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TFI Friday: 3 new indie games about soaking things in waterDon’t leave Teacup, Potion Craft or A Winding Path in too long or the code will go all prune-y
Don’t leave Teacup, Potion Craft or A Winding Path in too long or the code will go all prune-y
I love doing this column because it means a) it is the end of a working week (working hard or hardly working, amiright?) and b) I get to play something nice and (often) small, and usually a bit weird. I am also, as it turns out, really smug about the theme I discovered for this week. Last night I had a bath, so am ideally positioned to extoll the benefits of dunking things in water. May I present to you three brand new indie games: a frog’s tea party, a potion workshop and a rainy walk.
Potion Craft
Potion Craft – Early Access Release TrailerWatch on YouTube
Potion Craft – Early Access Release Trailer
Potion Craft is anotherbest Steam Fest demos alumnow gracing the annals of this column. Out now in early access, it’s improved uponthe demoa lot (although does still have some kinks that I hope will be worked out before full release). In it, you are a potion seller, who moves into an abandoned shop building and opens it up to start making and selling your wares. People come into the front of house and ask for things. They might need a healing potion for their bad back, a frost potion to freeze a river, or poison - a lot of people ask for poison, actually…
You then nip out the back and whip something up in your cauldron using the plants you’ve harvested from your garden, or bought from passing traders. In an unusual application of design genius, brewing and discovering recipes is played out on a kind of map, and different ingredients will let you travel in different directions. One kind of flower zig zags you to the left, while a funny looking mushroom sends you in loops to the right. You need to avoid hazards, which will fail your potion, and make it to the recipe spot. Getting bang onto it will make a stronger potion. Grinding your ingredients up first will increase their potency - and change or increase how far they travel on the map.
You can save recipes so you can instantly brew something you have the ingredients for, but if you’ve run out then you can do the equivalent of saying, “Let me see what I can do!” and bodge getting to the same potion using different ingredients. At this stage, I have a lovely time plotting moves on the potion chart and combining effects, but I think the haggling system and the cost of things needs a bit of a rebalance. It’s quite hard to make money in decent time right now, and everything feels a bit to expensive to make experimentation worth it. But aside from that, I really enjoy the kind of wood-cut art style, and meditatively smashing things up with my pestle and mortar.
Teacup
Teacup - Release Date TrailerWatch on YouTube
Teacup - Release Date Trailer
Teacup is a frog who really likes tea, which is some bang on nominative determinism. And also: hard same, Teacup. Tea is the best. But on this day, horror of horrors, Teacup awakens to discover she hasrun out of tea. Even worse, she is having an actual tea party tomorrow! So your quest is to go on a gentle little 2D puzzle adventure to get all the types of herbs and ingredients Teacup needs.
These puzzles aren’t taxing, but are nice and delightful. In fact, Teacup as a whole feels like a bedtime story. The art is simple but lovely and cosy, and going on an adventure to get supplies for a tea party is Cbeebies Bedtime Stories down to the hilt.
A Winding Path
A Winding Path – Announcement TrailerWatch on YouTube
A Winding Path – Announcement Trailer
