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[vivaladav]

I took a quick break from fixing bugs and adding stuff to the BattleJuice Alchemist open alpha and had a little play session with Markus. He is not only a very good friend of mine but also has a German Let's Play channel focusing on strategy games, which you can check out here.

Finally I had time to watch your video and I admire your ability to constantly bringing new guests to your channel, well done!

It was also nice to see more of your game. I hope the playtesting on Steam is going well.

[Alain]

Finally I had time to watch your video and I admire your ability to constantly bringing new guests to your channel, well done!

It was also nice to see more of your game. I hope the playtesting on Steam is going well.

Thanks for watching! The playtest is doing fine, I can see that quite some people have been playing. If I could wish for something, it would be that they would provide more feedback

[Alain]

The time has come for some more BattleJuice Alchemist epicness: "Let's Playtest 2 - Electric Boogaloo" with Egonson. We continue the quest of saving Caribou Creek, find out more about why it is troubled by evil spirits and we dive into the depths of ritual magic.

I hope you have a great weekend and a bit of fun watching us play and ramble

[Ramos]

I just saw the video.

You have a lot of features and the game environment got its own solid personality.

This being said I do have a minor suggestion regarding the learning curve, when the player searches through inventory for the first time for the quest object, maybe add an animated arrow for that specific object in inventory, hold his hand until he learns.
Here is a good practice, basically on all parts of the video where you had to give hints to the player, add those hints in the game.

[Alain]

Here is a good practice, basically on all parts of the video where you had to give hints to the player, add those hints in the game.

Thanks for the hint, I really might go through the video again and see where Markus got stuck and think about how to fix that.

I worked that way in the past when looking over people's (digital) shoulder when they played for the first time. I recently added exclamation marks for quest relevant items in the inventory. Maybe I could add a "NEW" icon for those items that have not been hovered in the inventory. I want to be careful though because as you know my UI and game in general is visually quite loud already.


Just a very brief side note: The new patch for the BattleJuice Alchemist alpha has just gone live. For those of you who are playing or think about starting, you can find out all about what has changed and what is about to come in the Steam announcement.



A tiny spoiler: the long missing loot drop from breakable objects is one of the new features

[logophil]

Hey just watched the video, great to finally see some gameplay. It's probably just watching as a fellow developer, but I was particularly impressed by the UI, it's clear a lot of thought has gone into it, and I love the icons and graphical style generally, seems really polished!

[Alain]

Hey just watched the video, great to finally see some gameplay. It's probably just watching as a fellow developer, but I was particularly impressed by the UI, it's clear a lot of thought has gone into it, and I love the icons and graphical style generally, seems really polished!

Thank you! The UI is mainly inspired by Diablo 2. Sometimes I look at my UI and think it is too loud and not focussed, so it is all the greater to hear that you think it looks polished.

[vivaladav]

The time has come for some more BattleJuice Alchemist epicness: "Let's Playtest 2 - Electric Boogaloo"...

Not sure if you added more content to the game or this video is showing more of it, but nice one Alain!
I especially like the fact you can die while killing an enemy, it adds a bit of extra drama and suspense to every fight.

Any reason why auto-pickup is not enabled by default?
I am pretty sure most gamers would prefer that to pushing a key multiple times.

[oahda]

Another good video! The "wihu" thing made me wonder if you've given any thought as to how you'd deal with localisation if you're basing riddles on English words. Would you just change the spells?

[Alain]

Not sure if you added more content to the game or this video is showing more of it, but nice one Alain!
I especially like the fact you can die while killing an enemy, it adds a bit of extra drama and suspense to every fight.

Being killed while your (potentially lethal) flask is still flying towards your enemy is something that happened to me early on by accident. I also liked it, so I kept it

Any reason why auto-pickup is not enabled by default?
I am pretty sure most gamers would prefer that to pushing a key multiple times.

I originally had auto-pickup enabled by default but players tended to miss items they had picked up and got confused. That's why I decided to have it turned off by default. But I will keep it in the back of my head to experiment with auto-pickup being turned on by default, because the tutorial might be overhauled at some point.

