enemies on every map type gets boring, maybe slightly different variants at least would spice it up. Random/rare encounters like running into a bear in the woods or a pack of wolves would add some nice pucker factor. There's a lack of wildlife diversity for sure. More difficult and varied encounters would be cool. Chimeras for an example only appear in that one abandoned farmhouse subtype, but could really be distributed into later dungeons amongst the other enemies.
Something Boreal is very frustrating to source in significant quantities because you can only get them from glacial water, which is random and usually you don't even get much, or spearmint leaves, which are insanely inefficient. Could you buff the amount of "Something Boreal" you get from spearmint? .30 is painful when potions cost 1.50, not to mention it already uses up 1.00 of something umbral which is very hard to get a lot of until later in the game, and .30 of something ephemeral which is used in a lot of different potions as well.
Thoughts on items: Could you just have the higher tier versions of the gloves/boots stack the previous effects onto the upgrade? It's very tedious having swap gloves and boots back and forth depending on what I'm doing. Also verdant sandles seem to be extremely pointless. I don't think it would be broken if you rolled up the benefits of the basic gloves and sinister gauntlets into the shock gloves, it would be a slight buff, but really more of a QoL thing than anything.
Is there a win condition in the current game? I have all the potion recipes and have been going completionist on the lore fragments. I'd like to know if there's something hidden or if it's just not implemented yet. I think it would be cool to have multiple win conditions with different pathways. Lichdom, going through the veil to another dimension, finding celestial language words to get immortality. Definitely would be good for replay value.
also ` words of power?
>Something Boreal
Maybe. I might add a couple of additional sources. But I think you underestimate the amount of glacial water that becomes available in the late game, which is when you actually need it the most. And if you have no idea what I mean: look at the entrances to mines.
>Could you just have the higher tier versions of the gloves/boots stack the previous effects onto the upgrade?
I saw several people actively considering their equipment during their playthroughs, and I don't want to remove that from the game. Verdant sandals may need a buff, though.
>Is there a win condition in the current game?
No. If you see no active quests (besides Ricardo's friends, which is always active), it means there is nothing else left in the story. All that's left is to explore until you've had enough.
I'm playing on steam. When playing with the whispering candle, I noticed the whispers are missing for the T2 forest.
Oh. Turns out, there is a bug. Thankfully, it's only lore that you're missing, but still.
I will fix that by the next release.
I'm playing the new version (paid on steam) and started a new save.
It seems there is a change in the book loottable, which makes it harder to deliver potions to the travelling merchant in time. I also accumulated ~12 academic knowledge in mid-game, before being able to use them in the new techs.
The new t3 maps are really difficult. I have already died twice in the flame spire, mostly because I went there too early. Luckily I picked the infinite life option. I think they will become easier when I get used to them, but will still cost a lot of potions to explore.
I encountered Raemus heir. In the conversation, he forcefully took 5 piece of gold from me. (he asked for 15 but I only had 5 at that time)
I wonder whether this is a scam, or is there some more story behind him?
5 pieces of gold is not a big deal, but I'm angry that someone can rob money from me and then show up as if it's completely justified. If this is really a scam, then I want him DEAD.
I wonder whether we can get some form of curse in the later stages of the game, to deal with this, or hire assassins to do this. Richardo is already doing those shady things (the 4 potions are probably used for them), and our alchemist should be able to afford such a cost in mid game.
>It seems there is a change in the book loottable
Yes, some books are replaced with map fragments, but it's around 1/10 in the early areas, so it shouldn't change much. The rest is just randomness (or the areas you choose to explore, since the selection varies between areas).
>I encountered Raemus heir.
Yes, you got scammed. He's a reminder not to trust random strangers (and you could avoid this result).
But you aren't the first one to get angry at him, so maybe I'll add some way to get back at him. Not assassins, though.
No offense but goddamn it took you long enough to get this update released.
I'm very excited to play this as soon as I have free time.
It's my bad and I admit it.
How is the development going? The release date on steam is close, will it be postponed again?
I think so. I got back on track, though, so it will hopefully be the last time.
Recently came back to this game, and it’s still as amazing as I remembered!
There were a few things that I wanted to note / ask from my playthroughs:
I also have a couple of suggestions for the game, though obviously you shouldn’t feel compelled to add them. I’m mostly just throwing around ideas I had while playing:
All in all, keep up the great work, and I look forward to the upcoming Steam release! Don’t feel pressured to rush on the update, your health & personal life is more important than getting an update out sooner.
