In Alchemy Garden you don't really take care of a garden and you'll instead spend the first hour of gameplay going around looking for random wild plants instead. You are also given a pickaxe instead of seeds for some inconceivable reason even though you need to sell about half a dozen potions to even afford the crafting table.
The process for creating potions feels anemic at best and as far as I could tell the only reason you make potions is so you can sell them to buy new floor tiles and such. You can't even purchase seeds in any significant amount and you instead buy, once again, completely random seeds, one at a time for a maximum of maybe 6 per week in total.
Alchemy Garden feels like a prototype. Some mechanics are superfluous such as mining or chopping down trees which could be cut off without affecting the game by much while other mechanics that you'll use constantly such as watering plants or crafting potions are far too shallow. This is the sort of thing that you solve as you continue development and have people actually play the game. I mean if you plant seeds close to one another, which is optimal for watering, then you run the risk of not being able to harvest them later because you just can't interact with stuff sometimes.
I think that in order to be a worthwhile game Alchemy Garden would need to have a more involved gardening and crafting processes and some kind of goal besides replacing the floorboards. As it stands I don't think I can recommend it.

Reviewed on Feb 10, 2024


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