Potion Craft: Alchemist Simulator

I was lukewarm on this game initially.
Mixing potions had always been fun, but the gameplay loop was somewhat lacking.

After the 2.0 update, I am hooked. This is a fantastic cozy game.
I hope the devs keep up the good work going forward.

When I first saw this game, I thought "how can this possibly be fun to play???" It honestly looked boring as hell. I don't know why I ended up buying it (probably some ridiculous sale price + dev vid), but OMG IT'S GREAT!!!! The game mechanics are so cleverly constructed, they make learning alchemy and crafting potions into an adventure! I love the artwork, I love the inside jokes, I love the sound effects, I love the insane attention to every detail that makes this a wonderful game to play! This is one of those "feels so right" games that come along once in a blue moon, definitely add it to your library.
(And I bought it before the final version came out. It was fun as a WIP, but it's just amazing now. Buy it!!!)

I like this game, very relaxing garden sim with a low-stress shop front game. Lovely hand drawn graphics. Does not contain any meta stories like "Papers Please" it's just you and your little shop.

Since the "Garden" update it feels more like a complete 1.0 game with a skill tree, ability to manage and expand your garden, and a whole new potion map (Wine).

The dev roadmap has some promising things on it too! Looking forward to a few more QoL things like reducing the tedium of fully grinding ingredients over and over just to traverse the map.

OVERALL RATING
✔ Nothing more to add – 6/6 ✔
It’s fun, that’s all – 5/6
Interesting – 4/6
Mid – 3/6
To play when bored – 2/6
Not good… - 1/6

GAMEPLAY – 6/6
It’s simple, yet enjoyable. Perfect for relaxation. Mechanics are easy to understand, discovering new substances, potions and characters it’s addictive. The newest update adds some new elements. Thanks to them, game is „fuller”.

DIFFICULTY – 1/6
Very easy. You don’t need to be genius, to understand all game features. Money, points, ingredients – everything is easy to get, especially in the late game. Making potions is simple, after update, even simpler. Only more time consuming substances are two last ones, but all you must have is patience.

EMOTIONS – 3/6
Relax, nothing more. Nothing can scare or sadden you. Maybe you can feel some satisfaction. That’s why, neutral rating.

PLOT/DIALOGS – 4/6
Besically, pieces of individual customers and sellers histories. That’s all.

CHARACTERS – 5/6
Overall just repetitive NPCs, but from time to time, recognizable characters are visiting your shop. They look like them and dialogs are refering to their worlds. Sometimes they just look like someone recognizable, or idk, maybe that’s just my imagination – I’m talking about crystal seller, who reminds me of a certain famous, bald, chemistry teacher… suspicious…

GRAPHICS – 6/6
Medieval style, but in modern way. Pleasant, perfectly matches vibe of this game.

MUSIC – 4/6
Matches well, but it’s little monotonous. Literally background music, so after a while you stops paying attention to it.

Bought this game some years ago and kind liked it, but not enough to play it again. I kind missed it after some time and decided to try another save, only to discover that they had released a HUGE update few weeks ago. Congrats for the devs for keeping the hard work even. Totally recommended.

I rarely go into detail with simulator games because it's what it says in the tin, but the one thing that made me pretty interested in this specific game is the brewery mechanism itself.

The potion crafting mechanism plays like a map-planning game on its own: the ingredients represent the path taken, how you crush it determines how far into the path you take, stirring the mixing pot is walking the path, diluting the mix is walking back to the center, and blowing the bellow is triggering a whirlwind or the potion enhancement itself. Unlike many casual shop management simulator games, this game does requires a bit of mouse dexterity to brew an accurately powerful potion, and has a bit of a puzzle on its own in the path-making through ingredients. This basic part of it is very fascinating just on its own.

The other two things this game impressed me is how both the seller roleplay and the gardening is as simple as it gets yet enhances the potionmaking experience instead of being "another addition to the hassle". The shop is our main way to get gold, and you can actually haggle (with some mouse clicking timing thingy) with the people you trade gold with, while the gardening is just a simple way to get constantly available herbs and other ingredients. In the shop, there are also multiple merchants coming at random that offers us various items to spruce up our potionmaking experience, to explain it shortly.

