As of late, encountering an interesting game without micro-transactions, multiplayer, DLC and other notable functions of the modern gaming pipeline is quite strange. However, here comes Potionomics – a potion-brewing game from developer Voracious and publisher XSEED. Despite a relatively niche theme and gameplay, it is a full-fledged AA title with an original plot, fun gameplay and amazing content.
Potionomics follows energetic, kind-hearted and ambitious witch Sylvia who inherited a potion shop from her uncle. However, not everything is quite so bright: in addition to the shop, the uncle also left behind a substantial debt. A Warlock named Helena pinned this debt (an entire million gold!) on our protagonist whose only way out now is to win in a potion-brewing competition. Unless you want to lose the shop and go to jail, that is. Thankfully, Sylvia will not be completely alone in this quest. She will be aided by numerous creatures, from an owl named Owl that lives in her uncle’s shop to dryads, a walrus man and even pirate cats. You will also get to meet your rivals in the potions contest who can become loyal friends if you are willing to put in the work.
Potionomics combines a handful of genres together: it offers a visual novel-like opportunity to build relationships with other characters, shop management gameplay with the option to change up the decorations, upgrade utensils and arrange everything the way you want. Of course, players can find an in-depth alchemy simulator that will have you try and experiment. Surprisingly, there are also elements of dungeon-crawling that you will send your friends to for unique ingredients and shop decorations. Last but least is the CCG part of the game. But you have only 50 in-game days to try it all out.
All of the above is available straight from the very start of the game. Every aspect is tightly intertwined with others, it would be impossible to exclude one without breaking the game. And, even though you will have to be on top of your game from the beginning, taking care of many things at once, the game is nothing short of delightful to play. Each of the parts got a surprising amount of developer attention: the visual novel part is woven into the plot, the card game helps dilute the routine, store management is interesting, and the alchemy part forces you to think with its entertaining complexity.
Let’s dive further into each aspect: this is our Potionomics PC review, and it’s time to get brewing!
The main element of the game is the potion-brewing, that is decided by the elements and the balance among them. There are 5 “atoms” in Potionomics: red, green, yellow, blue and purple. All ingredients consist of various numbers and compositions of those “atoms”, from a single pure one to all five present in varying degrees.
When brewing a potion, you have to follow a basic recipe. For example, to acquire a healing potion, you must match green and red “atoms” in a ratio of 1 to 1. Creating a potion using 30/30 atoms will result in producing medium health potion, providing about 5 HP. Meanwhile, making 120/120 potion will grant you a huge health potion that restores 10 HP at a pop.
Keeping to the potion balance has a chance of empowering your creation. Creating a 118/120 potion has a chance of giving it extra stars above the base level while painstakingly brewing a perfect 120/120 might give it additional 3 stars. On the other hand, if you break the balance and make, say, 110/140 potion, it might lose a couple of stars and lower its own class. Speaking of classes, there are 6, from the weakest to the pristine, each class also has 5 stars. Thus, your 1st class potion with 5 stars has a chance of upgrading to the 2nd class. Sometimes it will also lose out on the overall price because of these stars, but it is something for later.
Every usable ingredient has a certain number of “atoms” and, alas, in most cases they have terrible values. I’m talking like 6-13-18-27-64 and so forth, which makes the process of alchemy quite complex as you have to follow basic recipe balance. Just tossing things into the cauldron and hoping for the better won’t work, you have to think, count and experiment in order to get the best possible results.
Additionally, every ingredient has a number of assigned marketing features: sweet or disgusting taste, pleasant smell or stinking aroma, looking wonderful or like garbage at first sight, etc. Each such trait increases or decreases the overall price of the finished potion and while it doesn’t matter much what kind of potions you make for heroes that venture out to get reagents, you might want to craft clients’ potions with particularly favorable traits. As for the competitions… Each positive effect grants +5% to the price while the negatives reduce it.
Both Sylvia’s clients and friends will sometimes have interesting orders – special potions with unique characteristics that are needed in a span of a limited time. If you don’t manage to do it in, say, 3 days, that’s it. The order is canceled, leaving the client unhappy. But even in this situation we have a reliable friend who can help out – a charming succubus with an impressive… skill set. For a small fee, she can add a marketing feature to all your potions. In rare cases, her help can provide multiple features, up to 3!
