Potion Craft: Alchemist Simulator

I played this game as an itroduction to gaming with my kids. It´s been good figuring out what potions to make.

I love this type of games, it is relaxing!

I played this a lot with my then 4 year old. He's 5 now and we haven't played this much together, but he has played it by himself. He doesn't care about making money in the game just making the potions, so he goes through the motions in the game. I can load the game from a previous saved point so he can do whatever he wants in the game and it won't mess up things. The game consists * you unlocking recipes by mixing ingredients in a cauldron. There is a map with all the ingredients covered in a fog of war I guess. Each ingredient is a path in the map. Some go up, some down, some go south west, etc some do loops. As you mix the ingredients in the cauldron you travel those paths in the map until you reach a potion. The ingredients you used in the path to get to the potion becomes your recipe to later make that potion. The closer you get to match the potion the higher the quality of the potion. * Each morning you go to your garden and gather ingredients from whatever grew there the day before. * Then you go see which customers arrived asking for potions and you sell them potions you make for them. * Sometimes a vendor arrives selling mushrooms, or herbs, or equipment. * In the basement of your house you have some equipment you need to complete and once completed you can add different potions to it to unlock some special potion. As you unlock more of these you advance in level. I give it a 4 because it's a game we like to play together and we have good memories of playing it together, but it can be grindy and a bit boring. The game loop is the same day after day. Making a path to the potions is what I like. I have never seen that mechanic in any game before.

Potion Craft has simple mechanics but demands memory and spatial reasoning on a range of levels, making it appropriate for kids, but fun for adults too. I've had a couple dozen lovely hours playing this game alone and together!

Been playing since release. ~50ish hours. Does take a while, get’s super easy in the end. The reagent restrictions and gold stop being a problem after a while. They’ve added many mechanics since starting: new characters (references to other games mostly like Dave the Diver), more places to garden, a large tech/skill tree, more decorations which are nice but the space to decorate is quite limited. Some mechanics like traveling the alchemy board get less fun after a while. Overall, fun little game.