The satisfaction of getting the strongest potion of an enhancement is quite similar to how it feels playing A Little to the Left, yet it provides its own puzzle for us to try to make the most efficient potions for what we want to make. I'm glad I'm one of the people who enjoyed these kind of games!

Unique crafting system, I love the NPCs and gardening elements. A good comfort game, easy to pick up and put down to play at your own pace with no rush.

I really wanted to like this game, but it's a classic example of a good idea executed horribly.

the entire progression of the game is tied to the RNG of one dude showing up in your shop and the goals just feel like the same thing over and over but with an added step or 2 that's supposed to make them more difficult but only really serve to make the game progressively more tedious and annoying.

Although it's very repetitive the over all gameplay loop is extremely fun to me. Crushing ingredients feels very satisfying while trying to find your way around the map makes for a overall fun experience.
This game might be too repetitive for others but personally it's just right to play idly while watching something else next to it.

After the 2.0 update Potion Craft finally feels like a complete experience for it's price tag.

This game takes a very unique yet fun look at video game alchemy opting to use a map that players can traverse in set directional patters by using a variety of ingredients, a step up from the usual X and Z ingredients give Y effect when combined. As the game progresses the player will be pushed by new NPC wants to discover more effects on this potion map, with new effects getting harder to obtain the further out from the potions starting point. Though, along with the increase of difficulty, players are also given an increasing inventory of unique ingredients as well as alternate map layouts (different potion bases) that'll allow them to reach new effects easier and old effects with less ingredients.

The progression of Potion Craft centres around the player completing the tasks within the alchemists path booklet found on the top right of the screen. The alchemists path contains 10 chapters (unaffected by the selected game difficulty) with escalating difficulty. These chapters often require the player to discover new effects. However, many of them also require the player to create a legendary item concocted from multiple unique potions, some containing one effect, others containing five. I found chapters 1-7 to be the best, with chapters 8-10 being shorter and lacking, even though the recipes for the required legendary items were more complex/fun; however, the developer states that more legendary recipes will be added post 2.0 update so this issue may be corrected in the near future.

The recent 2.0 update was a game changer, giving the enchanted garden some much needed love by giving the player control over what is grown and when. This solves an issue the game previously had where the alchemy map originally felt more punishing to explore, due to ingredients being less unfair to gather without having chance it with a vendor NPC. The improvement to the enchanted garden is the main change that brought me back to the game and kept me from leaving again, just after a few hours.

Near equally important with the changes to the garden, version 2.0 also drastically improved upon the skill/perk tree (that may as well of been non existent in version 1) and added additional difficulties for returning and more challenge seeking players. I am yet to play these other difficulties but plan on playing through the hardest when the next major update hits the game, I appreciate the added replay-abilty.

Even though I'm praising many of it's additions, I am, by no means, saying the game is perfect. I often struggle to find the ingredients in later chapters of the game due to the sheer number of them; the games ingredient menu could use some additional/more useful filters along with separators for ingredient type. I also have a problem with the seeds where the sprites aren't immediately clear as to what they'll grow into, which in combination with seeds of the same type taking up multiple boxes in the menus, slows me down and causes me frustration.

However, I do this this game is worth getting and playing for it's price point and will be even more so after the promised additional legendary recipes and functional storage containers make their way into the game. I have no regret buying it and would recommend it to others that like these sorts of games.

In 20 hours i finished the whole game, it's super fun to play! You create potions, manage your garden and you can customise your little store! 10/10 great game

This Game is great, its relaxing, fun to play but at the same time it gets your brain working! I love the enchanted garden and the skill tree for it, over-all this is a well rounded good, fantastic preforming game.

Pretty decent game for relaxing, i play it during my study / work breaks.

Its not particularly exciting, there are no stories / plots going on, no cliff hangers to keep you playing for a few minutes more or anything like that. Its just ideal as a simple thing to take your mind of work for a few minutes ( anymore than that you will get bored of the game)

the mechanics of the potion discovery / exploration is well done, characters have a bit of humor to them.

The biggest thing lacking is some kind of plot like Strange Horticulture.

i'd give this game 7 / 10

This game is well made, and clearly has a lot of effort put into its creation.
I can see how it would be fun for some, but for me it just didn't click.

