Alchemist's Alcove

The sense of discovery you get from concocting a new spell or upgrade is incredible. And having that knowledge for subsequent runs and just rolling through the early game is very satisfying. Anyone who likes roguelikes should gives this a try.

I only played one run of AA, but that was more than enough for me to decide that I did not want to play anymore. It lasted ~4 hours. I enjoyed the first hour or two. According to the achievement, I reached the Church of Sulfur which at the time of writing. I assume this is about midgame as ~15% of players have reached it, but it is hard to tell. My run ended when I decided that I did not want to keep playing after I misplaced my phoenix feather, and let a minotaur kill me. Alchemist's Alcove has a nice hook, some cool spritework, and some fun ideas, but it fails to execute in a fun way. The crafting system feels like the developers played "Doodle God" or "Infinite Craft," and then decided to make it painfully tedious to play. To clarify, the crafting tree itself was a lot of fun. It's the actual gameplay that was miserable. There are items all over the floor, all the time, in every cleared room. This becomes a problem quickly. The games mechanics encourage you to hoard items within empty rooms with an item portal system that feels like a bizzaro work around for a menu. Within these item lairs, you then have interact with the crafting system under arbitrarily monotonous mechanics. You need to have at least one item that you are crafting with in your inventory. If an item you need is behind other items, you must walk over and pick that item up. On the way over, your character will fill its inventory with anything that it walks across for no reason. The game implements a specific key press to pick things up. There is no reason to pick things up on contact. The game also showcases that it is capable of having an item and a player occupy the same tile, so it is not a technical issue. When I was finally able to craft an item, it was exciting! This is what kept me playing for as long as I did. Looking at the sprite, reading the flavor text, and trying to figure out what items did was fun until I realized, that actually using the items... was anything but. Combat in this game is incredibly shallow. It boils down to whoever brings the bigger stick wins. Every room is an empty square. There is no line of sight or other hiding mechanics as far as I could tell. There is no outrunning enemies. There is no resource management because items are abundant. You don't even have to manage your health outside of the early game because the enemies should be disintegrated before they can even reach you or you lose. Even with enemy weaknesess, resistances, and infighting, the combat still fails to deliver because there is no choice. There is no outplay. You have either crafted the appropriate item or you have not. Enemies only exist to ensure that the player has spent enough time interacting with the terrible crafting system to be allowed to continue. Overall there is a lot to like about the game, especially in the artistic/atmosphere department, but it is riddled with beyond questionable design choices that make the game feel more like a chore than something I would do willingly.

Challenging old school roguelike with minimalist graphics. Inventory slots are limited to 16 and you can craft new spells, tools, or weapons. After defeating the enemy, some will drop items that can be combined. There are 3 exits in a room and you need to use the compass to find the next correct room. As you venture deeper, enemies become stronger and you can find better weapons and spells. [h1] Pros: [/h1] - Variety of recipes to discover. - Retro art is reminiscent of roguelike games in the 1990's and early 2000's. [h2]Cons: [/h2] - No progression besides finding new recipes for crafting. - Enemies outnumber you 4 or 5 to 1 in many cases. If you don't have a spell or weapon that can kill the enemy quickly, you are dead. Outrunning is not an option in later levels because enemies are spread throughout the room. - Limited inventory slots means you will be dropping items multiple times on a run just to craft a weapon or spell. [h3]Suggestions: [/h3] - Offer a cozy mode with reduced amount of enemies per room. - Add re-bindable keys so player can choose certain shortcuts for actions. - Distinguish weapons and spells with different colors or symbols so its obvious to player when crafting. [b] Conclusion: [/b] A traditional roguelike game that uses the classic formula of turn based gameplay and procedural content, but does not update it for a new audience. I did not feel compelled to try additional runs after unlocking recipes because enemies dropped random items and you are constantly outnumbered. Only about 15% reached the late game content and this game requires patience that I am unwilling to grind for. [quote=author][url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/32732116-IndieGems/] Follow IndieGems for more reviews like this one.