Hello, thank you for your input!
>I feel like clairvoyance potions should counteract the vision-reducing effects of fog.
That is a cool idea. It fits the flavour. I will probably make it that way.
>Why can’t I get “Something toxic” from fiend’s powderbox mushrooms? Given their effects in-game, I would think they would be a potent source of it.
They used to give that, but I changed it to something sinister at one point for more usefulness, as something toxic is abundant anyway. Now that I think of it, though, I can just make both options available.
>Some way to “unequip” potions from the throw action would be nice.
I never considered that it would be useful, but implementing it won't take long, so I will.
>I think it would be useful if there were some way to remove locations from the list once you no longer intend to visit them.
I will need to think of such a feature.
>I feel like all the mid-game research is all bunched up on the third row of the tech tree, and it would be better (both for readability and progression) if the third row were split into 2 rows, resulting in 2 rows for early-game research, 2 for mid-game, and 2 for late-game.
What is currently a late game won't be for very long, and specifics of the research tree, too, will be subject to change.
>I think it would be interesting if there was some way to “transmute” one alchemical ingredient into another
Something like alchemical gold is a possibility, but I don't have any specific thoughts yet.
Oh no, steam release is postponed again...
Yes, sorry about that. There are reasons I can't fully concentrate on development lately.
I stil have 0.1
I have a few small suggestions that I hope can give this game more appeal to people trying it out and give it the recognition it deserves:
The introduction is a bit redundant when you are asked to give your soul to the devil. Many people would normally not agree to this and the game forces them back to the title screen and redo all the tutorial crafting and prison escape again. Its not a ton of time lost but can be pretty frustrating especially for a new player who is deciding if they want to play any further.
I suggest having the narrator come in after the second time you refuse and say something like "After realizing that there is no exit, the alchemist reluctantly agrees." and move the story forward instead of ending the game and wasting the player's time.
Another idea would be to put in an option in the title menu to skip the intro section altogether and start directly after the prison escape. Choices for extra lives could be selected in this menu. This would be perfect for players who want to just go directly into the real game.
There is an option to skip the tutorial that appears after you meet with Ricardo.
As for replaying the introduction, there is a purpose, but I might make individual parts skippable.
Really like the game so far
Feels like the upgrade for the boots/gloves should be cheaper, the upgrade seems to be the kinda thing you'd smack out in like...the first three areas. But consistently I have 5-7 areas available to explore and only 1-3 max common-knowledge (I forget its actual name), so I'm running around getting hurt by nettles/snakes when that feels like something I should be able to solve in the first five minutes. Knocking the cost to 3 shouldn't be a huge deal should it?
Everyone is going to have different experience in terms of which and how much knowledge they find at any given point. You seem to be getting unlucky.
The cost of the research is proportional to its benefits. It would not make sense to have it lower.
Hello, dear creator of this game and everyone else here.
There is a unofficial subreddit for this game called r/Alchemist_rougelike.
There currently are no rules and if you have any suggestions just message me on reddit.In the moment I am writing this comment I am the only moderator.
If the creator of this game wants the subreddit to be removed just message me.
My only issue with it is that the correct spelling is "roguelike", not "rougelike". Would be great if you fixed that. I'm fine with the idea otherwise and won't mind posting some updates there.
Thanks for correcting me, English is my third language with the other 2 being Romanian and Russian.
Hello!
I just wanted to leave my feedback after playing for a couple of hours, but first, a preamble.
In videogames I have two favourite things - necromancy and alchemy. I'm also of the opinion that both of these elements of fantasy are horrifically underutilized. Both, of course, because the elements that I like most about them would often necessitate the creation of a game built entirely around them and not merely have them be classes in something larger... Which brings us to Alchemist, a game built entirely around alchemy.
I think you've knocked it out of the park, all in all. I love the elegance of the system you've presented here. Just enough moving parts to make you feel like your little alchemist is brewing and distilling without drowning players in the nitty-gritty details (Said by one who adores such details in, say, Cataclysm DDA). Additionally I adore the idea that this is a game in which you are intelligent, not strong, and appreciate your stance on preparation and observation being the keys to making it in this game. The lack of armour +1 and flametongue swords that enable me to just run in and eviscerate every last viper in the forest is a lovely and grounding choice. It makes me pay more attention to the world and brilliantly sells the fact that you are just an alchemist. I adore it, and think that what you do have here is brilliant and, again, elegant. The focus on the fact that you are an alchemist and not the generic roguelike hero is refreshing and exciting alike. I read earlier that you want to keep permanent upgrades relegated to tools, which I would also like to gush about, but this is long enough already.
