Potion Craft: Alchemist Simulator Switch Review

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Potion Craft: Alchemist Simulator Switch Review

I think as kids, we all used to pretend to make magical potions by filling our parent’s finest china cups with sand, dirt, water, and all manner of household ingredients. The potion seller is often the under-appreciated hero of our games, providing us with life-saving potions that enhance our heroes, or destroy our enemies. Developer “niceplay games” has decided to show us gamers a glimpse into the life of a budding alchemist with Potion Craft: Alchemist Simulator, a cozy management/tycoon game that sees you running a potion shop. What’s it like? Grab your mortar and pestle, pick some fresh herbs, and bring your cauldron to simmer as we take a look at Potion Craft on Switch.

Potion Crafts gameplay loop consists of serving customers by making potions to suit their needs. Some requests are simple, as they ask for a specific potion, whereas others may be a little more open to interpretation, offering explosive potions to unlock a door or chest, and strength potions to help with a tracker hunting down a beast, or slapping around someone to intimidate them. The individual characters all have their own dialogue and personality traits and there’s even a thinly veiled reference to a popular monster hunting Witcher. You will come to know your clientele the longer you operate your potion shop, and you will soon be able to gauge their needs… and their intentions. Morality comes into play in the world of Potion Craft where you can weed out customers with ill intentions, banning them from your store, or you could become an agent of evil, specializing in poisons and underhanded schemes, or you can simply cater to both, and profiteer regardless.

Crafting a potion consists of navigating potion maps, starting off with water, but upgrading to oil later on. Ingredients show a path that you can further along by grinding the material, which you then stir to move along the path. Initially, these paths will have to be discovered, and once you discover a recipe, you can save it to your book. Recipes are limited in your book, and you can buy more pages from merchants, but in the early stages, there’s a bit of thought required as to what you can make easily, versus what complex recipes you would like to save. There may be easier ways to craft a potion and finding them all boils down to experimentation. You’re not punished by experimenting, as you can go back and recraft the same potion, saving the more efficient recipe to your book, and helping your materials go further the next time around. You can use whirlpools on the map to shortcut to new areas and avoid the bones so you don’t destroy your current brew. There’s a challenge to discover new combinations and effects, and then go back and refine them to use fewer materials. Eventually, you will combine potions and stack effects, securing a higher price for your wares.

Speaking of securing higher prices, Potion Craft features a unique haggling mechanic. You can start off talking about the weather which is an easy topic offering a low risk and low reward, or you can branch out and talk about more complex topics. Haggling requires you to click as many topics of conversation as you can before selecting the thumbs up. The longer you take, the less chance you have of success, making you lose valuable coins in the process. You will learn to haggle on certain things while preserving your reputation points on the smaller stuff.

There’s a progression system at play as well, which increases as you find XP books on the paths to your potions, allowing you to put stat points into making prices better, increasing visibility on your potion map, gaining more XP on the map, and bettering your chances of haggling. You will also grow the Popularity of your store, increasing prices, customers, and higher-quality potion requests. Kicking customers out damages your popularity, but can increase your reputation by refusing service to nefarious characters. There are many systems at play here, and none of them really overwhelm, allowing the player the freedom to choose what kind of Alchemist they want to become.

While the game consists of only a handful of screens, it manages to never make you feel boxed in. You can navigate to your storefront, garden, potion-making map, and bedroom to save the game. Your garden replenishes herbs overnight at random, and you can further bolster your supplies by haggling with other merchants who stop by. Each item also includes a preview of the path it will travel on your potion map, stopping you from having buyer’s remorse. Take care though, as you will face stern criticism if you alter the deal after haggling, and draw even more ire should you back out of the deal altogether.

Potion Craft features an amazing art direction, peering into the sepia world through a Renaissance painting. Seemingly hand-drawn lines and intricate details illustrate the world around you, with splashes of colour to bring your customers or herbs to life in stunning detail. There’s a lot of charm in the art design, and the animations are smooth and subtle, gently grinding herbs in your mortar and pestle see gentle movement, whereas being rough will see materials fall out and spill. It’s these nice touches that all add to the successful recipe of immersing you in the game.

The musical score is a loop of ye olde wind instruments and the gentle strumming of a lute, creating a warm and relaxing atmosphere, complimented by the sounds of grinding your mortal and pestle, and the gentle bubbling of your cauldron. It all comes together well, never boiling over so to speak in a loud concoction of noise. For my vision-impaired alchemists, there are no visibility options to change, and due to a lot of the tones being sepia, I would recommend further research into whether this game will suit your needs. There is really only one issue I have had with Potion Craft, and that is the lengthy load time when you first boot up the game, clocking in at 1.40 on my SD but only 40 seconds when installed to system memory. It’s not a deal breaker in the slightest as there are no performance issues or load times once you are in the game. It’s also a safe bet to say this will depend on the quality of your SD Card.

Overall, Potion Craft follows its own recipe to craft a relaxing and incredibly unique experience. I know it won’t be for everyone, but for people who enjoy cozy games, or tycoon/merchant sims, it has all the right ingredients to make a great game. Couple this with the very reasonable price point of less than $30 AUD, there’s no need to haggle the price on E-shop. Potion Craft is a worthwhile experience on the Nintendo Switch that will provide hours of entertainment.

So What’s it Like?

Potion Craft is like Cooking Mama, crossed with a Tycoon game.

 

Potion Craft: Alchemist Simulator

90% Score

Review Breakdown

  • Graphics and Visuals 0%
  • Polish and Performance 0%
  • Gameplay 0%
  • Content and Features 0%
  • Value 0%

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