Potion Craft: Alchemist Simulator

Official Site

Well I’ve got all the achievements now so that’s certainly time to write about this! I actually got this when it was in Early Access back in 2021 before it released, and beat it back then, but since then it’s gone gold and they added achievements to it. Well, more specifically to Steam, there are technically “achievements” in game but that’s getting ahead of myself.

On the surface it’s a fairly simple puzzle game as the aim of Potion Craft is simple: You’re an alchemist, you’ve opened up shop so you can research, create and sell potions. To do so you to chart a course on what’s called “The Alchemy Map” using your ingredients which all lay out their own path on the map, to reach a potion effect to brew a potion like so:

I’d joke this image is spoilers, but you’re given this by the tutorial

The puzzle element being “how do I get to a potion effect?”, as well as “what is that potion effect?” as you aren’t given any of the effect locations until you find them on the map and attempt to brew them:

This one is spoilers though, you’re welcome, though you’d have likely found this one out quickly anyway

All this is with the goal of brewing potions for the townsfolk who are coming for your wares, starting with pretty simple requests that as the game progresses get more and more complicated as they request further exotic potions. Sometimes travelling merchants stop by that let you buy their goods, be they herbs, mushrooms, rocks and plenty of other things relevant to an alchemist’s interests.

Apparently you’re the first person in a while to show up to practice alchemy, that or the other alchemists are so bad that customers immediately start coming to your shop

And so you continue to make potions, explore the map by putting ingredients in your cauldron and stirring, or grinding them in the mortar and pestle to make them more potent before you throw them in. Add some of the potion base (water at first) to bring your potion back towards the centre of the map if you need to. Then fire your potion with the bellows to get the intended effect.

Grind and SMASH those herbs. They deserved it.

This is more in depth than I would normally go on “how does the game work” in these posts, but I feel like if I didn’t establish that it wouldn’t really make much sense some points I wish to make later.

The basic loop is enough to keep you interested and to keep doing it. It’s fun to just explore the map to find those potion effects, especially when you’re puzzling out how to line up paths to make stronger potions (by getting your little potion icon to fit in the effect icon as good as possible. A weak potion being barely in contact, a normal potion being mostly aligned, and the strong potion being contained in the icon near perfectly). More exotic effects are further out and there’s patches in the map that would cause the potion to fail so you’re working around them and so on.

Eventually you start unlocking the alchemy machine with the intention to make the magnum opus of alchemy, the Philosopher’s Stone.

I did it! Now to make iron to gold and the elixir of li- oh wait not in this game.

There are plenty of objectives to keep you going along in the form knowledge you gain from book icons on the map, making potions, selling them and trading with merchants. These convert to levels that you can use on talents to make your business more profitable or to have a larger uncovering radius as your potion moves around unknown areas of the map and so on. You also have a book called “The Alchemist’s Path” that gives hints on what to do to keep you moving forward as completing chapters in the book unlocks more complicated requests from customers as well as more things you can buy for your alchemy machine in the basement.

In other words, this is kind of an in game tutorial beyond it explicitly telling you how to play

I’ve genuinely enjoyed this, sometimes my brain felt like it was dripping out my ears as some later things need looooooooooooong paths on the map to get every effect you need. But it was in a good way in that I felt good for mapping the course I needed.

Of course, this is where I do have to bring in what I think is kind of a massive glaring issue in all of this. You need to actually do all the actions required. And by that I mean, remember earlier I said:

putting ingredients in your cauldron and stirring, or grinding them in the mortar and pestle

I meant that literally, you need to grab the cauldron ladle, or the pestle, or the bellows, or extra potion base (the small container on the left next to the cauldron) and physically control them. You need to wriggle the mouse to stair, to smash, to pump the bellows and pour extra potion base in. This is really cute to immerse yourself in the “Alchemist Simulator” aspect of the game title, but it’s also kind of tiring and over time it did start to hurt my wrist.

Now it’s possible with a controller this might be easier? Maybe you hold on to the object and you just wriggle the stick, I’d not tried to find out as I feel like it’d be equally as awkward to grab ingredients and place them in the cauldron/mortar too. Otherwise the best I could find in accessibility was to make it so you didn’t need to hold click and drag, but you still need to drag.

It’s a start at least?

Now you can save recipes so that if someone asks for another again you can literally just grab it without doing all that stirring etc. again.

Don’t worry about the limited pages, you can buy more.

This is honestly a fantastic workaround for the raw work you need to put in as not only can you rebrew them them on the fly, you can customise the appearances for next time as well as in the instances where someone wants a healing potion with “additional effects”. But, that’s a bonus after you’ve done the work. It doesn’t prevent the amount of wriggling of the mouse (or sticks or whatever) that a recipe for the more exotic potions you need to brew in the “end game”.

That’s a lot of wriggling my hand! A lot. My arm actually still kind of aches today which is why I chose to do other stuff today, chores, this post, etc.

If it’s frustrating (and painful) for me, who is able bodied, I cannot even begin to imagine what a pain it would be for someone who may have issues with such repetitive issues. Ideally there needs to be an accessibility option to change that. I don’t know what you’d want to do mind, I the saved recipe gives exact percentages (E.g. one ingredient I thought I ground up completely was 98% ground) so clearly there could be a system that could allow accessibility to fine control that without repeatedly shaking the mouse or a stick.

Of course I do understand that this would mean that a lot of players that find this out would just sacrifice the old “immersive” system but… it’s good to give choice.

Maybe I missed something? Maybe I was doing it wrong? Who knows.

I can recommend the game but only with “It might hurt your arm” and that the gameplay loop can get very repetitive.