Review #1 - 2021

https://www.potioncraft.com/

This is a delightfully comfortable game that I always fall back on when I tire of the other games I'm playing. Once you burn through the tutorials, it becomes an easy game to pick up and play, as you explore your map by mixing ingredients gathered from your garden (or purchased from merchants), in order to discover new potions to brew and gain XP. What's the goal? There are many to achieve, but the main premise, is that you are an alchemist who opens a potion shop, helping patrons with their everyday problems, from noble, to perhaps even evil. They ask for a specific potion, and it's your job to make it. Don't have the potion they are looking for? Then it's time to get back to the drawing board, and explore your map in order to find new potions. It's a routine that has you playing through in game "days", as you wake up, gather your ingredients, and open your shop. It's a lovely game, with beautiful Celtic inspired music and artwork to immerse you into its enchanting world of potion crafting. $15 well spent!

What you need to master it:
☐ Collectibles
☐ Ability
☐ Play online
☒ Complete the main story

I loved the mechanics to make the potions in the map with the ingredients, but it is repetitive.

Advices:

- You don't need to do the potions exaclty how the recipe says, while it has the same effects that's all right.
- If you haggle you'll obtain lower quantity of Popularity Points. Use this options always with the merchants in the most difficult option that you have.
- Buy all the ingredients with the normal price or on sale from merchants, always buy rocks.
- There are exquisite clients that will ask for potions with specifics things, I recommend sell them potions when they want an extra effect in the potions, use the options 'continue brewing from here' and add the closest effect, usually they'll be happy. If they ask for something so specific end the dialog and sell to the next client.
- If you didn't get the plants in your garden don't worry, they will be there on the next day. Collect them is important in the earlygame, at some point of the game you won't need them.

The gameplay is very simple - every morning some grass-ants grow in our secret garden, and visitors come to our shop with different needs and requests. Our task is to listen to everyone, figure out how to help their troubles and mix such a concoction by rubbing the necessary herbs in a mortar. It is advisable not to confuse a love potion with a sleep potion, although sometimes you really want to. For this simple trade we get a little gold, with it we buy improvements to the shop, more and more fancy herbs and mushrooms from the herbalist or mushroom picker, all this stuff goes further into potions, for which we get more and more gold and so on until we get tired of it.

Pretty torn on this one. I love its visual design, and how inventive and tactile the potion crafting feels. The overwhelming variety of ingredients and the traversal they allow on the alchemy map are wonderful, as are their cleverly color-coded designs. I enjoyed how the clients and the flavor of their demands changes depending on who you refuse service to (serve too many scoundrels and suddenly you’re only getting bandits and necromancers in the door). I don’t love the repetitive grind of the retail simulation, or the way it gates progression behind waiting on certain merchants to show up or certain ingredients to regrow in the garden. I also hated the way the alchemy formulas for the Salts and Stones depended on the same Stone from the previous stage, since I pretty much never wanted to make any of them a second time (it’s novel the first time, but tedious busywork after that).

Based on the dev’s roadmap, it seems like some of these complaints might be alleviated in the future; maybe I’ll pick it up again then, but for now I’m satisfied having created everything but the Philosopher’s Stone and a couple of higher level Salts.

o melhor ponto do jogo é a arte. achei bem bonita mesmo.
já a ideia de gameplay em si é maneira no início, mas vai ficando cansativa conforme o jogo progride e você tem que fazer cada vez mais malabarismos pra fazer o tubo chegar lá no cu do mapa e ainda se frustrar quando você esbarra nas caveiras e acaba quebrando o bagulho e perdendo uma caralhada de ingredientes.
demorei um bocado pra descobrir que eu já podia usar os portais desde o início (e só descobri porque estava conversando com uma amiga sobre o jogo), mas não sei se foi bobeira minha ou se faltou instrução do jogo em relação a essa mecânica. de qualquer forma, senti que eles ajudam bem pouco.
nem cheguei na parte em que você usa outras bases além da água mas me parece ser a exata mesma dinâmica só que com outro mapa. se for isso mesmo, acho que isso bate o martelo na questão da repetitividade.
eu ia comentar a parte da máquina com o nigredo, albedo etc mas só de pensar me deu preguiça

resumindo, jogo parece interessante no início mas se revela um tanto repetitivo.

Potion Craft is a enjoyable shop management game with a daily schedule of gathering potion ingredients and crafting solutions to the town's issues. Whether morally good or bad, people come to you for all forms of potions from healing and mana, to explosive and protective. While there is no major story, you get to learn about the people that enter your shop and build a reputation as the best alchemist in the town while exploring various maps using the gathered ingredients you harvest or purchase to make new potions.

