While spending the summer at your grandfather’s old, creaky house, you muster up the courage to see what’s in cellar. Upon finding the curious collection of bottles down there, you realize your grandfather was once an alchemist! Now, it’s your turn to do some potion crafting. Find some ingredients, and you too can learn to make all sorts of colorful creations. Who knows, maybe you’ll even be able to sell them for coins too!

Warning: There will be some spoilers in text/images below.

What Is It?

Digital Hybrid – Players will need to use an app to scan ingredients and advance through the levels.

Hand Management – Players start with a hand of 3 ingredients every round which they’ll use to make potions. They need to discard ingredients as they use them, but they can buy more, and will replenish their hand from the deck as well; they must manage them appropriately to make the potions they need later.

Deduction – In later games, players can use information they learn about some ingredients to deduce what other ingredient combos will make.

Who Is It For?

  • 2 to 4 Players – Scales pretty well, but I think 3 might be my favorite
  • Ages 7 & Up / Family Weight Gamers – The game starts very light with not many mechanisms and steadily adds more features. If you play each level enough for everyone playing to be comfortable with it, moving to the next level will be a smooth transition for all ages
  • Fans of deduction, hand management, and contract fulfillment
  • Fans of a Alchemists who want to introduce it to younger players or lighter game fans
  • Players who don’t mind a digital component in board games

PROS

  • Fun theme
  • Aesthetics – Really cute art in the components and in the app
  • Components – Good sized screens, all around nice tokens, tiles, et cetera
  • App works well, very responsive, and super cute cut scenes between levels
  • Rules are well written and clear; introducing new content is very smooth
    • The gradual introduction of new content works well for the game, especially for the younger players
    • I also think the game just gets progressively more interesting as you get into the new elements
  • Love that the spaces on the triangle trackers are labeled so you know exactly where to put your potions as you make them
  • I like that you can always see what potion the next customer wants so you can try to plan ahead
  • I like the introduction of the artifacts in later levels which add in some special abilities and scoring opportunities players can purchase

CONS

  • I wish you did not need so many stickers to open later boxes or you could opt to just move ahead to the next level
  • There is definitely a lot of luck with making potions, especially early on in rounds, and with drawing your random ingredients. I’ve seen players get unlucky and end up with 3 of the same ingredient, forcing them to “combine” 2 just to do a swap.
  • The potion animation in the app felt a bit long, which slowed turns at times

Final Thoughts

I liked the original Alchemists but I also felt like it was a little too thinky for me, and just a little clunky in some areas. This is much lighter and luckier, but I also thought it was very smooth. It was fun to progress through the different levels and add more elements to the game, and by the end you have a very solid, light deduction game that also works as an introduction to build up to the original game.

Additional Information:
My Final Rating – 6/10
Designer – Matúš Kotry
Artist – David Cochard, Štěpán Drašťák, Dávid
Jablonovský, František Sedláček
Publisher – Czech Games Edition
MSRP – 49,95 €
Website

*I was provided a copy of this game to do this review*

If you like what I do, consider Supporting Me.