Would have loved upgrades like having 1 or two storable potions, or more than two cauldrons, or maybe health upgrades for pots/herbs? but other than that, brilliant job and love the feel, especially the ending!
Reviews for "Final Fharmacy I"
Really fun game, the simple style and actually quite addictive gameplay was really nice, enjoyed playing it lots! Thou would be really fun to see more variety with plants or something of sort, unlocking and perhaps buying stuff depending on stars you have ect. But these are just suggestions. Thank you for a nicely spent time!
Tips: It's faster to just feed herbs than make a heal pot if the customer doesn't need 50+ HP. Making a heal pot, dragging ingredients, waiting for both green dust and the actual potion to make, is probably as fast as dragging 5 herbs to the other side of the screen to be honest.
Since the cauldron can hold 1 finished potion, you should pre-prep a Styptic/Antidote/Ice Water depending on what the newspaper mentions. That way you can quickly stop the DoT, thus reducing the amount of healing the customer need.
If you're aiming to get perfect 3 stars each level, on levels with additional customer queues, complete both customer requests and heal them nearly to full with herbs. Then pre-prep a DoT cure potion, the extract and dust for a different pot, and then use a herb to top off the customer who came in line first (the one whose gold star indicator starts blinking first). Wait for a new customer to approach (attempt to complete their request quickly if possible) and then feed a herb to the other one. This method prevents you from being overwhelmed, especially in Winter.
For Winter, I find that it's best to pre-prep: Antidote/Ice Water, Red Extract, and Yellow Dust. Red Extract is there so you can quickly make Styptic and Yellow Dust is set up for Anti Paralysis. Of course, RNG might screw you by making you deal with ailments you haven't pre-prepped for but hey, you can just let the customer die if you can't make the new potions in time and restart until you get a favorable combination.
To the creator of this game: Winter is the bane of my existence. Two customers at once with double Dot (or Paralysis+ DoT) is pretty much a death sentence. Even if you prevent both from dying, your perfect score is pretty much ruined since you need two potions to cure them and then a heal pot to quickly heal them because herbs are too slow to undo that heavy DoT damage in time. Yeah, no way you can do before losing a gold star unless you were lucky enough to have pre-prepped the necessary combo.
Winter 2 and 3 took several attempts but were doable. But Winter 4... have you play tested getting perfect on this level? Cause I've been at it for hours and still can't do it. I pre-prep and use my queue strategy but I'm still at the mercy of the RNG to not send 3 DoT customers at me which is pretty much an unsalvageable situation like getting two double DoT customers in the prior levels.
To do Winter 4 perfectly requires you to basically waste no movement and make no mistakes. You accidentally drop healing herb, ingredient, or potion from clicking too soon or overextending? You can't recover from that. You don't manage the queues properly and thus have no in-between time to prep potions for the next wave of DoT customers? Perfect score ruined. You toss a potion to make something else the queued customer needs but then the next one approaching wanted what you just dumped? You get the idea. Another thing that screws over queue strategy is if you misjudge the healing bar and heal a customer too soon. So having numerical value indicator x/100 HP would be much better for precise use of herbs.
The true final level was pretty interesting. If you ever make a sequel game, you should probably have each season end with a different encounter. Since the timed levels don't really change things up.
Ending D: Achieved if anyone dies in the final level
Ending C: Pre-prep Ice Waters and keep making them to keep the adventurers alive
Ending B: Pre-prep Antivenom and Styptic. Let the adventurers die (Which I found an interesting subversion of a typical fantasy story that glorifies the slaying of monsters)
Ending A: Hardest to obtain. You need to keep everyone alive. Pre-prep Antivenom and Styptic, then create two Ice Water and Ice Extract. Your goal is to keep feeding the SPOILER herbs until its at full health, which is an uphill battle considering you also need to keep creating Ice Waters to prevent the adventurers from dying. Like geez, that's a lot of health you need to restore with adventurers also lowering it as you raise it. Like I get it's supposed to be a hard-earned victory but that's a bit excessive.
