Apotheker Reviews

More people should know about this game!! It's cozy and chill with nice music and satisfying crafting mechanics. I played the game in casual mode and finished the story in 3 hours. There is still endless mode after that but I missed having customers visit me in the store (it happens but not nearly as often.) It's nice seeing how your customers react to your potions. There are also some dialogue choices which is a nice touch and feels more interactive.

Challenging potion-brewing puzzle game with intriguing characters, plenty of mysterious backstories, and all the ingredients and tools you need to either save your shop or blow yourself up trying. Potions get increasingly complex as the game goes on and so do the decisions about which potions to brew and for who!

[b]Hidden gem - STRONG RECOMMENDATION[/b] Personally I don't like management games much. Or potionmakers (pet peeve about witches, especially 'cute' ones) But this game is something different, and I really loved ! [b]The short: Play with lots of freedom in choosing from a huge range of plain-to-extraordinary ingredients and tools, to make lots of potions in the old potion-makers shop in the village, to save your old granny from dying. Explosions will happen! Disgusting and weird potions will also happen!! [/b] Pleasant and unstressed. Can be played in short stretches or longer. Replayability. No bugs or glitches, works fine on even simple gear and mouse. Three levels of difficulty - I tried easy and normal. Both were very calm and pleasant experiences, no time pressure, all potions can be redone if not working out. And your shop will stay standing even after explosions ;-) And there's an endless mode too :-) Looks sort of like a shop management game, but is really more of a quest solving puzzly sort of game with quite a bit of underlying story. But all action happening in-store. Choices matter a bit, in the here and now, though less I think for the overarching story as such. It's old-fashioned and nice-looking (although some odd modern slang in there as well). Characters somewhat formulaic but still enjoyable (the crazy scientist, hearty farmer-woman, stiff business type, etc.) Basically: You've been handed your sick gran's old potion shop, and you have a fortnight to manage to make a potion to make her well, or else she'll die. To help you do so, you have to make potions for other people in the village to earn potion ingredients and tools - some given in thanks and some bought for money. Your choices affect people, and village life. You can make up to 3 potions per day (or opt out by 'cleaning the shop'), and you have choice in which ones you want to undertake. You start out with only a few ingredients and tools, and need to satisfy customers to get more. There is no 'one preset solution' to how to make the potions, especially later into the game with many tools and ingredients to choose from. ---------------- SPECIAL NOTES: [u]Animals/cruelty[/u]: Many ingredients are animal parts, and I think it would be difficult to get through the game using only non-animal ingredients (I don't know [i]what[/i] I'd have done without those frog hearts, for example. Or the slugs...). A few quests involve killing or maiming animals, but those can just be refused. [u]Killing[/u]: For two of the story lines attached to the 5 main characters (farmer, scientist, mercenary, revolutionary, businessman) - there comes a point where you're asked to make lethal potions. One can be resolved into something non-lethal, although that isn't apparent until later in the game (- and if you're asked for a protecting potion for someone with asthma, then make that a priority!). And the other one, at the end, appears to not have killed after all, only incapacitated. Although, again, that isn't clear until afterwards. If you're feeling uncomfortable with not knowing how those lethal potion quests will turn out, the game can be played - and granny saved ! - even with refusing those quests, and 'losing' their storylines. Although the achievements can't be 100% without them. [u]Hints[/u]: A couple of practical tips I wish I had been aware of from the start: - It is possible, but very, very finicky to make Granny's healing potion without any Vial of inspiration at all. It's a little bit tricky but doable with 1 vial (just watch out for that instability!). But you can be given a vial from [i]more than 1[/i] 'friend' during the one fortnight, if you juggle their requests so they fit into your available days. And saving Gran gets a lot easier with 2 or more vials. I didn't realise that until my 3rd game... - Understanding the increasing and decreasing of characteristics: For ingredients and for potions, increasing means making it more extreme from its present level (a bit blue becomes more blue, for example). And vice versa for decrease (a bit blue becomes less blue - but does not cross over the neutral into green). - The game forum is not very active, but there's good and friendly help to be had on their Discord. If needed.

A hidden gem of an potion shop game (: You add ingredients to the cauldron, process the ingredients, and tweak the potion until it fits the criteria of what the customers want. Each request is a different puzzle to solve. But be careful, as each action you take to develop your potion destabilizes it, and if stability reaches 0, your potion blows up! You can optimize your potions to be more cost-efficient, use ingredients that are more stable and diluted for more challenging brews, and really develop your own strategy for putting together potions. There are several solutions to the same problems! You must pick 3 potion requests to fulfill each day, and the requests are full of personality. There are petty people trying to get revenge, daughters and sons who need cures for their parents, scientists trying to conduct experiments, explorers, chess grandmasters, soldiers, and more. You get a great feel for the world outside of your apothecary through just the requests and the newspaper headlines. You can choose requests based on the pay, the ingredients they'll give you, or whether you think you can meet the criteria. Why care about the ingredients they'll give you? That's how you unlock more ingredients to use in your potions. The goal of the story campaign is to, by the end of 14 days, brew the elixir of life to save your grandmother from dying. One of its restrictions is that you can only use up to 1 of most ingredients, so it is essential to unlock plenty of ingredients and potion brewing tools! Also, you can choose the requests based on how helping that person will impact the world. Will you save the poor and sick? Help the little people by helping them to prank greedy CEOs? Help people give their loved ones tastier meals to share together? You'll get to read about the impact you've made in the newspaper headlines each day. Very well done, and also I hear that there's an endless mode now, which is honestly just amazing :D

A relaxing, easy puzzle with a light storyline. Good fun for a few hours.

This is a fun little game, and the addition of an endless mode is fun. although not so great that i have to deal with the consequences of my actions, lol. I enjoy the challenge of balancing the potions and enjoy the story. I wish I had more save slots but three is still a good number, and allows for a game on each difficulty even. I do wish that there was more description on the differences between the difficulties- on the hardest difficulty the amount of time potions take to make is drastically different, and that isn't told to you at all. It was a startling change from the other two difficulties. Still, that doesn't ruin the experience or anything, and it definitely ups the difficulty so well done there. I enjoy playing this game and hope to soon 100% achievements.

Fun puzzle game with a really cool core mechanic. Balancing ingredients, tools, and money in just the right order and balancing different tasks for different people makes the game exactly the right balance of challenging and enjoyable. I enjoyed supporting both sides of a violent coux and being paid handsomely for it.

Great game with an awesome story, music, and a lot of experimenting! Fun to play if you want to relax or if you want to stream it so your friends can yell at you to not keep adding glass shards to your potion.

TL;DR - This is a really fun game and the devs are super responsive and nice!! I'd like to start that I have a bias towards games that include themes of alchemy, so when I found out about this game it was an instant buy. But to my loss, I had a bug that rendered the game unplayable, but such is the way sometimes. So I emailed the support team about this bug and got a response in 15 minutes! The bug was patched within a few days and I can now enjoy a game I've been looking forward to. Now onto my thoughts about the game-play; it's a puzzle-game for sure. Not particularly hard, but enough that I can have something to do while I listen to streams or talk in discord. To put it simply, the game is tricky enough to get me thinking, but not enough where I must drown out my surroundings to focus. I personally really love this level of difficulty, but if you're looking for something to really challenge you or you're someone who'd rather look up solutions, this game might not be for you. But as for my review, as I've previously mentioned, I'm really enjoying the game so far!

Phineas: asking for increasingly strong potions Me, yelling at my screen like a madman: My strongest potions would kill you traveler! You can't handle my strongest potions! You'd better go to a seller that sells weaker potions! 10/10 potion seller simulator