My biggest critique is that it feels like an actual job, which for some may be exactly what they are looking for if they are passionate about this sort of thing. I suppose this makes the game exactly what it is advertised as - an alchemist simulator. I don't know what I was expecting, but for me, it felt less like fun and more like work - perhaps your experience will be different.

Regardless of my own personal opinions, this game has been around for a while, and is very well polished with a caring developer. I would recommend that you at least try it to see if it's for you.

Great game, slow releases, but considering the small team behind its quite good. Every patch brings load of content. Please encourage!

I cant believe i sat down and actively played this for 4 solid hours.. It's kinda addicting once you get used to it <:)

amazing game :3
very chill, but w rly deep puzzle elements - also, quite an innovative crafting system! i wish the character dialogue was a bit deeper (tbh i wish after u finished the main quest line u could enable a visual novel-style mode where u could make friends w the regular customers :P ) but the game is lovely and the garden update is fantastic !!
oh, also, i am really not sure what the point of the crystals or the wine base are - i cant figure out how to use them at all, so i just use mushrooms, herbs, n salts, + oil/water for crafting lol
i think the crystals are meant to teleport you? but they dont go far at all, so idk why u would use em - but hey, the other game mechanics that i do understand and use (herbs, mushrooms, gardening, haggling, oil slicks, salts, etc.) are rly fun and well polished, and they r all that is necessary to finish the game, so im happy :P

I think this is a very clever and addictive game. The gameplay is addictive in the beginning and the player is supplied with an ample amount of "ability points" off the bat to specialize. The art is unique, the music quaint, and the customers are full of amusingly-worded requests that you can choose to fulfill or not. The only thing that can feel tedious is searching for potions past the game's "halfway" point (around chapter V). I find myself giving up because I guess I got too far too fast and don't even have the crystal grotto yet.

ANYWAY, I would highly recommend this game to anyone who thought that making potions in the Witcher was fun, or wants a good game of non-violent design. There's a bit of a learning curve but it's fun to figure out. Solid 3.5/5

After the V2 upgrade, this game has become WAY more addictive. I liked it before, but now I find it hard to stop - with just that "Just one more game day, it won't take long..." effect right now.

Really fun potion making game. Many great changes from the 1st version.

This game switches seamlessly between a puzzle/logic game, an exploration game, a resource management game, and a cosy homesteading game. Brilliantly executed and insanely unique and satisfying gameplay!!!

this game was already fun and they just updated it and it's a lot better now than it was.

I have always enjoyed games related to alchemy so take this review with a grain of your salt of choice (I'm partial to void salt). The implementation of the process toward creating the magnum opus, a philosopher stone, is well done and shows the right level of grind that the alchemists of our history attempted but ultimate came up short with. I simply cannot recommend this enough to anyone who enjoys a good shop simulator, potion brewing, or just appreciate a good art style.

very fun, although I wish there were more playable hours

Nice, simple, chill. What more could I ask for?

Everything works, UI is intuitive. No bugs, no scummy DLCS so thank you for the grand time!
Noticed a lag spike when I enter a fully planted enchanted garden though.

I absolutely adore this game! It's amazingly comfortable, and the soundtrack is upbeat and relaxing. There are multiple ways to run your own potion shop, which is fantastic. The only critique I have is, after I decorated my potion shop with all the potions/ingredients I wanted to display, I noticed a slight lagging issue due to the number of items I had in the shop! Once I took some of the items down, frames went back to normal.

For those who are achievement hunters, I 100%'d the game within 25 hours. Even with those complete, however, I foresee myself playing this game on harder difficulties in the future for an extra challenge.

10/10, would get lost in the alchemy again.

Kind of 'meh' , not good, not bad. The theme is good, everything else is repetitive and boring.

An absolute delight to play! I'm revisiting this for the new Enchanted Garden update and there's something very cozy about waking up each day to tend to the garden and brew potions for my customers. I also enjoy seeing the new faces in game with new merchants and clientele!

It is not just a game—it’s an experience. With visuals straight out of medieval manuscripts and gameplay that feels like you’re stepping into an alchemical workshop, this is one of the most unique and satisfying games you’ll ever play.

