A few days ago, I saw someone playing a speed run of Potion Craft, well actually I have learnt about the game ages ago from some game reviews, it was just that I didn't cared much about playing the game, and the speed run reminded of this game again. Strangely, that night, I dreamt about playing the game, and was like "wow, this game is so fun!".

When I woke up, I was considering whether to buy this game. Although the game mechanics sound interesting, I worried if it is actually too difficult, and I won't have fun playing it. Well, when weekend strikes, I noticed I'm basically free these few days, and decided to try playing it.

The main thing about this game is brewing potions. Everyday, you gather the ingredients in your backyard, brew whatever potions you need, sell them to visitors, or maybe use the potions to make crystals, which will be the ingredients of the Philosopher's Stone (the endgame goal). To create potions of different elements, there is a map with the marks of different potion types, to go to the destination you want, you use different ingredients, which goes different directions. And the more precise you land your potion on the mark, the higher quality the potion is.

My thoughts

My favourite part about this game is exploring the potion map. There are plenty of potion types around the map, and it will take quite a bit of time to find all of them. The potion marks might be also in very tight corners, so it is always a challenge to get them, especially if you don't have a large variety of ingredients. But when I finished collecting them all, and finished all the potions for the Philosopher's Stone, there is a feeling of accomplishment, it IS really fun! Also when I aligned the potion and the mark perfectly, it really scratches my brain very good, it was like my perfectionism is satisfied.

I finished the game quite quickly, probably less than 24 hours total, perhaps because I chose the easiest difficulty, so I recommend you to choose the in-game recommended difficulty if you wanna buy it.

Something that didn't match my taste is the lack of heavy story elements. The goal of the player is simple, is to create the Philosopher's Stone. Aside from that, there isn't much storylines with other characters or the worldbuilding. This game is still very fun though, it is just that I'm very into lore-heavy stuff.

Also I'm not sure if it is related to the difficult I chose, but I wish the requests are a bit more tricky to guess. The shop mechanic feels somewhat similar to Good Pizza, Great Pizza, they both have to serve customers with specific requests. But in the pizza game, the customers word their orders in bizzarely vague ways, and you have guess what they meant using your experience and a LOT of brain cells. While I don't wish Potion Craft to be too difficult (ugh I hate the wheat dough orders in Good Pizza Great Pizza), I kinda wish it follows a similar fashion to that.

Conclusion, I really recommend this game if you enjoy problem-solving stuff and exploring. It gave me quite a fun and relaxing time!

Finally, a question I thought of: Is Lavender interested in potion-making? I believe that she doesn't LIKE like potion stuff, as her main thing is practicing magic spells. She didn't make potions a lot when she's younger, still have to learn them though, just like how all of us have to learn weird math equations. But when she's older (which is now), she isn't draw magic within herself anymore, so she has to rely on external magic sources, and potions comes into use. She's probably surprised there comes a day she has to use potions this much.