I'll fully admit I was predisposed to not enjoy this, I'm not particularly great at spatial reasoning puzzles. The real problem, though, is the tedium.
You're at the mercy of too many things outside your control when you want to make any kind of progress. That would be fine if it led to interesting choices. But here it's a case of "I need x herb to make y potion, and the lady who sells it hasn't shown up for three days. Guess I'll continue autofilling the same orders again and again until she shows up".
For the kind of person who sort of just needs a thing to do with their hands while listening to a podcast or whatever this seems ideal, less so if you want to engage with the game in front of you.
You're at the mercy of too many things outside your control when you want to make any kind of progress. That would be fine if it led to interesting choices. But here it's a case of "I need x herb to make y potion, and the lady who sells it hasn't shown up for three days. Guess I'll continue autofilling the same orders again and again until she shows up".
For the kind of person who sort of just needs a thing to do with their hands while listening to a podcast or whatever this seems ideal, less so if you want to engage with the game in front of you.
Not bad aunque al final se hace repetitivo
É um jogo divertido no começo, mas depois de um tempo começou a ficar enjoativo.
Acho que podia ter mais coisas pra fazer num geral, acabou ficando repetitivo demais.
Gostei bastante do estilo visual do jogo e dos efeitos sonoros, inclusive foi isso que me chamou atenção pra jogar, mas faltou explorar mais conteúdo diferente pra me prender.
Acho que podia ter mais coisas pra fazer num geral, acabou ficando repetitivo demais.
Gostei bastante do estilo visual do jogo e dos efeitos sonoros, inclusive foi isso que me chamou atenção pra jogar, mas faltou explorar mais conteúdo diferente pra me prender.
good but needs more content
Needs more patches to be enjoyable again for me
se vuelve muy repetitivo y aburrido. algo falto
Man: "I received this letter, but I've lost my letter opener."
crush stir crush stir bubble
Potion Seller: "Here's your strong explosive potion, sir"
crush stir crush stir bubble
Potion Seller: "Here's your strong explosive potion, sir"
played while it was on game pass and enjoyed it when it was on there, not enough to repurchase it however, but fun none the less
Misturei Libido 3 com Explosão 2 pra criar uma poção de orgia espontânea e ninguém quis mas tirando isso muito gostosinho de jogar
JOGO VICIANTE DA PORRA AMEI FAZER POÇÃO DE TESÃO
Pra o que se pretende a fazer, funciona muito bem, mas perto do final começa a ficar chato pela quantidade de crafting que precisa ser feito pra avançar. Mas me deixou viciado por um bom tempo.
Cute game but got boring early on.
Very entertaining but it's lacking objectives.
tres cute mais devient repetitif et absolument impossible a terminer a un moment donné cest bien dommage
Entretenido, pero el ritmo del juego termina siendo tedioso
nane limon simulator. allahım hayallerim gerçek oldu
very enjoyable and low energy game
+ An entertaining little game with a neat gameplay loop.
- I played it for like three days. A week after putting it down, I completely forgot it existed. Not exactly memorable.
- I played it for like three days. A week after putting it down, I completely forgot it existed. Not exactly memorable.
seems really fun at first but I spent so many hours looking for certain potion recipes and literally couldn't find them, and it gets a little boring after a while.
not a bad game but not something i'm super into rn, methinks
cute!! had lots of fun
there are some absolute highlights to this game. the sound design is great, the story is charming, the gameplay is relaxing. however, I got about halfway though the overall progression of the game and just got board. once the charm of using ingredients to move around the map wore off, the game felt boring and stale to me.
This review contains spoilers
I'm always excited to try more alchemy games- it's one of my favorite themes. This game was a special treat due to its incredibly unique core system. Ingredients corresponding to paths of movement on a map of potion effects- Wow that's fascinating!