The music in the main menu was excellent for setting the mood, and I do quite enjoy the writer and listener's back and forth while discussing the story. It's personable and well written all in all, though I did want to go through at some point and collect any typos I've found if that would be something you'd consider valuable.
The weather having an effect on the world, the lighting, the graphics easily and readily conveying all of the important information, the intriguing story... I've nothing but praise and excitement for this game and really very much just wanted to offer my encouragement. I'm most assuredly and certainly an ardent and enthusiastic fan, and look forward to buying it the second I see it pop up on Steam. (Stalked your reddit posts a bit, noticed it was a priority for you.)
Thank you very much, means a lot.
Question: Is there any time pressure, aside from the travelling merchant and cyclical things like fireflies and shop restocks? Any other quests or events that can just expire if I take too long hanging out in early zones?
Currently, there isn't.
Thanks for the answer! I think the travelling merchant is a good kind of way to handle time pressure, you want to move fast enough to get the bonus, but it's not run-ending if you don't.
Just wanted to say I saw this game and picked it up, and I'm really enjoying it so far! I'm hoping as I get past the earlygame and into mid/lategame that I can learn cool new ways to use alchemy to improve the player character. If that's not a thing, consider that a suggestion! Also, it would be nice if one could leave notes for locations and mark them as cleared so they don't clutter up the list.
If you press "F" in the examination mode (or click the icon with the magnifying glass and the door), the game will point the camera at one of the exits from the area. If you press it again, it will move to the next exit.
You can also move the camera by holding Ctrl or mouse wheel and either moving the mouse, or pressing the movement keys.
I've played a new save to have a look at the lumberjack quest and the church shop, which I have missed before.
The lumberjack quest unlocks a new buff potion, and it seems that this potion can also be sold for money. 5 gold each.
I think this potion itself has some limited use, as an early game replacement of rift potion (for escaping) and time freeze potion (for other actions).
This potion accelerates player action, which is useful for dangerous situations. However it costs HP, so it can also cause problems. I think in early game this can be used to solve some farm dungeons that are otherwise difficult. It won't have much use in late game.
Selling this for money is only viable in mid-game, when you have a steady supply of blood from the scarlet flask, and you still go to tier 1 forest for mandrake.
In early game I don't have much spare sanguine essence for this. In late game I don't often go to tier 1 zones, and tier 2 zones don't provide enough something fey for crafting this. There is also no need for so much money in late game either.
About the church shop, it sells ingredients for something holy, but I don't need much of it either. It is indeed an early-mid game shop, just like the dev log said.
Hey, a quick question. I think it would be relatively easy to add visually impaired/blind support to this game. Is this something you'd be interested in?
You're already doing quite complex sound work, even including spatialization, so most of what would need to be added would simply be more of this. The rest is text and menu accessibility, which would need to be spoken using TTS. You're using Love2D, so you could use the Love2Talk package by Pitermach on GitHub to easily add TTS to the game.
I don't want to overwhelm you with too much info right off the bat, I've just been following your progress on this game on YouTube for a long time now, and I'd really love to be able to play this game myself, and I believe adding blind accessibility shouldn't be a huge task! There is quite a big community of blind gamers out there that would potentially want to play it as well. But if this is something you'd be interested in, please feel free to reach out, I'd really love to help!
I am not actively opposed to this idea, but currently my priorities are elsewhere (I want to complete the core game first). I might return to it after the game is fully complete.
I've played this game again in v2.1. It's so addicting, I've been playing it for 3 days. I've reached 2 years, solved all the areas, and unlocked all the potions except the lumberjack one. It seems I have missed the lumberjack quest, and now I can only buy wood from him.
It seems I have also missed the shop of the lonely church.
As of now I have 3k something dead and 6k fuel, and ~900 money. I wonder whether there will be a late game Richardo shop upgrade, as I have nowhere to spend this money now.
I have encountered a bug. It caused a crash. Reloading the game and repeating the steps caused the game to crash again.
I was exploring the fort area, in depth 2. I was trying to kill the wyrm. My tactic is, first use rot potion, then retreat and wait until it has only 1 hp, then go back and use a fireball.
