Alchemists is a co-op horror game that can be played solo or with a team of up to four players. Your goal is relatively simple: collect items scattered around the map and use them to conduct a ritual to expel the evil spirit from cursed places, or to destroy the monster alone or with your team, utilizing the tools available to you.
Gameplay
The gameplay is simple in nature, but achieving your goal is far from simple. You will be tasked with scouring one of two locations to find items, as the visibility is extremely low. There are also puzzles to overcome and various monsters who will immediately kill you and ruin your day.
Your character seems to move like a snail that has run out of breath, so outrunning creatures is a chore to achieve. There is a torch to help you navigate the darkness, and a detector to alert you when a creature is nearby, but these didn’t seem to help that much during my time with the game.
The Nitty Gritty
While exploring the environments within Alchemists, you will be met with various and many types of jump scares, such as creatures spawning in front of you and running at you, to general environment alterations around you. All the while, you have to keep searching for keys/codes in all nooks and crannies to open and solve various puzzles and doors in the hope that the ritual artifact you’re looking for will be within.
Graphically, Alchemists is okay. It looks a little better than Phasmophobia, but honestly, not by that much. There are some assets that do look quite good, such as the death animation you receive when you have been captured by the main creature you are trying to exercise, along with other various beasties. The sound design was arguably my favourite part; the foreboding music of the game, and the noises of the creatures while you explore are very well paired together. The intro cinematic voice acting was fantastic; it’s just a shame that it’s rife with GenAI.
I would love to tell you, Dear Reader, about how well the co-op part of this game fares; however, I have been unable to find anyone else playing this game at all to try out the multiplayer component. Maybe some of the above issues wouldn’t seem as bad if you were playing with a group of friends and having a laugh doing so. Alchemists does boast that it will pick up your microphone (pretty much just like other horror games of this ilk), but again, in solo, I barely noticed a difference due to not needing to speak to others during my play.
Conclusion
I think Alchemists has a good foundation and an interesting idea behind it, but it definitely needs more time in the oven, and even a recent update wouldn’t go amiss (as of writing, the last update was back in March). There are some solid scares to be found, but Alchemists was overall a slightly underwhelming experience. It doesn’t have a high cost for entry, sitting at the £4.99 mark, yet I’ve seen it on sale for as low as £1.24. So if you’ve got some willing friends to drop some small change on a game, you may find yourself for a few hours of fun together with Alchemists.
Platform – Steam
Developer – WASD Game Studio
Publisher – WASD Game Studio
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