The alchemy map traversal system shines due to the focus on a wide and goofy cast of ingredients. There's so many hilarious, strange, awkward, and interesting paths. Spending time with this game is an exercise in learning to appreciate these herbs,mushrooms and crystals. It's incredible how even the most wasteful loop-de-loops, spirals, and paths that turn back on themselves have their moments. I want to really empthasize how memorable the ingredients are here. It's quite satisfying both to become more familiar with them and discover new ones
The resource management aspect forces some occasional additionial creativity and decision making. Sometimes you'll be forced to adapt to what you have on hand, sometimes it's worth taking the scenic route to conserve scarce plants. What's even better at slightly shaking up your map decisions is the experience books. The experience trying to figure out how to fit in the ones that you judge to be conviently along the way synergizes with the odd arsenal of plants quite well.
I like how the threat of bleeding ingredients encourages creating efficient recipes. It's also neat how progress leads to some better ways to make things. I especially like the introduction of the oil map- it's definitely a severe case of missed potential that there's not more maps. If they wanted to get wild then an advanced mechanic that involves switching maps while a potion is in progress could be awesome. {Although i see why they wouldn't do this, it invites quite a few problems}
The mechanics of adding base to move towards the center for free and using the mortar and pestle to decide how much of an ingredient's path to manifest are quite solid. Although, as a physical action to perform the mortar and pestle SUCKS. I don't know if my thumb or joystick hates me more for playing this game. What a terrible repetitive motion. I can see how it fits the game, especially for constructing partial paths but at the very least they need a tool to automatically fully grind things.
Another way this map business works well is the effect strength mechanics. The level III effects encouraging precision is a good thing to ask of the player in this system.
I find myself thinking of all the pieces of this alchemy system and wow do they work together well. Now just a cool idea, but a good execution too!
The feature of being able to save recipes is essential . Without them the entire game would fall apart under the mind numbing repetition of potion brewing. The system works best when you're exploring the map or trying to make a specific potion for the first time. Even with recipes, depending on my mood it can feel like the game's just too tedious and wasting my time. I definitely can't play arbitrarily long sessions of this game the same way I can for so many other games
Having to remake substances again is only barely tolerable because of recipes- having to manually brew some of those potions again would actually be insane. Especially due to the baffling choice to make each tier of substances have 2 branches- each of which consume 1 of the previous tier crystal. It's quite annoying, and the salt in the wound is having to recraft alchemical salt if you run out. Auto Recipes for substances that recursively craft the potions and other substances you need is a feature that would improve this experience a lot. Better yet, just make the alchemist guy who occasionally visits sell substances you've made. It's a bit of a shame that recrafting substances feels like such a waste of my time, because on the first time they're quite a rewarding/suitably daunting task
I quite enjoy the discovery aspect of this game- uncovering fog on the map and being introduced to new stuff through progress. Unfortunately both of those things are finite- the alchemist path progression goals take you comfortably beyond content limits. Speaking of that, chapter X is actually insane. Reach 15 popularity level... are these devs out of their goddamn mind? I enjoyed my time with this game and was intending to see it through to the end, but I had to drop it after realizing that I'd be mindlessly grinding for hours to acheive that final sprint.
I'm curious what the dropoff rate on the alchemist's path completition is. Let's look at the steam achievement percentages
Complete Chapter I - 57%
Complete Chapter II- 42.6%
Complete Chapter III - 30.4%
Complete Chapter IV- 20.3%
Complete Chapter V- 13.1%
Complete Chapter VI- 9.3%
Complete Chapter VII- 6.9%
Complete Chapter VIII - 5.4%
Complete Chapter IX - 3.1%
Complete Chapter X- 1.1%
Let's put that into perspective. 20% of steam stardew valley players have completed the community center. 2.5% of steam Shenzhen I/O players have beat the game. 8.4% of steam terraria players have gotten the ankh shield, 7.7% the cellphone. 10% of steam celeste players have gotten all red strawberries. All of these are higher than the amount of people who have finished the last chapter of alchemist's path.
Part of the problem with the later alchemist path chapters is they present daunting goals after the game has already ran out of steam. It seems like the devs are currently developing more content and features for this game, perhaps the latter part of alchemist's path is speculative for when these additions are done.