The wyrm is usually in a special room with only 1 exit. This crash happens when the only exit is blocked by pits. I threw a rot potion from the other side of the pit, and retreated. About 4 turns later the game froze, and I have to kill the process by the taskmanager.
This tactic would work perfectly without the pit. Eventually I killed the wyrm with a different tactic, and moved on. I guess there is some problem with the wyrm's pathfinding logic.
I have some thoughts about the new items and changes:
1. The skeleton key is super powerful. It trivializes the traps in the dungeon, as they can now be lockpicked for no cost.
2. The bestiary is also very powerful. It allows the player to make effective tactics without trial and error of death.
3. The weather system caused something luminiscent to be less abundant, but there's still enough for me. This is mainly because the rains cause the fireflies to hide.
The weather visual effect is a bit too heavy, and it causes some difficulty for me to see the path. But I don't want to turn it off completely, maybe there should be an option to reduce weather visual effect.
4. I can't find a use for the black fire. It deals only 15~20 dmg, and is not enough for the stronger enemies. It is also too expensive for killing weak enemies. I tried it in a forest and it didn't spread well. It also has severe issue of potential backfire.
I think this potion is designed against swarm enemies but there is no such enemies in the game for now.
5. The scarlet flask makes something sanguine quite abundant. It's now a little too abundant, as this component is only used in healing and curing potions.
6. The leatherskin potion seems powerful, but isn't actually that powerful, since not many enemies deal physical damage.
7. The eelskin potion seems to be designed against crimson ivy. It could probably be helpful in later combats like crystal mansion, and it's quite cheap. I didn't use it though, because I could already kill the enemies quickly enough, and I prefer to avoid the damage completely.
8. The salamander boots make burning down forests easier. Instead of finding somewhere safe from fire, I'm now immune to flames.
9. The sparkling gloves are quite powerful, it can kill enemies easily in wet environments, and it's quite powerful in crystal mansion, saving a lot of shockwave potions. I think both of this is by design.
10. The efficient burner seems helpful, it saves a lot of fuel in distilling, and saves a little fuel in brewing.
Strangely, it halves the fuel cost of ember potion, but some of the fuel is supposed to be a part of the potion, instead of used in brewing. Maybe the effcient burner makes fuel in the potion also burn more efficiently?
Some previous problems:
1. The snake problem is solved. The snakes are a lot less aggressive now. The bestiary also explains why they are sometimes aggressive.
2. Umbral essence seems to be not that scarce now. I think the coffee thing is added in this version, and it provides some umbral essence. This allows me to use some frost potions, though it's still not very useful. I think frost potion can solve crimson ivy, but we have eelskin now.
3. The loot overlay now has its own UI component, together with a new creature overlay. Nice job done.
This update has also caused a new problem: Frequent switching of equipments.
In the previous version, I only have 2 equipments, and I use the sinister gloves most of time. There isn't much switching between them. In this version, I have 3 equipments, and I often need to switch between the sinister glove and the sparkling glove.
I think some equipment effects should be merged. As I can switch to the basic gloves at anytime with no time cost, its effect should be merged into all of the more advanced gloves. The same with boots, though verdant boots might have some adverse effects, so making it permanent is not good.
I think this could be solved be adding a new mechanism: Equipment enchantment. When you unlock more advanced equipments, some lower tier equipments can be turned into enchantment. Enchantment can be equipped with other equipments at the same time, but doesn't stack with its original equipment.
Thank you for such a detailed feedback. And for catching that bug especially.
Suggestion: When starting a new game, there should be an option to start with the items in the cellar, the inn, and the border of town automatically collected (perhaps at the expense of a bit of time if that really matters, though I doubt it does.)
Collecting them by hand is fun the first time but gets repetitive, and since there's no danger or complexity to it there doesn't seem to be any value in having the player go through it again with every new game.
Perhaps also a "go to travel map" shortcut from the basement or just outside it. It could take a bit of time, but walking the entire path to the stables manually is time-consuming and boring.
It's complicated. I see the issue, but I don't like the suggestion. I will have to think.
Finally the game is out!
Now we have a free and paid version. Unfortunately, I don't have access to itch's payment tools, so I can't get the paid version now. I have the money, it's just the payment tools.
So I decide to play the free version for a while, and buy this game later, and then transfer my save file to the paid version. Is the save file compatible between the two versions?
Yes, of course. The save files, settings, etc are all shared between versions.
very great game, I enjoy playing it.
