The game industry is full of surprises. The long -awaited, almost in absentia, cult games show modest results and are forgotten as soon as the term of release discounts expires, and modest, unremarkable projects suddenly capture the tops of sales and set trends for the coming years. We remember well, for example, Undertale, House Flipper or Among us, Although there is its own specifics. Now there is a reason to look at Potion Craft Petersburg independent studio NicePlay Game , which immediately after access to early access was at the top of the world chart Steam. And let her be in the first place did not succeed for long, she is still ahead PUBG, Deathloop, Detroit: Become Human And Grand Theft Auto v. There are constantly several thousand people online, and the community actively writes management and shares its own alchemical recipes – a team of five developers turned lead to gold.

Sausage, mortar and fur

Although Potion Craft is declared as an alchemist simulator, in fact it is more likely a puzzle than a simulator. Moreover, the puzzle is very creative, where you can choose many solutions for each task. She really offers to draw up recipes of potions – or rather, lay routes to them.

The laboratory table of the protagonist, who got the house of the old alchemist, is a map on which you have to travel, moving the flask to the desired points. The final point is recipes for various potions, but in order to get to them, you need to lay the path using reagents: herbs, mushrooms, stones and other ingredients “draw” fragments of the path on the map. Straight lines, broken lines, bizarre loops, short and long segments, up, right, down … Throwing a combination of ingredients into the boiler, you will draw them with a dotted line on the map, and preventing the brew – send the flask forward.

This is how our basement looks at the beginning of the game and after we will take the first step to repairing the alchemical machine

A lot of nuances lurks in this system. Say, if you add a chopped grass to the boiler, the line will turn out to be long, and if you throw a bunch as it is, it will break off in the middle. And you can also choose how much to rub the ingredient in a mortar! Yes, and you need to stir the potion carefully so as not to fly into trouble and bring the flask to the right place as accurately as possible. If https://cocoa-casino.co.uk/ you were a little mistaken, it doesn’t matter: it is worth inflating fur and warm up the equipment, as everything will become in place. But getting a potion of the highest sample this method will not work. For a quality product, the contours should coincide by 100%, and you will have to achieve this manually: try on other ingredients, add liquid, take into account the whirlpools, carefully monitor the position of the flask and its routes.

You can come to the desired result in a variety of ways. Judging by the discussions in the community, each player has its own recipes of particularly complex potions-and they rarely repeat each other exactly. The presence of ingredients and the ways of bypassing dangerous places plays the role here: traps that destroy the flask are periodically found on the map – to jump over, you will have to spend rare stones. But there are also potions with a double or triple effect, requiring very specific lines, weak potions, strong potions, special salts from an alchemical machine ..

You get pleasure not only from laying the perfect route to a complex recipe, but also from how the game gives the process itself. In Potion Craft, almost every stage needs to be done with your own hands: pull the grass out of the inventory, throw it into a mortar, twist it with a pestle, throw it into the boiler, interfere, tie up, inflate fur. Cooked potions can be poured into bottles of different shapes, sticking on them labels and even give copyright names. The potion of the explosion "Bzdyshch", the potion of lightning "Death of an electrician", a potion of invisibility "Where I?" – You are limited only by your imagination.

A game about alchemy without reference to "Witcher" It is considered invalid

By the way, to give potions to grateful customers and bargain with them also needs to be manually. What did you think? Alchemy is a business, but customers, fortunately, are not capricious and universal patient. They will calmly wait for you to return to the laboratory and try to invent the recipe for the potion, which you first heard a couple of minutes ago. In trade, everything is tied to karma: successful sales increase your personal reputation and store popularity. If we help the respectable citizens and sell the wounded adventurers of the inilee, then life will be much nicer: suppliers of raw materials are more likely to cooperate with the famous alchemist and do not skimp on discounts. On the other hand, the sale of deadly poisons or explosives to some robbers is not too welcomed by society: having settled in all serious ones, you will only harm the image of the shops. In the future, the developers plan to finalize the mechanism of forming queues so that we can play the evil scientist, but for now, his aiding attackers does not justify ourselves.

Often, visitors quite vaguely explain what they want to buy: maybe they are waiting for a growth potion, and we will decide what they had in mind the libido stimulator. However, the game does not punish the mistake. If the client, instead of a joyful smile, met a bottle of bewilderment, then you can always return to the laboratory and try it again, listening to his request. In one kind of kindergarten, with weeds, the other will have to climb into the dark basement or bypass the terrible monster in the dungeon. In some cases, variations are possible: for example, if someone designs to jump from a high slide, both a jump potion and an elixir of levitation are suitable. It only upset that these stories at some point begin to repeat themselves, but with updates the situation will probably improve.

For a game that has just chosen in early access, Potion Craft makes a very pleasant impression. It is soft, meditative, exciting – but, alas, short. In fact, everything we have now is one perfectly working mechanics and several more or less interesting dialogues. In a couple of hours, you can open all secrets, earn enough money for the full repair of an alchemical machine, stock up on the ingredients for several years ahead and enjoy enjoy the visual design.

Fortunately, Potion Craft already has a foundation that allows you to expand the game almost to infinity: all herbs, mushrooms and fantasy stones, which means that new ones can be invented as much as you like. The developers have already promised to improve the shop and garden, the expansion of talents, the ability to make notes in recipes and save the compositions of legendary potions, as well as new solvents – and therefore new cards with recipes of potions. Therefore, to the question of whether it is worth buying it right now, I will answer this way: it's still very early, but it's time for a long time. Especially if you value non -standard puzzles and love interesting craft systems that do not boil down to the banal dumping of ingredients in one pile.

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