For context, I played this game in demo for almost 3 hours, so at the time of this review I have about 4 hours of solid gameplay (progression transferred to release). I'm pretty confident that I'm still in the early/mid game, and from snippets of conversation on the Discord server it goes way, way deeper than just beating the game. My spoiler-free opinion: This game absolutely rocks, my first few hours have been absolute pure magic of discovery and the core systems are deep, with a lot of potential to explore. Overall, the exploration is decent, the combat is good, and the art and sound are excellent. But these are all just window dressing for the greatest crafting system I have ever played, and it's not even close. This game makes me FEEL like an alchemist, madly bashing random things together until POOF a new discovery. The world is but a window into a glorious maze of recipes, endless combinations, and arcane secrets. There is a solid chance that this is going to be my GOTY. Maybe it was made for me, but I think it's just that good. Basic Summary and More Description: **Minor spoilers ahead** Every run you start with almost nothing, only your knowledge (stored in the in-game journal) You've got a dagger, a glove, maybe a magic scroll, and a journal. That's it. Alright, you clear the room with the dagger. Now you've got some goop, some ash, sulfur, maybe a stick. And then the magic starts. Two items can be combined to make a new item. Not every pair works, but the game indicates what will work with a highlight and when you've discovered everything about an item (very satisfying). Common items form other items (of varying usefulness), which form other items, blossoming into hundreds of crafting recipes for weapons, spells, food, and more. But you don't know them yet, every new room brings another aha moment. Your journal swells, and every single recipe YOU discovered. Soon you will find yourself sitting in a room absolutely stuffed with chemicals, remains, and magic, madly combining, filling pages of your journal, discovering spells that double, quadruple your fire power. Also side note: The developer fixed one of the most annoying game design problems of the game with a pretty brilliant solution during development, definitely super open to feedback.

Really fun little roguelike. Not as hard and much more accessible than other titles in the genre. Discovering new recipes and slowly figuring out the game is so much fun. There's some QoL hiccups here and there (why is combining things in the inventory is just a click vs combining them on the ground where its bound to the Alt key? That just leads to mistakenly combining stuff. Why can't I remap the controls ?) but nothing too too bad and certainly nothing it doesn't make up for in fun. EDIT: the dev is very reactive. QoL hiccups immediately fixed.

Combined a rotting carcass with some fungi on the floor to create a poisonous gas, which I then lit on fire and got a flamethrower. With that flamethrower I cleared enough rooms to find enough sticks to combine with my glove and make an Inspector Gadget-style arm, with which I've accidentally killed myself 5 times. Absolute peak. Absolutely amazing and the developer is always hearing feedback from us! Will be making a more in-depth review (with recommendations for players). Game is still new- Make sure to experiment, share your strategies, thoughts & ideas when you can! - beta tester "Evilest Kobold"

I did not expect this game to grab me like it did. It's an easy sell on concept alone, but i really want to emphasize that the execution is there too. Multiple times I've audibly said "oh that's sick!" By stumbling on a recipe for something cool, or figuring out what to do with a weird ingredient I'd found and left in the corner of my stash. I'm still early so I don't know how replayability will feel once you know all the good recipes and strategies, but even if it's just a one and done thing for me there's been enough cool stuff in here that it's an easy recommend, and it's a really cool framework that's ripe for expanding upon with content updates if the devs go that route. It has the sauce, as the kids would say. I also want to quickly shoutout general accessibility. It's one thing to be mouse accessible in this genre, but it's another for it to actually feel comfortable to use. I haven't tried controller yet, but the fact that it's an option is greatly appreciated. It's also just an easy gateway game to recommend to people who would otherwise be put off by the trad roguelike genre. Looking forward to playing much more!

Absolutely having a blast, used to play NetHack, Rogue and other ASCII roguelikes on my Linux machines so I fell in love with the demo. The full game is everything I could have asked for. Gameplay is fun and intuitive, music and art are wonderful, and the crafting mechanic takes the show! Highly recommend.

This game is super cool, and amazingly deep. I feel like I've just scratched the surface of all the combinations of spells and abilities you can discover. The art style, sound design, enemy design, ect are all so well-thought out and you can tell a lot of care went into making each part of the game. The game doesn't hold your had by any means, and it can be quite overwhelming, but the discovery is a large part of the fun of this game.

absolutely loving this game so far! I was already enjoying the basic crafting gameplay but after unlocking a couple of super transformative spoiler items I feel like it's really exploded in terms of options. A very creative roguelike that gives a really awesome feeling of discovery. Recommended