From the moment you start grinding ingredients in your mortar and pestle to crafting potions with care and selling them to quirky townsfolk, every moment is pure magic. The base game already delivered an incredible sandbox experience with immersion of the . And now, with the FREE 2.0 update, it’s better than ever.

For those who appreciate games with soul, artistry, and endless creativity, *Potion Craft* is a must-play. The developers have poured so much heart into this game and its updates, and it shows in every detail.

People have problems and you have ingredients, time to make some potions!

In my opinion, I find this game so relaxing. The music, the way that everything seems so tactile and the sound design is amazing. I think it's great that the game just lets you do everything at your own pace. Exploring the map, working on big potions in the basement, all whilst running a store (thank goodness the customers are patient).

Plus the level of customisation with each potion from the name, labels, colours and ingredients depending on how you make them, is fantastic. (I personally enjoy making the dumbest names for my potions, just for the hell of it).

True there can be some frustrating times where you don't have the right ingredients, you play a bit too dangerously and end up breaking your potion or you read the recipe wrong and you've picked up the wrong thing, but with as much time as you need to gather everything you want, it'll all fall into place.

I completely recommend for a relaxing time.

Mouse pad aging simulator.

Awesome concept and really clever mechanics but there are some quality of life things that are missing. There really should be some alternative to the stirring and mashing motions on keyboard. Not only is it really bad for accessibility in it's current state but it's also just annoying after a few hours. I would still recommend it unless your hands/wrists get strained very easily from repetitive motion.

Potion Craft: Alchemist Simulator

Final Thoughts

Fun game focused on exploring a map and learning how to use the resources available to you.

some recipes are too hard but that's a skill issue for me also nice graphics and i love the gameplay dhsijdhdkskjdkskhdksjdksjdhksksksjdjsksjdhkslsks

10/10 would recommend if you don't have a skill issue
10/10 would recommend if you do have a skill issue

yes its good, go play it, but for your own sake do not buy too many recipe pages.

Really good game if you have time to kill. I like the farming aspect along with the idea of finding out to make your own potions. It's really a game you have to farm and be ready to explore and mess up on.

I just started playing after the Enchanted Garden 2.0 Update, so I don't know what it was like before, but this game is sooo enjoyable and fun! Experimenting,silliness, chillaxingnessitude: what's not to like?

This game was really worth buying. Although it took a while for them to put the new update out, I have to highlight a few things. Easy controls, you don't have to rush anywhere. Great background music. Expansion of the herb garden and also the crystals. Unfortunately after the new update the fisherman who used to go for potions disappeared and was replaced by the diver from DAVE THE DIVER. It's an interesting easter egg. It's just a bit of a shame.
You can choose the difficulty at the beginning, which I rank among the advantages, because you won't get tired of the game that quickly.
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I want to say I bought this when it was still early access and I've been in love every since I got it. It's low pressure and after a long day of regular life I can load up my fantasy shop where if I don't feel like dealing with a customer's stupid demands I can either tell them to get lost or I can make their custom order and charge them out the nose for it. I really like the newest update where I have access to the extended gardens and can grow exactly what I need. It's literally my evening wind down game before I head to sleep.

I won't lie, when I first played this after its initial release, while I enjoyed myself? I found myself getting distracted from it due to a slow slog of progression and a bit of being 'stuck'.

Thankfully, with the most recent Enchanted Garden Update, they've absolutely fixed that sensation and made it far more addictive to play. The talent tree system and expanded options for the garden let you progress and unlock avenues that fit your playstyle and preferences a bit more, and let you more easily match any challenges you find. If you were sitting on this game for awhile, now is very much the time to jump in; and if you've got an old save you've been neglecting like I was, don't flinch and just wipe it to start fresh. You'll enjoy yourself far more!

Having 100%'d this game:
This is a very strong recommendation in favor of this game with the caveat that you have to like these types of game. If is cozy and has some puzzle to it, but it's also quite grindy at the end. The 2.0 update significantly cut down some of the excessive sections, but it's still a commitment.

The 2.0 update in general was fantastic. Fleshed out some content and really helped you feel like a booming shopkeeper at the end game.