At first, the gameplay elements might seem too intricate and complex but as you get involved you will understand them almost right away. The math involving atoms is limited by two-digit numbers, the signs are all written on ingredients and even have their own grouping that is easy to follow. As a result, unclear and complex alchemy turns into an exciting and addictive gameplay mechanic that will act as a central pillar of Potionomics.
I spent many hours experimenting with reagents to reach the perfect marketing attributes, potion potency, quality and price. The potion quality is something that you will need for tournaments and it is this characteristic that will be the sword of Damocles in your playthrough. If you didn’t manage to brew the potion of the required quality and of the price that is at least close to that of your opponents’, it’s time to load the previous save. Sometimes you would also get the strongest potion that features 5 negative marketing characteristics and wonder where to stuff it now.
While the tournaments only care about the level of your potions, their quality and marketing values, the prices in stores also dynamically change depending on the weather of regions around the city. As the weather changes, it can affect positive and negative effects on the buyers. For example, a storm can reduce the price of health potions while a drought will affect the cost of mana potions. Meanwhile, good, clear weather will add value and price to some of your brews as far as the buyers are concerned.
Players have their own way of affecting and changing the weather thanks to another friend. Ordering certain ingredients, players can cause negative states to appear in various regions. If you order in bulk, you can also receive rare or even legendary reagents.
The second part of the mechanic is linked to the shop management. You have cauldrons that are used to brew the potions – and you have to place them somewhere, which means you have to repair the shop to increase the available space, you need to buy and/or upgrade new cauldrons to increase the limit on the number of reagents and atoms, you will have to take care of barrels used to infuse potions which, in turn, will affect their price. There will be many more decisions to make in terms of the store decor that will attract or scare away your customers.
A number of new recipes for potions, reagents as well as various cards and interior items will open as you progress through the game, without dropping a hundred options on you at once. However, even the choice of the shop window that will feature promotional potions to attract customers might captivate you for quite a long time around mid-game. Also, shelves for selling potions will please you with additional increase in price.
The next aspect of the game is trade and negotiation, presented as a card game where you need to both collect cards into the deck and choose the ones you need.
Imagine this situation: you have brewed a high quality potion with good parameters such as great taste, nice smell and beautiful appearance, and now you need to sell it. Your customer wants to buy it immediately for the standard price and your job is to raise it as much as you can by haggling since you really need the money.
The negotiation process is represented by an easy to understand card battle. The customer has a certain amount of patience responsible for how many turns they will take haggling with you. Sylvia on the other hand has a Stress counter that directs how many turns she can keep up. You won’t be able to keep the client for long, while patience can be increased with certain cards, it is nonetheless not endless. Your stress will get in the way as well, the higher it is, the more negative cards you will draw with every turn.
Your goal is to increase the client’s interest (and the potion’s price!) by advertising with your deck of cards while fitting into the customer’s Patience counter/Sylvia’s Stress counter.
Your attacks increase the interest, while the protective cards block the Stress counter from customers’ nagging. Reaching 100% Stress will simply drag our heroine to sleep for the rest of the day. Your deck can feature up to 20 cards of all types and properties. Some increase the client’s Patience, others lower the cost of the cards, some have special requirements such as “play first” or “play last”. You can get new cards from friends as your relationships grow. Although some cards for the high level of friendship (8 or 9) are quite disappointing. While I won’t call them exactly useless, nevertheless they don’t match the effort required to get to the relationship level to receive them.
There are only 20 cards total in the deck and the negotiation goes for 3, maybe 4 rounds. Of course, not all cards are equally useful and there are some not even worth being added to the deck. Out of all the cards going through your hands, about half are playable and optional and very few are must have. Building a deck by the end of the game is an enjoyable task, and the randomizer brings its own interesting spins.
The visual novel as a part of the game also has its own appeal. All characters and opponents are well-written, have a good, complex story and their own behavior patterns and quirks. It is a pleasure to communicate with everyone throughout the game, and Potionomics makes you want to see how story developers throughout the events. Every character is unique, some sell and upgrade cauldrons, some hunt for ingredients, others offer firewood, etc. And every one of them can become your friend or, in some cases, even a romantic partner. Also the level of friendship with characters will grant you new cards with their unique special effects.