I played this game on Xbox. This is very obviously a pc game that's been ported- i groaned when i opened up the game and saw that i was controlling a cursor with my joystick. The UX actually wasn't as bad as i was expecting it to be- the quick radial menu and toggle between free/snapping movement do a lot of heavy lifting. Still unideal though. The flaws are most noticable once you're in endgame with pages of herbs and recipes. {Also why do the recipe bookmarks overlap each other like that, it's stupid that buying more recipes will at some point straight up obscure ones you have}.
This game has a remarkably long startup time
The slow-burn player driven pacing is nice. I generally prefer stressful games, but this works well here. It fits the platonic idea of a patient alchemist studying their craft and servicing customers as a supplementary routine.
There are only 2 music tracks in this game. Lol lmao. Yeah i muted it pretty fast and just listened my own music. The art style is unique and they did a fine job , but it doesn't feel particularly significant to my experience. There's a pleasant variety of character designs. The dialog is serviceable but not particularly interesting. There's a slight degree of intrepretation for what potion people want, but it's mostly them fairly directly telling you. I think it's better that way, but it's hard to tell. Maybe there's some potential in this component, although i did have a few slightly frustrating moments trying to decipher the few unintuitive ones already shrug.
I like the presentation of haggling- the way the conversation topics are presented from the perspective of someone searching for suitable small talk is pretty good. Other than that, haggling leans more towards a boring mechanic than an exciting one.
I adore the excited expression characters make when you offer them a potion
It annoys me that they left UI in the game for shop upgrades since there are none you can obtain. I guess it's either vestigial or speculative. Either way it breaks a promise to the player
The alchemy map traversal system shines due to the focus on a wide and goofy cast of ingredients. There's so many hilarious, strange, awkward, and interesting paths. Spending time with this game is an exercise in learning to appreciate these herbs,mushrooms and crystals. It's incredible how even the most wasteful loop-de-loops, spirals, and paths that turn back on themselves have their moments. I want to really empthasize how memorable the ingredients are here. It's quite satisfying both to become more familiar with them and discover new ones
The resource management aspect forces some occasional additionial creativity and decision making. Sometimes you'll be forced to adapt to what you have on hand, sometimes it's worth taking the scenic route to conserve scarce plants. What's even better at slightly shaking up your map decisions is the experience books. The experience trying to figure out how to fit in the ones that you judge to be conviently along the way synergizes with the odd arsenal of plants quite well.
I like how the threat of bleeding ingredients encourages creating efficient recipes. It's also neat how progress leads to some better ways to make things. I especially like the introduction of the oil map- it's definitely a severe case of missed potential that there's not more maps. If they wanted to get wild then an advanced mechanic that involves switching maps while a potion is in progress could be awesome. {Although i see why they wouldn't do this, it invites quite a few problems}
The mechanics of adding base to move towards the center for free and using the mortar and pestle to decide how much of an ingredient's path to manifest are quite solid. Although, as a physical action to perform the mortar and pestle SUCKS. I don't know if my thumb or joystick hates me more for playing this game. What a terrible repetitive motion. I can see how it fits the game, especially for constructing partial paths but at the very least they need a tool to automatically fully grind things.
Another way this map business works well is the effect strength mechanics. The level III effects encouraging precision is a good thing to ask of the player in this system.
I find myself thinking of all the pieces of this alchemy system and wow do they work together well. Now just a cool idea, but a good execution too!
The feature of being able to save recipes is essential . Without them the entire game would fall apart under the mind numbing repetition of potion brewing. The system works best when you're exploring the map or trying to make a specific potion for the first time. Even with recipes, depending on my mood it can feel like the game's just too tedious and wasting my time. I definitely can't play arbitrarily long sessions of this game the same way I can for so many other games
Having to remake substances again is only barely tolerable because of recipes- having to manually brew some of those potions again would actually be insane. Especially due to the baffling choice to make each tier of substances have 2 branches- each of which consume 1 of the previous tier crystal. It's quite annoying, and the salt in the wound is having to recraft alchemical salt if you run out. Auto Recipes for substances that recursively craft the potions and other substances you need is a feature that would improve this experience a lot. Better yet, just make the alchemist guy who occasionally visits sell substances you've made. It's a bit of a shame that recrafting substances feels like such a waste of my time, because on the first time they're quite a rewarding/suitably daunting task
I quite enjoy the discovery aspect of this game- uncovering fog on the map and being introduced to new stuff through progress. Unfortunately both of those things are finite- the alchemist path progression goals take you comfortably beyond content limits. Speaking of that, chapter X is actually insane. Reach 15 popularity level... are these devs out of their goddamn mind? I enjoyed my time with this game and was intending to see it through to the end, but I had to drop it after realizing that I'd be mindlessly grinding for hours to acheive that final sprint.