This is a really excellent game and worth at least trying

The last update did everything I wanted to make this the perfect chill little game. Now I can custimise my shop with shelves for different kinds of potions, and buying in bulk means that i have a lot of those running around to decorate with. I now leave a bottle of sleeping pills next to the bed every night, just in case. And the garden is so sweet and cute, simple but a good investment and also goes to the idea of decorating the space. Loving it even more. Very addicting.

Wow this game was fun, but a little simple. Since the update they totally revamped the entire system would highly recommend it then and even better now.

Enchanted Garden 2.0 is a really great update to a good game... however, while its overall great, the rework of the "main progression" really dampens the whole experience.

*TL;DR of this way-too-lengthy review: This update makes most of the game way easier except the very end. Difficulty now comes from arbitrary number value changes.*

Repairing the Alchemy Machine to craft legendary crystals using specific potion effects is the "progression" of the game. However, it can get grindy, requiring specific potion effects that are extremely far away from each other on the map, requiring extensive resources and time. The 3rd crystal out of 5 was resource intensive enough prior to the update, I didnt even want to create Rubedo, much less see what the Philosopher's Stone required.
So, in this new update, they went about making these Legendary Recipes easier. I agree entirely with this choice. However, it was made far too easier than it should be.

- With the Enchanted Garden 2.0 update, 4 out of the 5 Progression Crystals now only use single-effect potions to create, which you will already have stored recipes for them for the sake of selling to customers. As soon as you discover a required potion effect, thats at least 1 and maybe 2 or even 3 Legendary Recipe steps already solved.

- As for the salts crafted out of the Progression Crystals, they use a mix of pure effects and mixed effects. I actually dont mind what kinds of mixed effects they ask, as making the required mixed potions all have complimentary effects (i.e: speed+strength+dexterity) teaches new players how to optimize making money from mixed-potion customer requests.

- As for the 5th and currently final Progression Crystal, sure, there are some effects that are really far apart, but by the time the game even offers you the recipe for it, you should have built up plenty of money that you can afford the powerful Gemstones from the Dwarf that completely bypass the potion map hazards to make this potion making. This update just reduces the amount of Gemstone usage or extensive plant usage, so you dont need to do full laps around the giant map border. (FYI, by the end of the game, you can get such powerful ingredient like Healer's Heather, Druid Rosemary, and Dragon Pepper which can travel so much map distance that there is very little difficulty in actually moving around the map anymore- just in trying to make a path in the first place with your huge range of options.)

- .......And it all falls apart upon reaching the 5th Progression Crystal Salt Recipe. While all 9 previous Legendary Recipes were easy enough with the right game knowledge, now suddenly all 12 required potions are all quintuple-effect potions forcing extensive cumulative laps around the map. This is what it was like for creating Citinitas, Rubedo, Sun Salt and Life Salt prior to this new update, and I'm glad its not that way, but the Legendary Recipes don't seem to change depending on what **Difficulty you play.
- I dont even think the new Wine potion map added in this same 2.0 update can even be used for any of these required potions due to required effects being completely missing from this new map. The whole point of this map seemed to be based on having highly treacherous map navigation for the benefit of faster access to difficult potion effects like Necromancy, Luck and Fear, yet I can hardly use it for this new progression. Even the ones that do allow using the Wine map are just not worth it because some of the existing effects are simply not much closer at all for what hyper-specific pathways you need to take if you want to evade using Life Salt.



** So yes, there's now difficulty options. Since the new overhauled talent system lets you accrue a ton more money and grow way way more ingredients of literally almost anything you want, the development team had the foresight to realize that since this makes the game easier, they should add difficulty options. However, like with how the mid-game Legendary Recipes got too much easier, they made the harder difficulty modes way, way too extreme.

- The rest of the difficulty modifiers are whatever, but there's zero stepping stone difficulty between the casual Classic Mode and the extreme Grandmaster difficulty. The listed value of 0.25x profits on Grandmaster difficulty is realistically closer to 0.0625x (16 times less) profits, because both your sell profits are divided by 4 AND all the merchants charge you 4x as much. Though of course, a player with a lot of hours in the game knows how to get much more profit.