Oh, I read that you were inspired by Cook, Serve, Delicious! I've played that game too and enjoyed it. Getting perfect days in that game not only earns you extra cash but is also a requirement to upgrade your restaurant to a 2-star establishment. The best aspect of the game is the sense that you upgrade your food, buy new cooking appliances, to help rake in even more profits. Plus the fun of customizing your menu as each food has different prep difficulty/cooking speed, boosters and detractors, and customers become tired of non-staple foods if you keep it on the menu three days in a row.
If you ever make a sequel, making upgrades purchaseable with the stars you've earned would be great. Though I'm not sure how that would work for a linear game like this considering something like getting an extra cauldron was necessary to even complete the levels at all. So unlike Cook, Serve, Delicious, you don't have a choice in what you want to buy. You'd have to make it a profit earning game like Recettear or the Atelier series.
Adding named NPCs with unique sprites would be a good idea too, if only to add more exposition to the game besides the newspaper. The NPCs could talk about their day, their feelings on current events, etc. Maybe you could even build a friendship with them?
This is really just me finding the character sprite for the cat boy cute ( I think he's a cat boy since he clearly has ears and a tail when he's wounded/dead) and wanting to talk to him. Is he based on a FF class/race?
FutureCopLGF responds:
Thank you very much for the in-depth and detailed feedback! Tons of great comments in here, lots of which I agree on: I definitely will take a lot of this to heart if I go onto make Final Fharmacy II. I think I rushed this game a bit too much to try and follow the 'game jam' fads nowadays, when I should've given it more time and another pass to add all the things I wanted. Still, you live and you learn, and there can always be a sequel!
Few in-depth responses:
Haha, difficulty was definitely something tricky to balance. I love me a hard game, and I tried to make it fair by playing it multiple times with random ingredients when I balanced it for difficulty, so I wouldn't have the luxury of playing it by knowing the recipes beforehand. However, I agree that I have heard a lot of people having trouble with Winter, and I agree that if you get hit with an unlucky combo of ailments on Winter it can be really annoying (I thought I crushed the combo from being able to happen but the code must've had a loophole somewhere). Definitely will think longer and harder about difficulty in future.
Ending A is indeed like you say: gotta save everyone on screen (gotta admit, I had it even more difficult to do initially since I gave the villagers the ability to keep poisoning and bleeding the dragon, glad I took that out). I did try to make every ending interesting in their own way, and I tried not to guilt trip or judge, so it's not like A is the 'best' ending. In fact, I think my favorite endings were when you favor one side over another: I had the most fun writing them.
Yeah, the boss fight was something I probably should've done for each ending of the season instead of the time trial: it was a bit of a last-minute addition so its kind of held together with chewing gum and duct tape, haha. Next game I think I would have a much bigger focus on that type of combat.
I definitely wanted to do things like add gardening before opening the pharmacy to prep ingredients based on the news, and add currency so you can purchase upgrades to your shop, and more NPC relations and dialogue and all sorts of stuff to increase the complexity, but I wanted to avoid overdoing it for my first game in Unity (I have a huge problem with feature creep), so I decided to just keep myself laser-focused on a simple linear experience. Definitely would consider putting in those more strategic management elements and progession like that stuff in future installments though.
Haha, the sprites in general are based on FF1 NES sprites (the game screen itself was built to resemble the FF1 combat screen), with the cat boy being most resembling the classic Fighter/Warrior sprite.
The game is good, but has a huge problem with unlocking medals:
1. I beat all the spring with all stars - no medals unlock;
2. I reloaded the game for no result.
3. Then I tried to beat all the spring again, but that did not do anything either.
4. Being "a bit" angry already I played the whole spring in incognito mode of the browser and at least it gave me the medal for beating that season...
It does not encourage to play the game further...
It is annoying and should be fixed using a feature that re-sends the medals.
FutureCopLGF responds:
Cheers for the feedback; sorry again for the issues with the medals, would've loved to fix it but unfortunately it would've had the downside of wiping save files. I will definitely implement the medals and saves better in future!
I love the game, and the pacing is really great. It's stressful in all the right ways - still trying to get the 3-star medal. The winter medal doesn't unlock for me, no matter how many times I replay the whole winter, but it's fine. Great endings, and I had a lot of fun.