I'm curious what the dropoff rate on the alchemist's path completition is. Let's look at the steam achievement percentages
Complete Chapter I - 57%
Complete Chapter II- 42.6%
Complete Chapter III - 30.4%
Complete Chapter IV- 20.3%
Complete Chapter V- 13.1%
Complete Chapter VI- 9.3%
Complete Chapter VII- 6.9%
Complete Chapter VIII - 5.4%
Complete Chapter IX - 3.1%
Complete Chapter X- 1.1%
Let's put that into perspective. 20% of steam stardew valley players have completed the community center. 2.5% of steam Shenzhen I/O players have beat the game. 8.4% of steam terraria players have gotten the ankh shield, 7.7% the cellphone. 10% of steam celeste players have gotten all red strawberries. All of these are higher than the amount of people who have finished the last chapter of alchemist's path.
Part of the problem with the later alchemist path chapters is they present daunting goals after the game has already ran out of steam. It seems like the devs are currently developing more content and features for this game, perhaps the latter part of alchemist's path is speculative for when these additions are done.
I played this game on Xbox. This is very obviously a pc game that's been ported- i groaned when i opened up the game and saw that i was controlling a cursor with my joystick. The UX actually wasn't as bad as i was expecting it to be- the quick radial menu and toggle between free/snapping movement do a lot of heavy lifting. Still unideal though. The flaws are most noticable once you're in endgame with pages of herbs and recipes. {Also why do the recipe bookmarks overlap each other like that, it's stupid that buying more recipes will at some point straight up obscure ones you have}.
This game has a remarkably long startup time
The slow-burn player driven pacing is nice. I generally prefer stressful games, but this works well here. It fits the platonic idea of a patient alchemist studying their craft and servicing customers as a supplementary routine.
There are only 2 music tracks in this game. Lol lmao. Yeah i muted it pretty fast and just listened my own music. The art style is unique and they did a fine job , but it doesn't feel particularly significant to my experience. There's a pleasant variety of character designs. The dialog is serviceable but not particularly interesting. There's a slight degree of intrepretation for what potion people want, but it's mostly them fairly directly telling you. I think it's better that way, but it's hard to tell. Maybe there's some potential in this component, although i did have a few slightly frustrating moments trying to decipher the few unintuitive ones already shrug.
I like the presentation of haggling- the way the conversation topics are presented from the perspective of someone searching for suitable small talk is pretty good. Other than that, haggling leans more towards a boring mechanic than an exciting one.
I adore the excited expression characters make when you offer them a potion
It annoys me that they left UI in the game for shop upgrades since there are none you can obtain. I guess it's either vestigial or speculative. Either way it breaks a promise to the player
''The dead don't talk too much... The dead don't get jealous... The dead don't betray...
A select few have managed to learn secrets that ordinary people will never know. We can learn those secrets together, but first I need an elixir to get the process going...''
Based.
A select few have managed to learn secrets that ordinary people will never know. We can learn those secrets together, but first I need an elixir to get the process going...''
Based.
Art style is pretty... Progresses in the most boring way.
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.
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.
Lacks any real goal and incentives
Jouer les petits alchimiste avec des mini-jeux satisfaisants.
Very unique take on potion-making mechanics with the potion map, but the core gameplay loop is a grind and ultimately doesn't expand enough on the core mechanic to allow it to reach its full potential
Basically a type of farming and selling simulator. You grow ingredients, make potions and sell them, rinse and repeat. It's not a bad game, but not an amazing game. If you're interested in this kind of sim game, it's not too bad.