The crafting-sim genre has gone through many transformations over the years. From the humble beginnings of Harvest Moon all the way to modern-day Atelier and the likes of Graveyard Keeper, the genre has seen its fair share of epic highs and abysmal lows. But what if it were in first-person, and we added a healthy dose of murder? Enter Alchemist: The Potion Monger from Art Games Studio S.A.
Alchemist: The Potion Monger begins as you move into your new home alongside your faithful doggo companion. A narrator guides you through unpacking and placing your alchemic tools inside, when there is a knock on the door. Here, you meet Eve, a wolf-about-town who has surrounded your house with thorns, which you must remove if you wish to meet her in town. Thus begins your new life as the village alchemist, but something terrible is brewing in the shadows, threatening everything you hope to accomplish.
The daily cycle of Alchemist: The Potion Monger follows the familiar cycle of collecting resources, crafting potions and exchanging them for money in some way or another to purchase machines to further your creations. There is a merchant in town who offers out contracts for you to fulfil to get you started, but eventually, you will open your own market stall to earn mega-bucks.
There are also quests for you to complete for the locals. Although these may seem random at first, they do build into the story. Better yet, you are often given a choice in how you complete them. This was where things started to get weird and was my first clue as to what was to come.
You see, not everyone in this village is a good person. In fact, some of them are downright rotten and you will be encouraged to participate and provide potions for their schemes. As someone who always takes the path of the hero when given the choice, I found myself succumbing to darkness and embracing the chaos…
That’s right. It was I, Mashashy, who yeeted a fire bomb potion into the farmer’s cattle and left their bodies strewn across the floor. And it was I who drank an enlarging potion and stomped through the town to see what I could damage. And I would do it again. I even returned to the carnage of the farmlands to see if I could use a resurrection potion on the dismembered bits of cow, only to find they had respawned after resetting my Switch. I also won’t deny the temptation of dropping another bomb to continue the experiment further, but alas I had none on me at the time. Although, I could always go back…
It’s not until you complete a specific quest that you will get into the real meat and bones of this story/world. Doing this quest will introduce you to the potion mechanics as you combine them to gain buffs such as strength and higher jumps. You’re also naturally introduced to the puzzle-solving elements of Alchemist: The Potion Monger through this quest, before adding in a whole new game mechanic: Red Nights.
Every few nights, the skies will turn red and the demons hiding in your town come out to play. These terrors walk among you, but under the light of the red moon, their eyes shine red and it’s, to quote The Thing, “Clobberin’ Time“.
I won’t lie, these portions really got to me at first as there’s a serious degree of tension in the evenings without the addition of angry mobs. Having to tank potions and fend off hoards of angry red-eyed villagers is intense and they managed to catch me off-guard for a few scares more than a few times. They dropped handy resources and money though, so I diligently did my duty to protect the village.
The battle mechanics aren’t great. I found that I could just swing wildly and throw potions at most enemies, but equally, you’re supposed to be an alchemist using potions so it kind of makes sense. Eventually, I figured out the timing of the slimes and could KO them in one swing, but there’s nothing special outside of combining your potions to make things easier on yourself. Thankfully, there are no downsides to dying (in apprentice mode), so you can always try again if you fail.
Similarly, the platforming isn’t the best because you’re supposed to use potions to help you. Mixing the double-jump potion effects with a potion that makes you lighter will allow you to slowly glide back down and you can take a speed potion to help you get a run-up. This makes everything from crossing the map to completing quests a puzzle. A puzzle with many ways to complete it.
I’ve held off on explaining the alchemy/crafting mechanics to this point as they are wonderfully complex and rewarding to conquer. It starts simple; put the flower in the mortar to change the flower’s properties to match the potion recipe you have selected and throw it in the cauldron. Then do a short quick-time mini-game to determine the quality of the potion and bingo-bango you’ve got yourself a potion. Simples, right?