Also, how can you get your save file and will it be compatible for newer versions?(I have Alchemist 0.1.2)
If you're playing on Windows, the save file should be in Users/.../AppData/Roaming/Alchemist/saves
There will be two files of the same name, called something like 12323.save and 12323.metadata. You'll need both.
Unfortunately, it will not be compatible with the next version due to major changes. For smaller patches, saves are generally compatible.
Idk if im impatient or my laptop just too old for this game, but i can't seem to progress with the horse.... it just freeze when i interact with them..
It's a known issue that happens on some hardware. Go to Options -> System -> Troubleshoot and switch "complex map colouring" off.
thank you!! Works well now
Is it possible to set a multi-key combination for a single keybind (Shift+Up Arrow)? If not, could this be added?
I can't get the hang of vi keys and would like to setup an alternative for movement.
It's not currently possible. I will consider adding such an option, but don't expect it too soon, as it's going to take some thought to implement.
There's also another option for diagonal movement aside from rebinding keys: you can point at the target in examination mode and then press the "confirm target" key (default Z, enter, space). Try it, maybe you'll like it more.
Great game; patiently waiting for 0.1.3.
I have an ... idea.
A permanent stat increase optionts.
WAIT!!! Wait! wait, put down the pitchfork, let me explain.
There would be 2 type (tier) of potion: lesser and greater.
For example:
Lesser strength potion would increase youre meele attack damage by 1 and the greater by 5, the greater would cost 4 time more to create then the lesser.
Speed: 10 and 50%.
HP: 1 and 5 ETC
How can you obtain the recipe:
All the "bosses" (the goat, the poison wyvern, the shadow spawnin skeleton) have a 1% chanse to drop 1 lesser and 0,1% chanse to drop the greater recipe. These recipes would be unique so you would't get a duplicant of them.
The real kicker come from the cost of the recipe.
I'm talking like 1000 metalic 500 holy 500 fey and similar cost for the lesser.
Easy to obtain: no
Easy to farm: definitely no
Would give a further goal: for some definitely; others ehh not so much.
Would be some crasy people out ther how would grind it like crasy:
absolutely (including me).
This is just an idea, but maybe you can considered it puting in somting similar, I know it supposed to be a difficult game, but it would be a great reward for thos who put a lot of time and effort in the game and
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I JUST GOT AN EVEN BETTER IDEA:
Who about if you put this in the 1 life mode because you have "the knowledge of all mortal languages" so you can read this ancient books about the recipe.
It's not a terrible idea, and I might consider something like that in the future. But I mostly want to keep permanent upgrades in the "tools" category.
A high fixed cost for permanent stat increase might be difficult to balance. I have a better idea: not make the potion cost high, but as you drink more of the same potion, the effect of each additional potion will get lower.
I think a square root or cube root diminishing return is good enough. That means the total effect scales with the square (cube) root of the amount of potions drunk. For certain special stats that have a large influence, you can use logarithm.
For players that want to grind, they can get relatively high stats, but not too high that would break the game. (A mage with 100 melee attack is certainly broken.) And for players that don't want to grind, they can still benefit from the potion.
Fantastic game! It's been a while since I've checked in on your progress, and I'm excited for all the new stuff! I've decided to name all my characters after St. Patrick, because I *will* kill all the snakes :P
My only real gripe (other than snakes, which you are addressing) is that you seem to have a rounding error in your code? Sometimes I'll wind up with 1.001 of something. Or it'll say that I have 1.0 of something, but then I cannot make a recipe that requires 1 of that thing; my guess is that I actually somehow have 0.999 of that thing, but it displays as 1.
A few suggestions and nitpicks for down the road, if I may...
This is a very fun game, and I'm eagerly awaiting future progress :)
>is that you seem to have a rounding error in your code
There is some weird display issue that causes things like 1.01 to display when there shouldn't be. As far as I know, actual calculations are not affected, but I should probably get to fixing that either way.
>It seems as tho remapping the shift key doesn't work as intended.
Thank you, there was a bug with this command. I'll fix it by next release.
>Being able to pin a recipe
Planned for a while, but will probably not do it right now.
>an accessibility option to enable reloading
There will be an option for extra lives.
> There is some weird display issue that causes things like 1.01 to display when there shouldn't be. As far as I know, actual calculations are not affected, but I should probably get to fixing that either way.
I've definitely run into the problem several times where I was unable to make something despite having enough ingredients. Would it be helpful to screenshot such things, or send in a save file?
Yes, it would. Please do.
