HomeFeaturesPotion Craft
Alchemy sim Potion Craft has the best crafting system ever concoctedBrew-tiful times out now
Brew-tiful times out now
I’m a big fan of life-sim mini-games. Cooking, crafting, mining, gardening, and all those other videogame-y tasks make something that’s a bit mundane into a fun little treat. It looks like developers Niceplay Games agree, as they’ve taken the joy of tactile crafting and created an entire potion-brewing sim around it - and not only is their crafting system both creative and clever, it’s oh so satisfying.
Potion Craft 1.0 is available NOW!Watch on YouTube
Potion Craft 1.0 is available NOW!
It’s a little abstract, so stick with me. Brewing a potion uses a map, with your tools of the trade - cauldron, bellows, mortar and pestle - at the ready. The idea is to move a little potion bottle around the map, stopping when it lands on a potion icon. Adding ingredients to your cauldron will set the bottle’s course, and stirring the mixture will make it move. When it reaches an icon on the map you can pump the bellows, and your concoction will be brewed into a magical potion. Poof! Ta-da!
It’s tactile but never difficult, and takes a wonderful finesse to master. Stirring your cauldronjustthe right amount to make the bottle stop exactly where you want it is immensely satisfying, and there’s a handy pot of water that you can use to dilute your mixture and move your bottle back the way it came if you slightly overshoot your goal. It’s this delicate movement that really captures the art of potion brewing - or, what I imagine it to be like. The closest I’ve ever gotten to achieving a similar equilibrium is perfecting the balance of white rum, pineapple juice, and coconut cream to make the perfect Piña Colada.
Another lovely set of details go into the way that everything sounds. The bubbling of the brew as you heat it up, the crunch of a root as you crush it into powder, and the gentle clanking of the mortar and pestle - it’s like alchemy ASMR (after a quick Google turns outalchemy ASMRis a real thing because of course it is).
I’ve still got plenty of the map left to explore in Potion Craft, so I think it’ll be my first Christmas game of the holidays. There’s a big, old, dusty chemistry set in the shop’s basement I still haven’t quite figured out, and Niceplay Games have announced a bunch of future updates, the most exciting being the addition of gardening and planting management. Hell yeah.