Another good video! The "wihu" thing made me wonder if you've given any thought as to how you'd deal with localisation if you're basing riddles on English words. Would you just change the spells?

It is funny that you mention it, because I have thought about this issue recently as well. I was leaning towards having the ritual being called "Wild Hunt" in any language, so the mantra WIHU could stay the same. But this would still mean I would have to re-design the riddles where the solution is woven into the text. The more elegant way would be to make the mantras more abstract, not connected to the ritual's name and rely on riddles that work without having wordplay involved. I guess I have to do more thinking on the issue and I am happy about any suggestions

[RealScaniX]

I'm still catching up on projects. ^^
 
I have seen (parts of ) the gameplay video and the game is amazing. It's great to see something complex coming to life with all those systems in it. Your world is very interesting and has a pretty distinct style to it, I think.
 
I don't know if this would be a way to solve the language problem, but in my game I have text riddles. I translate the riddles, hints and solution. So, the code wheel combination would be "DERP" in English and "DUMM" in German and all the hints texts are changed as well. But I like the idea of language independent symbols.

[Alain]

I don't know if this would be a way to solve the language problem, but in my game I have text riddles. I translate the riddles, hints and solution. So, the code wheel combination would be "DERP" in English and "DUMM" in German and all the hints texts are changed as well. But I like the idea of language independent symbols.

It is interesting that you have comparable riddles in Mournway Mansion! The way you handle languages in riddles is most likely be the best way to go. I think I might try to make riddles language independent as often as possible and I really should implement a second language as soon as possible.

[Alain]

We did it! Here is the final episode of Let's Playtest BattleJuice Alchemist:





I hope you had a little bit of fun watching. Doing this "simple" video series with Markus helped me to free up quite some time so I could work on a lot of behind the scenes and business stuff. The last few days I was able to lay my hands on the game itself again more, which feels really good.

[Alain]

BATTLEJUICE ALCHEMIST DEVLOG:

Office Hero - Gamedev Edition

After going the lazy route of making a couple of Let's Play(test) videos, I am back with a regular DevLog. And what a sweet comeback it is: In this video I talk a bit about boring behind the scenes stuff from the office. If that is not your cup of tea, you can skip ahead for juicy news about the game itself. There is a little recap of what has changed over the course of the last weeks, which I only talked about in update posts, but not a DevLog. In the video you also get a sneak peek of a new feature that I have been working on recently. If you have 190 seconds to spare, stay awhile and listen.

I hope you are all well and have a nice weekend!


Alain

click GIF to watch on YouTube ↑ (3:10 min)

[Ramos]

Great video!

In case you do not find a publisher that meets your requirements, have you also considered Kickstarter?

[Alain]

In case you do not find a publisher that meets your requirements, have you also considered Kickstarter?

That's a good question. In case there is no publishing deal, I might consider Kickstarter, but I guess it would mainly serve the purpose to gain exposure. I doubt that I could raise an amount that would make the difference to make BattleJuice Alchemist a project with a budget instead of no-budget.

[bram_dingelstad]

It's been a while since I checked the thread out. Super hyped about your progress, I immediately enrolled into the playtesting thing on Steam! I'll let ya know when I played it!

[Alain]

It's been a while since I checked the thread out. Super hyped about your progress, I immediately enrolled into the playtesting thing on Steam! I'll let ya know when I played it!

That's cool, thank you! Looking forward to hear what you think

[Ramos]

In case you do not find a publisher that meets your requirements, have you also considered Kickstarter?

That's a good question. In case there is no publishing deal, I might consider Kickstarter, but I guess it would mainly serve the purpose to gain exposure. I doubt that I could raise an amount that would make the difference to make BattleJuice Alchemist a project with a budget instead of no-budget.

True, I was mostly asking for a worst-case scenario in case you don't find any investor suitable deals with an end target of the game getting finished.

[Andersk]

I'm really enjoying seeing this project. I also enjoy the devlogs that you've posted to Youtube! (I subscribed!) I think you have an amazing project! I look forward to seeing a lot more!