What’s Alchemist: The Potion Monger about?

Alchemist: The Potion Monger is a First-person Alchemist Simulator with RPG elements. ^You’re an apprentice alchemist who you play starting off as you move into a home with your pet dog that you get to redecorate as you progress also. You get to Explore the world, gather ingredients, and sell or use potions you craft to help others and fend off enemies. You get to learn more alchemy as you progress through the game and adopt more pets to help you with your alchemy knowledge. You can then use this knowledge to help others with tasks like growing crops or defeating ghouls or other bad folk around tyyour home.

What’s the gameplay and controls like?

When i first started playing Alchemist: The Potion Monger, It started off teaching you how to change some aspects of your new house then getting you to create some new potions. The movement controls were okay however the menu system for the potion making was not very intuitive and i found myself been asked to create potions that just were not listed in the “potion handbook” and it just confused me. I got frustrated by the menu and little to no helpful prompts to what i was supposed to do and almost just put the game down at this point as i couldn’t progress without creating “heal potion” or similar. The character select and pet name menu was also particularly awkward also and this would become a theme moving on.

How does the game look graphically?

Alchemist: The Potion Monger is a cell shaded game that keeps it simple and sports a cartoonish type UI that won’t tax your system too much. There are moments of explosions and particle effects ont he screen but they’re prety limited and not overly distracting. The world area is pretty limited also with small areas with enemies or small villages, that you can portal to from a portal in an arch found int he world with a swirling animation.

How’s the progression and replay ability?

So to progress in the game, you have to learn new potions and for you to do that you must collect ingredients and also sell and buy tools or ingredients from NPCs or complete various tasks and earn reputation points. As you learn to create new potions, they unlock on the potion creation screen that has 4 types earth, wind, fire and water.

The games story is almost non existent outside selling and buying potions with NPCs and doing the various tasks with the same characters. There is mini boss type scenarios were you can earn ingredients or new pets to help you along the story. The combat system is pretty janky and really takes away from the fights you rarely get to do in the game.

Conclusion

I really wanted to like Alchemist: The Potion Monger but its bad menu system and lack of real story stopped me from doing so. The world seems neglected and some features just fell short of been polished or fun. The limited NPC interaction didn’t have or do enough to keep me interested either. The potion making part of the game with it’s interaction and boiling animation and bright colours might keep the kids interested for a short while but will ultimately only do so for a short time.