Here's a screenshot showing one instance:
Here's the save files:
https://anonfiles.com/H8a9Xf7ay8/alchemist-saves_7z
I'll keep an eye out for more instances.
Interesting. I looked into it, seems like there is an issue with floats comparison. Thank you for the save file, it helped.
I've added rounding of the items' quantity and tested again with the save that you gave me, and it seemed to have fixed the issue, so expect it to be gone in the next release.
I love this game so much, and now that I’ve finally completed all the research, I feel that I can give my thoughts on it.
Firstly, the praise:
Secondly, things that I noted while playing, but don’t feel are strictly good or bad things:
Thirdly, criticism and feature requests:
That’s about it. Sorry for writing an essay, but I have a lot of thoughts on this game.
Thank you for writing this. Actually, the fact that someone got so impressed by the game as to write such a post is the highest praise I could hope to have.
>The alchemy system
To be clear, it's directly inspired by Prey's recyclers. So if you like my take on the crafting system, you'll probably like theirs.
>The homeward crystal is
It is, of course, intentionally pretty powerful. It's, after all, one of the later researches, and pretty costly to make. But there are plenty of items that allow you to escape danger, sometimes out of way worse situations, like the rift potion or the frozen time potion. Most of the time, if you can survive 20 turns, you can probably reach the exit anyway.
>I’m not sure if you’re planning on giving them more recipes, or just leaving them as something to immediately be converted into essences.
Some might receive additional properties, but in general there will always be simple items with only one use. I am considering adding some kind of autoconvert feature for those later.
>Why can you push stuff around?
Mostly niche tactical uses. Like moving a barrel of gunpowder to cause an explosion where it would be most useful, arranging debris to make a large fire, building an improvised barricade.
There's also something I forgot to mention anywhere in the game (I should), and it's that you can move stunned or crystallized creatures. You can move them out of your way, into hazards, or even push them into chasms, which is an instant kill. Try it, it's fun.
>My problem with them, however, is that semi frequently they will “chase” me, repeatedly moving towards my character.
The aforementioned update is probably going to help here. As they will be less likely to move towards you in general, they will be even less likely to do so repeatedly.
>change it so that you treat bats like passive animals while the character is holding a light source?
Good idea, I'll arrange that.
>I would like to see more uses for ecclesiastical knowledge
Not promising anything right away, but I am planning to expand the research tree in general, so there probably will be.
So one of my problems with the game is the vipers, sometimes there's too much of them and they surround me and I now carry at least more than 10 of those alcohol hand potions and antidotes since I got killed bunch of times because of that. I also think that maybe you should make the start more engaging since I thought of quitting two times before I got hooked to the game. I also made another run that lasted a year and four months before I stupidly punched a tomb from a witch forest, after that I just didn't wanna play again since I played it for 2 days and unlocked almost all the potions. I think you should add a normal mode where you'll just get back to your laboratory after you die since it's so depressing when you lose the save file that you worked hard for.
I will be adding that. There will be an option for additional lives.
Some notes I took while I was playing the tutorial for the first time:
First of all, I appreciate the option to play on Mac.
Great Menu upon loading the game, immediately made me feel like this game could be epic.
A bit too much talking from the Alchemist at the start of the game in my opinion. Consider making the very start of the game a bit more actiony? Perhaps the devil saves you from an intro fight before you make your pact? You gotta remember new players don’t know what they’re getting into, they don’t know it’s the awesome game you know it to be as the developer. You need to hook them early. Starting the game to find I’ve made a pact with the devil was interesting, but then got a bit text-heavy and boring after that.
I liked the torch to illuminate hidden passages thing. I hope this isn’t a one time tutorial thing and is actually introducing me to a mechanic that is used throughout the game.
Once I met Ricardo I got a better understanding of the story. Tutorial got better after that when got to my Alchemy room.
Got killed by a bunch of Vipers in the first fight. It wasn’t clear to me how to cure the poison?
>Perhaps the devil saves you from an intro fight before you make your pact?
Indeed, there will be a new intro in the next release.
>I hope this isn’t a one time tutorial thing and is actually introducing me to a mechanic that is used throughout the game.
You are correct.
>It wasn’t clear to me how to cure the poison?
Antidote is an unlockable recipe. But in general, the best tactic is not to get poisoned, or at least not let it stack too high.
Vipers aren't actively aggressive, but I know a lot of people have issues with them.
