Potion Explosion

A brilliant, fun and intriguing game, let down by very easy bots offline and the worst online play I have ever come across, your rank can randomly drop to 48 from 1500, games are constantly bugged, it's a shame this game has been let down as it had true potential. On the odd occasion where a game doesn't bug it can be quite enjoyable hence the 24 hours play time record but as it is majorly bugged i'd rate this 0.5 out of 5.

solo play 2h is enough

Right, so here's the thing about Potion Explosion on digital: I love the physical version. Proper love it. Them marbles clacking into your greedy little mitts is one of the great tactile joys of the hobby - up there with cracking a fresh box or the smell of a rulebook nobody's going to read. So naturally I thought, go on then, why not the digital equivalent? Same hit of dopamine, none of the faff, and crucially nothing for the cat to launch off the table at half three in the morning. And you know what? It's a decent port. Decent. The premise is lovely and, bless it, idiot-proof - which suits me down to the ground. Everyone starts with potions to brew, each one demanding certain bits. You pluck a marble out the dispenser, everything above it slides down like the world's most passive-aggressive Tetris, and if two of the same colour clatter into each other - bang, explosion, and you're scooping up the lot like a kid who's just spotted the good biscuits are out. Then you cook your potions, bank your points, set off some smug little power, grab another recipe. Only there's a catch: you've got a tiny tank to stash your leftovers, so hoard like a greedy sod and you're properly stuck. Most points wins. Simple. A child could learn it. I did, and I've got the emotional range of one, so. Now. The caveats. Oh, the caveats. There's a bewildering pile of bugs and some genuinely, teeth-grindingly maddening glitches once you go online. Broken games that just sort of... exist. In limbo. Purgatory for the digitally damned. And there's no log to tell you whether the thing's been marked a win or a loss, so you're left gawping at the screen like it owes you a tenner. No chat function neither, so when it all goes pear-shaped you can't even tell the other bloke what's happening - the pair of you just sat there in mutual, dignified silence, like two men at a bus stop that's clearly not coming. And before you ask: no, don't matter if I plough through in one go or wander back later. The bugs are loyal, them. Salt of the earth. They wait for me. So I mostly play on my tod. Partly 'cause I'd sooner have the physical game out with a mate, and partly 'cause the online experience gently invited me to have a long, hard think about where it all went wrong. The AI's alright - fun, even - but calling it a challenge would be doing a lot of heavy lifting. It's a skirmish, not a campaign. Which, honestly, suits how I play anyway: on my own, no rush, weighing up every move like I'm defusing a bomb rather than sorting coloured balls into an order. So: a fun game you'll learn in minutes but happily lose hours to. Complex enough to make you think, simple enough to enjoy on repeat. It asks just enough of your brain to feel clever without ever making you feel like you've done a day's graft.

Potion explosion is a fun little match-type game, good for zoning out and just chilling. It has a good degree of challenge conditions if you want to mix up the potions and challenge boundaries, would recommend.

An incredibly fun game that can be learned in minutes, but involved enough to play for hours. Just complex enough to require a little thought, but simple enough to enjoy casually over and over again. Highly recommend!

Please fix the online play! It locks up in both Mac & Windows - you have to leave the game and rejoin to be able to play your turn. Worked fine before the switch to Horrible Games - Horrible!

Needs an undo last move option. I do have to wonder if in the base game you are a) required to preserve any unused ingredients in your stash (or if you can play defensibly and opt not to so your opponent can't steal) and b) if you can opt to stash an ingredient (I.e. for use with a wild-card potion) instead of (what the game does) force you to fill in any matching slot in one of your active potions you're completing. For the latter, you can run into situations where you could have completed both potions, while the game forces you to play in a way where you can only complete one.

I enjoy this game for a bit of mindless entertainment while I'm doing something else. Having said that, it has some majorly annoying bits. Starting a game requires selecting your options every single time (which, if you always play with the same options, gets really boring really quickly) and chasing the "play" button all around the screen. If they remembered the last options used and kept the play button in the same location, like Carcassonne does, you could just triple tap the mouse, which would be infinitely less annoying. Also, selecting no sounds doesn't work - the option bar shows no sounds, but sounds still happen - so you have to redo it every time you open up the game. I know these issues are petty, but they are also unnecessary annoyances.