Spellcorked! has beautiful artwork, really showing off the impressive resolution of the Playdate. I really enjoyed the general vibe of the game, with great music and sound effects and satisfying little mechanics for making potions.

I was so ready to enjoy this, thinking at first that it would be like VA-11 Hall-A, Coffee Talk and Bloom, where the simple minigame underpins a compelling narrative. Unfortunately, the e-mails completely dry up, your familiars stop talking to you almost immediately and the game rapidly descends into mindlessly brewing potions back to back. It just feels like work, boring work.

Working with the ingredients was mostly fine enough, but the way you have to figure out what they do through complete trial and error was very frustrating. Maybe I missed something, but it seems like if you brew an unwanted potion you just have to ship it anyway and get a bad review or whatever. Yet, the chances you'll brew what you want from a new ingredient, especially from an alembic, are slim to none. It's not satisfying at all.

So, in summary, beautiful game with a great vibe but overall lacking in substance and not fun to play after the first thirty minutes or so.