So Idk how to "kindle" the flame under the cauldron, how do I do that? I tried wielding a torch and interacting with it but it still doesn't work, am I missing something here?
That's just flavour text. So long as you have all the necessary components and the recipe, you just click whatever you want to craft, choose the amount and hold the button to confirm.
Oh, ok, I also have another question, I'm stuck on the "Ricardo's Friends" because there's no clue or instructions on how I actually do it. Can you add like a clue or instruction on where to start? It's really confusing and I would l love some help. Thank you and great game as well.
You'll just unlock the recipes for the potions naturally as you keep exploring the areas.
You should probably have some of them unlocked already.
Lots of good ideas here, and lovely presentation, but the terrible mouse handling made it so painful to play I don't think I can bear to do it again. Making this mouse-compatible would make it open to a much wider audience.
(basics like: dont make the player tap z, click 4 times because your mouse handler is guessing the wrong thing to do, then click z a million more times, for stuff that is directly achievable by the user clicking on things. You even have the popup context-sensitive menus already, so there shouldn't be any need for the 'forced keyboard' stuff)
Thank you, I'll see what I can do to make it more convenient.
Hello, so i have this problem whenever I try to mount the horses at the stable, meaning i haven't even left the first area. What happens is the screen freezes black with the game still running I can hear music and footsteps when I touch movement buttons.
am I the only one with this problem? any idea how to solve it?
No, you're not the only one. It seems to happen on certain old graphic cards. Go to the "troubleshoot" section in Options - System and switch the "Complex map colouring" option.
I can clearly see the resources used in the TOME. How is the project related to this?
It's not related. ToME does not own game-icons.net, which it what you're probably talking about.
Okay, thank you, projects are linked by resource source.
I've encountered a problem that some of the people here have experienced before. When I go to the stables at the beginning of the game and interact with a horse, the game freezes completely, leaving only the audio of the game in the background. I have a low-end PC. If anyone has any solutions please comment below.
It's a known issue that some people had before. Go to the "troubleshoot" section in Options - System and switch the "Complex map colouring" option.
It worked! Thank you very much.
Very addictive game. But also very frustrating. The amount of times I’ve died due to there being way too many freaking snakes is ridiculous
I can't say how much I can relate to that.
I had another run, and I have unlocked most of the recipes before accidentally dying.
The run lasted 1 year and 2 months ingame, and I have solved all of the areas except the tier 2 woods. I have also gathered a lot of materials, and here are some things I noticed:
Something dead is surely overabundant, I have about 3000 of them when I died.
Something epiphemeral is scarce until late game, and then you get many bats to kill. I think this is by design.
Something umbral is rather scarce, and this severely limits the use of frost potions. Potion of rust is almost taking all of my umbral essence, and thus frost potion becomes almost useless.
I haven't figured out how to use potion of chaos. I just can't think of a situation that I need the effect of a random potion, and this potion is not cheap enough for me to try in large amounts to get the desired potion effect. Perhaps it's used to use the effects of locked recipes?
I've unlocked homeward crystal, rift potion and potion of frozen time. In theory, these 3 items could save from any danger, but I wasn't careful with my HP and got killed by a trap.
Collecting items indeed becomes tedious late game. I think it does need some work, either auto collection of some sort, or resource compression, and ideally both.
I have some new thoughts about auto collection: autocollect with queued action. With a given amount of movement steps, the game marks all items reachable in X steps and in sight. Then the character moves to each item and collect them.
I'm going to wait for the next update, and play again when I get to disable permadeath.
Thank you for your very detailed feedback. I'll take it into account.
>I haven't figured out how to use potion of chaos.
No one had. It's just for fun. But accessing the locked recipes is one way it can be useful.
I've noticed another problem: with the toggle resource display option, it's difficult to tell whether you had it toggled on or off, when there is no resource in sight. This could cause confusion when the player enters a new area, when there is resource but he turned it off.
I think there should be a small icon that shows whether the resource display is turned on. This icon should have a tooltip to let the player know what it does.
I have some more thoughts about this game.
1.Large amounts of low value items repetitive to collect
More condensed items are a good solution, but I also like the auto collection. Perhaps we can have some sort of telekinesis potion, that auto collects most simple items within 2 tiles and within sight, and lasts for a duration. It might not work on the core loot of the zones, as this could break balance.
With permadeath players are expected to experience the "refine forest for charcoal" stage quite many times, and this stage needs lots of collection. So this potion should become avaliable shortly after this stage, maybe this recipe could be included in forest zone loot list.