- For reference: my Classic Difficulty mode is on in-game day 60 with 9/10 Legendary Recipes created, with the recipe to purchase the Philosopher's Salt costing about 24,000 gold with maximum Talent discounts. And this was my first Classic Mode file (well, after the 2022 release that revamped the map) where I did not know where everything was.
- Meanwhile, my Grandmaster Difficulty file is on day 30, and it hasn't yet been able to purchase a roughly 5k Alchemy Machine Part, much less the 12k Void Salt recipe- the literal first purchaseable Legendary Recipe.
-The Mushroom Man and Herb Forager merchants are now running complete and total scams. I have no need to buy a single Thunder Thistle for 117 coins, when a Lightning Potion made from 3 Thunder Thistles would not sell for that much. The only path forward in these modes is by using the Garden to get a minimum of 18 from every herb and mushroom planted every day. The seeds of a plant only cost ~50x the price of a single one from the Mushroom Man and Herb Forager.
-With how extreme the prices and profits are, I'd anticipate around 200 required in-game days to be able to afford the Philosopher's Salt that would presumably cost over 100,000, based on it costing as little as 24k in Classic Mode- when I had well over 76k when it was offered to me on my unoptimized first file.

And this isn't even the most difficult mode. I dont know who asked for this, but niceplay games decided to add a Suffering Mode. "0.25x" price profitability was already over 10x more difficult, but with "0.1x" profits, it might just lengthen the game by at least 50x.

To quote the description for the Suffering difficulty mode: "An extremely unfair, ruthlessly grindy, and blatantly imbalanced version of the game for those who want to suffer instead of relaxing. It may cause frustrations and feelings of unfairness.
Not recommended for anyone."
I could use those same words just for Grandmaster difficulty. Grandmaster could be well over 8x longer than what my CURRENT skills could optimize.

Just nerf these difficulty modes or add a stepping stone difficulty between it and Classic. Then make the Legendary Recipes actually change with the difficulty. If you're gonna make it super grindy to even buy the recipe, then at least make it take longer to create the crystals or salts too.

Still enjoy this game. but I only see reason to play after each new update, which is a struggle with the slow development time (I don't mind the slowness though). But its hard to actually recommend the Enchanted Garden 2.0 update until it receives proper balancing. The new talents and enchanted garden are very powerful, yet they made the legendary recipes easier; the only way to make it harder is with difficulty modes that dont change the legendary recipes.

Delightful puzzle game, recently improved even more with 2.0.

The game is awesome but suddenly with the new update i have weird vertical lines disturbing the image, could you maybe add some kind of V-sync?

man this game is so epic i just play it while i'm listening to like a video or music or something like haha comfy game go brrr

After months waiting for the 2.0 update it has finally arrived and it was definitely worth the wait! The devs have given a lot of attention to detail, gameplay and balance. The game feels a lot better (creatively and mechanically) and more immersive than ever! The new talents feel great and the gardening experience is so cool to play around.

It took me 27.7 hours and over 170 in-game days to get all the achievements. It would have taken significantly less if I were not so obsessed with storing an absurd amount of ingredients.

I really like this game, especially the music. All those different kinds of ingredients are cool and interesting. I tried different kinds of recipes to make the potions to avoid using up a specific kind of ingredient. Sometimes, the merchants simply did not sell the thing I needed or carried a disappointing amount of ingredients to sell.

Although my popularity level was high, I felt like the chance of getting pricey ingredients was still pretty high. Additionally, I think the penalty of failing the haggling is too much. I was screwed if I missed twice or thrice. What's more, the difficulties of 5-star and 4-star haggling is significantly higher than that of the 3-star, and they give only a 5% discount. I think they're not worth the risk at all.

The clients' requests are sometimes weird. Many players, including me, do not get the needs of the clients in some cases. And some requests do not make any sense, such us "I want only a weak potion." when it comes to protection against lighting and fire.

Overall, I think this is a good game. I did realize that the dev wanted to release more contents of the game. They are even shown on this page. Unfortunately, we have received no further updates from them. But I got this game at a discount. I think it's worth the discounted price. If the dev does release more features of this game, I will be happy to play more.

I personally love this game but it's been a year since the last update and there has basically been silence from the devs. I will change my rating once an update has been released.