As Wholesome Games Steam Celebration comes to a close, we would be remiss not to talk about the new cat on the block. Alchemist: The Potion Monger is a lovely first-person alchemist simulator by Art Games Studio S.A. You are a new arrival to this small island kingdom with your pet pup, ready to set up shop. Meet a variety of characters, discover alchemical ingredients and reagents, and bring home those dolla-dollar bills. Maybe you’ll even save some lives while you’re at it.

Funnily enough, this developer does in fact have another, earlier game called Alchemist Simulator. While the crafting system and art style are very similar, and you will definitely see some familiar furniture, Alchemist: The Potion Monger is much more focused on an RPG storyline and world exploration.

Your New Day to Day

Alchemist: The Potion Monger is ultimately a very relaxed game. You can take things as slow or as fast as you want to, and the game actually encourages you to take your time exploring everything it has to offer. You have a house with several rooms to decorate as you please, and a number of pets to adopt. The pets aren’t just a side-feature either. If you go out wandering with your dog, then they’ll alert you to new ingredients laying around, or nearby enemies. All of the animals are also very keyed in with the elements, and can help you identify the uses of various ingredients.

 The local townsfolk are also very helpful. Aside from the shopkeepers, talking with NPCs can give you an extra bit of lore, or a hint at where your next quest might be. There are a few questlines outside of the main storyline, and you will be given some choices as to who to side with that may block or unlock optional content like the Black Market.

You’ll get especially familiar with Salem, the orange cat that purports to be your best middleman. He is essential to your business, connecting you with daily client contracts. Fulfilling orders lets you purchase more equipment and recipes for your business, among other things, and eventually you can open your own stall in the town square. Truly any Potion Monger’s dream come true.

Oh, did I forget to mention that everyone’s an animal?

Because you are. You get the choice of being any number of anthropomorphized animals, each with their own unique buffs and debuffs. The cat is quick, but has little health while the bear is hearty, but quite slow. Foxes earn more, but spend more too. Goats level up quickly, but their potions don’t last as long, while mice experience all effects, both positive and negative, from potions or the environment, much longer. You get the idea. 

Potions for the Win!

While Alchemist: The Potion Monger is a casual RPG, there is the occasional enemy to fight. Mostly you’ll be fighting a variety of slimes – nothing a sword or a good stick can’t handle. The full release has also sprinkled tenacious wolves across the land, and they take a little more cunning to deal with. As you progress through the story, you will activate a cursed blood moon. The enemies that appear during these nights are much tougher, but they also make great practical experiments. You craft a variety of potions, including ones that heal, give you status buffs, or cause damage. I particularly enjoyed throwing bombs into a crowd. Just watch your aim in town, or you’ll have all the townspeople coming down on your head as well.

Speaking of potions, the crafting system in Alchemist: The Potion Monger is splendidly immersive. There are an abundance of alchemical tools, each with a unique purpose. Every ingredient has at least one property on the elemental wheel, and the tools help you change properties. You can move up or down the wheel, strengthen or weaken a property, eliminate properties you don’t need, ect. A few potions can be made with simple, raw ingredients, but most need you to refine everything until you have exactly the properties you need. Get it wrong, and your potion will blow up in your face.

Even the brewing process is a bit of a minigame. I found the Xbox version to be easier than the PC version, since you just have to press the right buttons rather than draw shapes through bubbles. Thankfully, you don’t have to go through all of that every single time you want to brew something. Purchase an enchanted paper, and you can record your process to mass produce potions.

A Vibrant World

The art style for Alchemist: The Potion Monger is bright and vivacious. It is simple, with highly saturated colors and flat shading that makes you feel like you’re inhabiting an animated universe. In fact, it would be very fun to play through the game pretending you’re in an isekai. The music is also quite soothing, featuring a lot of oboe, flute, and piano against the sounds of nature. It is easy to forget there is a music track at all, it is so unobtrusive. That is, until you’re in the heat of battle and the strings come in to hype you up. Different bosses also have specific themes, which makes them especially fun to fight.

There are a few biomes you get to explore, from calm beaches to treacherous swamps, lush meadows, and freezing mountaintops. Most environments are easy to navigate and have unique enemies and ingredients for you to find.  There’s also a very useful portal system. Who knows why the townsfolk weren’t using it themselves, but every time you reach a new area you activate the regional portal. It makes having to get around the island much easier, since you get to avoid the hazardous transition zones. Just remember to pack a few poison resistance and warming potions for the late game areas!

A Lot in a Glance

The UI in Alchemist: The Potion Monger is very user friendly. While optimized for PC gameplay in most aspects, traversing the menus isn’t too laborious on console. By pinning recipes in your journal and holding or hovering over ingredients on your shelves you can easily see everything you need to know at a glance. The elemental wheel is also easily accessed for reference, and you can check what each refinement on a tool will do before you use it. And while you don’t have a minimap, the Skyrim-like bar at the top helps you locate your objectives.

An Upgraded Experience

Now that Alchemist: The Potion Monger has entered full release, a lot of new content has been implemented. There are new potions, new quests, new furniture, and a whole lot more! Plus, a number of highly requested bug fixes and balancing updates were made, so let’s dive in.

Firstly, the biggest addition is the new bundle system. Most of the main characters and shopkeepers have potions they want from you, and handing those off nets you not only gold and reputation points, but high level items. I mean, why pay for a holy font or demonic altar when you can just fulfill a quest for it, right? These bundles will certainly keep you busy in between contracts.

There are new enemies, bosses, and side-quests to face too. The lighthouse finally has its resident mouse, Matt, who will set you up against the biggest, baddest wolf of all. The swamp is more hazardous than ever before, now that the water is poisoned. The dead also rise from the murk in the dead of night, making a couple of quests especially difficult. There’s also a new visitor to the farmlands if you side with Eve, so be on the look out for suspicious goat activity.

Thankfully, Art Games Studio S.A. has been hard at work smoking out all the bugs in the demo and early access. Most important to me are the changes to the cave and light potion. Apparently lots of people were having the same issue, so now the layout and light radius have been altered to balance the experience better. I was able to make it through on my first run, even!

Even more important to me than that, though, is the fact that we now have beds! Yes, you no longer have to spend the whole game in a sleeping bag. And they even come in different colors. The attic is also open now, and makes a great place to stash away my demonic altar from prying eyes. Alchemy takes all types, you know – no need to judge.

Overall

I do honestly enjoy Alchemist: The Potion Monger. It’s a fun little adventure that can be as serious or as silly as you want it to be. The world makes for a good sandbox if all you want to do is play around with potions, and is enjoyable for all ages. I especially love the well thought-out crafting system. Its something that I’m going to have to implement in my TTRPGs for the alchemically-minded.

That being said, this game definitely still has plenty of room to grow. I’ll be following Art Games Studios for future updates, as I’m sure they still have plenty of ideas to play with. Whether you’re into Alchemist: The Potion Monger for the gold or the gaffs, I’d definitely recommend giving this one a try.

Alchemist: The Potion Monger is out now in Early Access on Steam and Xbox. It retails for $13.99. NeverMore Niche was provided a review key on Xbox and PC from Art Games Studio S.A.