2.Gardening?
This is mainly about exploring locations, so gardening may not quite fit the theme. However, some items are mainly bought, and can't be reliably found in exploration. These items include food and beverage. Probably these items can be gardened. And gardening is also a good place to go for my 300+ something dead, which is overabundant from refining forests.
3.snakes
For gameplay, I'm okay with the snakes as they currently are. In forests they are very easy to deal with, also easy in farms, but much more difficult in swamps, because fire no longer works. Perhaps I need to freeze them instead. I have completed a few forests, so I'll talk about snakes in forests.
The special loot of forest area is near the path (bag in zone 2, mangrove in zone 3), and the only natural threat is snakes. In the lore, snakes recognize the path as human territory and try to avoid it. In the game however, I have to go off the path very often to avoid snakes. The path is still important because it leads to the loot, and the open space helps me avoid the snakes. I'm ok with the snake challenge but not the conflict between lore and gameplay.
This game is really nice, and burning down whole forests is fun, but the permadeath is frustruating.
Some other roguelike games I've played have options to disable permadeath, like noita(via mods), and wayward(via an option on creating a save). I think a causal mode option when creating a save would be nice, so I don't have to start from scratch if I got killed when exploring something new.
I've only reached the point of being able to mass craft amber potions from burning down forests, then I died in a dungeon. It seems that homeward potions (in the tech tree) could save me from such danger but I'm way too far from unlocking that.
Edit: I've also noticed another problem: As you play a save for longer, you will have more and more unlocked locations, but it seems there is no way to delete them after completing a location. This will cause the save file to inflate as the player progress. So we should be able to delete a location after completing it (or if it becomes no longer possible to complete).
I am indeed planning to add such an option in the next release.
Save file size only becomes noticeably large after extremely long games (and I mean, longer than you'd need to unlock everything). Even at that point, the only noticeable difference would be time it takes for the game to save or load. File size is a pretty far-fetched concern here.
The casual mode will be really nice, it'll surely improve my gameplay experience a lot. I just wonder how long will I need to wait for it.
For deleting completed locations, I originally thought that this would help reduce UI clutter with lots of locations. Now looking at it, it's somewhat unnecessary, as new locations are abundant, and therefore usually I will only ever visit a location once. I originally thought that I would need to come back to a previous location when I get better equipments, to search it more completely, and it turns out this isn't the case.
I can't give you the exact date, since I don't work full-time on the project and it's currently a very turbulent time for me. A few months, I think.
As for deleting areas from the map, I see how it could be useful in some cases, I'll consider that.
A few months? I certainly can't wait for the new version, so I guess I'll play the current version more and also die a few more times LOL
Another important thing is savefile compatibility. If you add the multiple life system, pls make it avaliable for old saves.
This game really has quite some potential to become a successful rougelike game, perhaps as successful as Noita.
This game isn't really a rougelike yet, it is lacking a core mechanism: limited resources. I could think of 2 limitations: Either limit days, or limit the amount of locations, or perhaps limit both.
Location limit: After exploring this number of locations, no more locations will be provided by the bartender, until you complete his quest, which provides another limited supply of locations.
Time limit: Starting from some point (like day 20), the bartender asks you to pay him rent every some time (in the form of "something that glitters", can have debt but must pay off the rent to get more locations) , and this amount increases gradually to make time a limited resource. This way rent acts like the hunger mechanism of other rougelikes, making time a limited resource. Completing quests for him will reduce this amount by some, giving you more time to get resources.
Perhaps past some point, this amount no longer grows, or is even completely removed, as the bartender wants you to focus on creating powerful potions for him. This could be simply implemented by adding a constant supply of quests, as long as you complete enough quests, you no longer have to pay rent, and the quests are relatively easy for late game.
If this game is to be converted to a rougelike this way, then it's important to add QoL improvements, like collection convenience.
And of course also a casual mode without rent and permadeath, perhaps customizable when creating a save.
In Noita, the main limiting resource is HP. Methods of regaining lost hp is extremely limited, until you get extremely powerful spells to break out of the main dungeon, and then the player can grind as much resource as he want, allowing a save to be persistent, until the player makes a mistake and dies.
Noita doesn't have ingame option to remove permadeath, instead it's provided by mods. Mods are a good thing to have, many successful games have either a dedicated modding platform, or steam workshop for mods. The only problem is the coding difficulty, but it's rewarding enough to pay off its cost.