The game controls better on PC with a mouse, than the joystick on controller. I had multiple issues where my selection of what I was currently holding would move elsewhere on the screen and adjust settings of my current actions which became frustrating overtime.

The game is also super challenging towards the later portion of the game where patrons ask for extremely specific potions. While selling you also get to make new salts and crystals to make fine adjustments to your options which came be destroyed with the slightest movement across the map which erases minutes of progress.

It's a fun game and worth checking out but the achievements can be very difficult without a guide.

played aprox. 8 hours? i love the concept but feel it asks for a little too much time commitment to play through completely. i only made the first crystal out of the machine, but once i saw that second recipe i knew i wasnt up for it. getting a level 3 brew requires some really precise planning as if you overshoot your movement, its done and will almost always require another ingredient. i think the haggling minigame is perfect as it takes exactly as long as it should. the cursor speed is a nice cruise and the refresh when you hit just feels so nice. but the whole game revolves around this singular mechanic of moving around the map, using these items to follow wacky paths. the problem comes in when it wants you to mortar and pestle every fucking plant to extract the most distance. i wish there was more "free" ways to move around as watering it down only gets you so far.

don't get me wrong, im harping on it alot but i do genuinely like what this game is doing. i wish there was a more relaxed version where i didnt have to economize each and decision i have to make.

You are the new alchemist in the village. You're cleaning up the shop, building reputation, and creating new potions.

Visuals

Potion Craft is designed to look like it's drawn on aged parchment. I actually really like this simple look. There are five locations, which are just more hand-drawn single screen areas. The garden actually looks really nice and cozy. Your customers and the traveling merchants are nicely drawn as well, although there isn't too much variety among them.

Sound Effects + Music

Potion Craft has exactly one background track. It's the typical chill medieval music. It's fine, but repetitive.

Gameplay + Controls

Potion Craft is an alchemy simulation which uses simple screens for different parts of the process. The main screen is where you brew your potions. Clicking to the left is the shop where you'll sell to customers and interact with merchants. The right-most screen is the garden, where you'll harvest ingredients. The attic holds your bedroom where you sleep to save the day. Finally, the basement has more alchemy equipment that first must be repaired.

You're free to move between all of the screens at any time depending on what you need to get done. Harvesting ingredients is a daily chore, so just do that first thing when you start the day. Most of your time will be spent on the central screen brewing potions. Customers will come in with problems that require a specific potion, so you can either talk to them, then make it as there is no time limit, or you can make a bunch of potions ahead of time and sell those.

You do have to discover recipes on your own though. There's a map that shows where your ingredients will go, and each ingredient has its own direction and length. The goal is to land on an effect, as your potions do nothing if they have no effects. For instance, you'll need to use ingredients that make a path toward the heart symbol if you want a healing potion. It's a simple mechanic, but it's not always easy to get the right ingredients to line up.

There are tasks to complete in order to level up. You'll find those in your alchemists journal. It has ten chapters, and you can check off items in future chapters if you happen to complete them early. The tasks will earn you experience, as will hitting certain points on your map, which increases your alchemy level. This will also earn you points you can spend on character upgrades, like more experience points on the map or better merchant prices.

Potion Craft is surprisingly involved. You have to harvest or purchase ingredients, place ingredients in the mortal and grind them down, place them into the cauldron, stir the potion, press the billows to bring it to a boil, and then finish it off before bringing it to the customers. You can even customize the bottles and give your brew a name. It's not tedious though. I found it quite relaxing and comforting once I got into a rhythm.

I did find that making money was quite hard. It doesn't seem like anyone wants to pay much for the potions, and haggling doesn't really help much. Haggling does work quite well on merchants, but that just means I was spending more on ingredients and not getting much in return. It's a slow build, but that was probably the intention. I just wish the base prices were more in line with the cost of ingredients (even though you can get a lot for free from your garden).

Replayability

While I enjoyed my time with Potion Craft, it's not a game I'd consider replaying. The gameplay is extremely repetitive and linear, and the sense of discovery would be gone after finishing it the first time. It's definitely a game that I could continue playing in short bursts though.

Overall

While I usually prefer games with a story, I really enjoyed the meditative gameplay of Potion Craft. There was something relaxing about mixing ingredients, discovering new effects, and creating new combinations. This is a game you can definitely play frequently for small increments and still have fun.