I adore this game so much!! I had it on my wish list for ages because I didn't know that it is exactly the type of game I love. The banner art and game description truly do not do the game justice. I played through the whole game over a 43 hour period, and it was quite frankly addicting - I am already planning my second playthrough!
First off, the game comes in three difficulties - Cozy, Regular, and Capitalism. I played on cozy as I like to take my time and overthink every single decision, something that the game absolutely accommodated in the most fun way! It allowed me to go about completing the main objectives in whatever way I wanted and took off some of the timing limitations that the gameplay loop would otherwise have. It was therefore VERY cozy and I enjoyed taking my time to think up the best strategies!
Second off, I totally missed that there are dating sim elements to the game, and I therefore chose the Free Love option so that I could see the romance stories for all the characters (more on this later). The game also has a One Love setting that locks all other romance options once you enter into one relationship, and I really liked that the game was flexible like that in terms of playstyle preference when it comes to romancing NPCs.
The story is a quite simple, very common one for cozy games, but I feel like this game managed to create depth and connection where many others fail. The characters were interesting
The gameplay itself has several components:
Potion brewing - this is a bit of a puzzle minigame where you have to match the right ingredients together to make a potion. The puzzle part comes from the fact that each of the ingredients has a certain number of color coded “magimins” aka points, that need to be balanced to make the correct potion. This was very fun and allows the player to be quite creative with the ways in which they combined the different ingredients.
Selling potions - you have a storefront where you choose which potions to display and which to offer for sale (two different mechanics, although very linked) by arranging them on shelving in the store. Once potions have been arranged, you open up the store to customers, and begin another minigame, this time a deck building one! Similar to games like Slay the Spire, you accumulate cards (these are collected through getting to know the NPCs, more on them later) and then arrange them into the best deck to address the different types of customers, playing cards that take energy and that affects the sale price of the potion. So instead of slaying monsters, you are making profit!
Travelling - you yourself cannot collect ingredients, but there are several NPCs that you can buy them from! Beyond that, you can also send out NPCs to collect ingredients for you from a slowly expanding map. Travelling allows you to visit all the NPCs and to engage with the various services they offer, as well as chatting with them, giving them gifts, and romancing them or befriending them.
Romancing and befriending NPCs - by chatting with NPCs, spending time with them, and giving them gifts, you develop your relationships with them and slowly unlock cutscenes with each of them, which are fully voice acted. The voice action is phenomenal, and each NPC has a unique character and story, all of which I found to be well written and excellently paced. The art and animation for the game is also very pretty - and switched between a cute drawn style and 3D animation! I mentioned that I could romance all the characters, but I found myself actually preferring to befriend some of them as the befriending felt more compelling to me. Oh, also, the music in this game is AMAZING - each NPC has their own themed music and I Looooooved some of the tracks. Salt and Pepper have the best one, in my humble opinion, but that might just be because I love cats super much and enjoyed the combination of meows and pirate shanty (I will not elaborate, play the game to find out exactly what I mean).
As the game goes on, smaller gameplay elements unlock and there become more things to manage and use in your quest. I found that mechanics were introduced in a very easy to understand way, and in a way that made sense in the game quite well too. I never felt overwhelmed or like there was too much going on, it felt very balanced and well executed on all fronts.
All this to say: PLAY POTIONOMICS!!
Big thank you to the devs, I had an absolute blast!!!! <3
