The Little Alchemist

Enjoyed the story, the battling I mashed through and did not need to dodge anything. The dark room puzzle is not quite right lol. I think Z is a weird interact key. I think at least there should be a button above your head when you can interact with something. The battle backgrounds were trippy and cool. Some of the sprites felt rushed... hmm Good job overall but a lot of work to do!

I like the idea for the combats.
But I think the UX could be better, I spent a lot of time looking at my keyboard and, as I'm european, the letters are in a different order. If the four elements were in a horizontal line it would be easier.

And I don't understand why I have to select an enemy when there is only one. Or why I have to click again to attack when I have all the elements.

And I don't understand why sometime in the world I am teleported back. Sometime it feels random and sometime it's always at the same place. I guess it's the bright path thing when it's always the same but I got teleported to an other screen and I don't understand why.

I got some Undertale vibes, especially from the overworld (might be the bright path that resembles similar puzzle from UT) and also the battle backgrounds really make me think of Earthbound (even if I haven't actually played it).

Balancing between the dodging and inputting the correct elements might be good as a general concept, but I feel the execution here doesn't quite work? Might have something to do with enemy attacks being kinda wobbly and hard to tell the direction of to the point I couldn't quite react in time, and quickly making elemental attacks was effective enough I didn't really need to dodge in the first place. Undertale's system of having attack/action sections and dodging sections works better in that the player can focus on one thing at a time.

Other than that, the game was pretty short and sweet. The overall story reminded me of Homunculipse, if you played the game you may notice why. Nicely done, overall. ^^

absolutely loved the enemy designs.

liked the idea of having to juggle optimal attacking with dodging enemy attacks.

Tho I did notice a lack of penalty for attacking poorly, and with no cool down.

so I began button mashing QWER + Left/Right Mouse and hilariously just melted every encounter.

But I'm sure you're working on it. :)

Finally, the gamer girl bathwater is mine.
+ Very interactive combat that reeks of earthbound

+ Enemy attacks have much smoother animations than you'd expect
+ Fun overall tone
- Juggling the elements to attack is a bit awkward. I never found myself memorizing which button was what.
- Having to re-target enemies for each attack is arduous. Especially with the encounter rate being kinda high.
- That maze puzzle is the devil and those hitboxes are his grand design.

I like the direction and the art design - i agree it's clearly Undertale inspired :)
One thing: I got beaten by the one-eyed-dog and on the "try again?" scene I could not click on the yes or no button, and z also did not work.

Nevertheless, nice submission! Congrats!

I can very much see the Earthbound/Undertale inspirations here, from the battle backgrounds to the sprites and UI, to the general weird/unsettling feel of the game at times, especially with the excellent sfx and music. Honestly, I had a lot of fun with it, even with how short it was!

One thing I will say is that the combat system, while super interesting, can be a little bit frustrating as well. I did find out you could just spam through encounters with mouse and keys, but I didn't use that since I wanted to experience the game as intended.

The frustrating part for me really comes down to the fact that, if you get the first element wrong in the sequence of the attack, you still need to go through the effort of doing the remaining elements (right or wrong), then attacking just so you can miss. I think if the attack cancelled immediately upon getting something wrong, it would be a lot smoother.

It also wasn't clear at some points what could and could not be interacted with. I got stuck for a while since I didn't realize I could interact with the key block. 

Overall, amazing idea for a game, which could use a little polish to truly take it to the top. Loved the ending. Found it very charming.

I like the combat system and I think this is a cool idea. I agree with some of the other comments here about the 2x2 layout of the QWER attacks and the room to the left. I had no idea what was causing the teleportation and decided to stop playing. I knew there was a puzzle, but I didn't know what it was. I think an animation of falling through the floor would have given me an indication of the puzzle type.

Cool battle system , not sure got stuck going left, feel the battle frequency is a bit too high, but overall feels like an interesting game that has a lot of charm

i loved the game! When the text comes on screen to explain how combat works, i feel i had to re-read it a few times because it would go up a line as it added more words. Not sure if you want to try different way of showing text, maybe a line at a time or the whole thing? It also wasn't clear to me to hit z to continue the text. The moving background behind the enemies, you may want to slow down or make a certain solid pattern, it does hurt the eyes and might cause issues to some players. It's also unclear when you should dodge and what direction? i was just spamming a/d not knowing if i was actually going to dodge an attack. also i had to afk but couldn't pause with enter after i got the key, and i lost xD but i had fun! cant wait to see wait you have planned!

I think the combat mechanics are actually really cool and I was a big fan, it took me a second to figure it out but from there it was actually quite intuitive and I could easily recognise which symbol matched which key on the keyboard. I think T got stuck at one point as I kept being teleported back, but I would have definitely liked to see more of the game!

This was awesome! I kept teleporting in the room with the key and I'm not sure why, maybe I followed the path wrong or something.

Apart from that, I really love the enemy designs and the twist at the end!! I had a lot of fun playing this, especially with such a unique battle mechanic. Feels like I'm playing a rhythm game and Punch-Out at the same time. :P

(take this as a reminder to hydrate)

I like the combat, although I feel like the getting hit isn't really punishing and I can go through spamming the attacks.

Also, I don't know if this is intended but I keep on getting teleported from the room with the crystal thingy back to the room on the right and it's very annoying which made me stop playing.