These characters have their unique animations and emotions perfectly conveyed by the game. To sum it up, characters feel like actual people that you want to spend time with over a 3D prop for the story. The lively hero Mint, bard-rocker Xid, secretive and gloomy ingredient merchant Quinn, calm and positive dryad Saffron – at first glance they might seem like the typical clichéd character, but the more you learn of them, the stronger your friendship is, the more of their features, secrets and even personal experiences will be available to you. Even the pirate cats will let you pet them – but only if you reach the maximum point of their friendship!
The romantic part of the relationships has gotten a lot of developer attention and is built extremely competently. Since you are in a small city, you will not get to have an affair with multiple people at once. No, only one other character can occupy the heart of our heroine. The rest of the characters will treat your blossoming romance with understanding, offer friendship and reassurance, and try to take care of your love lines. Sometimes even going as far as expressing fear that flirting with them might ruin your relationship, which makes the game feel more alive.
Any meeting with friends comes in the form of interesting conversations in which you can choose what to say to them: support or encourage, speak out negatively or offer reassurance. The reaction of the NPC will depend on your choices. Calm, quiet discussions of grown-up problems are sometimes quite striking in their thoughtfulness, even in such a seemingly simple game.
All the encountered people will visit your shop, with their character affecting their behavior in the haggling card game: the walrus-blacksmith will start with protection while the business-moth has a minimum amount of patience because she’s always in a hurry!
When it comes to collection reagents, there are several ways to go about that: send friends out to gather ingredients, purchase from mercenaries, smuggle from pirate cats or directly purchase from a merchant that first needs to have the ingredient in order to study it and figure out how to start acquiring it.
The city is surrounded by vast lands, desert, overgrown forest, dragon mountains and many other locations that can be explored by your friendly heroes, provided you equip them with a variety of potions to assist in their travels. Every hero can take up a certain amount of potions that will be spent during the adventure and, in turn, grant you reagents you request. Potions of health, vials of mana, protection from elements and curses – all of that needs to be given to the heroes before they start the quest. The overall amount, quality and atoms of reagents that will be brought back by your friends is astonishing. Level up your friendships and give them some good consumables – and voila, you’ll get 2-3 legendary reagents, a dozen of the regular ones and maybe even sometimes to decorate your store!
On the other hand, you can hire mercenaries from the guild. After receiving a certain fee, they will go to clear out a certain location to get you needed ingredients. However, it will upset the balance of the ecosystem and thus cause negative weather conditions for the next day.
And, finally, you can give reagents to the merchant named Quinn that will add it to the wares for a significant fee after having studied it. Even the rarest legendary reagents will be available for purchase, albeit in a small amount and only starting with the next day.
The visuals manage to capture your heart immediately and irrevocably. Both the 2D and the 3D animations are gorgeous, every conversation among the heroine and the NPCs feels lively due to their emotional facial expressions, overall design and the way it manages to convey characters through minuscule emotions. Charismatic villains, bright and expressive allies, mysterious heroes – the game will introduce all of those and more, and make an amazing job of it.
Charming soundtrack echoes the wonderful visuals with 50 tracks of a total duration of just a bit over hour and half – for each of the characters, key story events and shop screens. There is orchestral music, choir, atmospheric folk and even modern electronics. And how about a pirate shanty that consists of meowing kitties?
However, Potionomics is not faultless and has its own weaker sides. One of them is the overall time management.
The entirety of the game takes place over the course of 50 in-game days, 6 hours in each. Every action you make takes time, from visiting friends to actually selling your potions. And, while you may want to become friends with everyone, you won’t be able to do that simply due to the time constraints. A simple meeting takes time and, even though every chat opens characters up from unusual sides and gives you deeper insights, you will have to choose and limit yourself. You can’t spend all your time on making friends because you still need to get ingredients, brew potions and sell them. My inner overachiever is in shambles, and my dream of becoming friends with everyone, solving all the mysteries and getting all ingredients is never to be.
The usefulness of many cards is simply ridiculous, seriously. Slightly less than half of the overall cards are playable but even less than that are actually good.
The game also features incredibly slow loading screens. And, while you might panic in the beginning due to the time constraints, by the end of the game you find yourself wondering what are you going to do with all that money and hundreds of ingredients.
To sum it up, the game will blow you away with intertwined mechanics, wonderfully made features and thoughtful gameplay additions. The visuals, music and humor are just bombastic and will grant you many happy moments with Sylvia and other characters. And, although it has its weaknesses, it is one of the best potion-making games I have ever played.
Note: the Steam version of the game is a verified purchase by the author.