As you unlock more resources and tools, you will uncover more attributes which are required in your recipes. Every resource you find has an attribute(s) which will correlate to one of the four elements; fire, water, air, and earth. This attribute can be found on the elements chart and you have to figure out which alchemic instruments you need to utilise to reach the ones you require. This means you can get the same result with different resources – if you can figure out how.
Perhaps one of the most useful mechanics is the ability to save potions. You can buy more potion scrolls to save additional potions into a quick-brew shortcut. So long as you have the base materials you can fast-craft as many of these as you want, which makes mass-production for adventures and sale all the more convenient. I unlocked a fair amount of them too.
Thankfully, you are not alone in your research. Your dog companion can discover earth elemental attributes, unlocking them on your chart so you can see where they are and figure out a way to get to them. You later unlock other helpers for the different elements. But what if you haven’t discovered the element you need for a recipe?
One of your tools is an Alchemy Stone. After selecting a recipe from your book, you can click on this and it will give you a clue on which resources can make the attributes you require. You can then “preview” what will happen to your resource when you interact with different equipment and use your deduction skills to try and uncover your missing element. This essentially means you can make any potion you have the ingredients for, even if you have not yet unlocked certain elements. I’d even suggest it’s a core mechanic, especially in the beginning, but you can just wait until you unlock that elemental companion.
The graphics were deceptive in the way that the colourful world lures you into a false sense of security. Buildings and landscapes reminded me of Calico, with simple colourful models, but the character models were more… for lack of a better word… cursed. The anthropomorphic nature of the villagers was kind of unsettling but something that didn’t feel too out of place in the setting.
I was playing on the Nintendo Switch, and there appear to be some graphical changes between different versions. After a little digging, it looks like the Switch has a different build. Having checked out the store pages, I would be interested to see how everything performs on PlayStation as the landscapes in the screenshots I have seen paint a different picture to the ones I experience on Switch. Not that I would complain that a game has been optimised for Switch, it’s just worth noting for anyone looking at my screenshots.
I didn’t make full use of the home decorating and organising as I was more focused on buying things to craft with, but there are lots of options and more space/garden plots to unlock. You can put stacks of items on shelves and have them displayed but I wasn’t a fan of this mechanic and focused on chests. I also picked up my shelves and everything on them flew across the room on more than one occasion.
The villagers do speak when their text boxes pop up, but it sounds like they’re playing sound clips backwards or something as I wasn’t able to place the language. It’s something akin to Sim-ish and only adds to the humour and unsettling atmosphere.
I found the sound design worked well for the different “moods” as you switch between casual resource hunting and unbridled chaos. They’re not tracks I’m going to download and play on repeat, but they do the job. The same with the special effects, although the various animal noises did have some comedic timing.
Unfortunately, I was unable to complete the entire game in time for this as the final area is locked behind a cave which seems to have a glitch, making it impassable. It seems some people brute-forced their way through it (a multi-levelled jump puzzle in the dark!), but the developer is aware of the issue and working on it, so I intend to return once I have caught up on some other reviews.
It has a lot of quirks in general, but I found most of them humorous and endearing than game-breaking. One time I received a key item but my inventory was full, so it ejected the first slot in my bag across the tavern, which was a stack of 35 minor healing potions! It was a mess and I was still finding potions sticking out of things days later. There was also a graphical glitch where the rose bushes didn’t spawn in properly (see below). Good times.
Alchemist: The Potion Monger was a lot of fun, and I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys crafting with a bit of chaos to give it a go. As I am currently unable to finish Alchemist: The Potion Monger, however, it makes it hard to rate it as highly as I would want, especially on the Switch. The game I experienced was still incredibly enjoyable for an indie project and I’m tempted to grab it on PlayStation to see what the trophies are like, it just needs a bit more polishing. If murdering villagers isn’t your jam, though, it might be worth checking out Alchemist Simulator by the same team too.
Platforms: PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X and Series S, Microsoft Windows, Xbox One
Developer: Art Games Studio S.A.
Publisher: Art Games Studio S.A.
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