Purchased after seeing a YT vid exploring other potion games. Looked fun so I though I'd pick a newish one like this one up. Unfortunately, I cannot recommend it for a number of reasons.

- Visual style is inconsistent. There are characters, areas, and objects that obviously got more artist time than others, and the undercooked ones are jarring.
- The controls are clunky. The game expects you to evade moving hazards as you explore, but the game controls like a browser flash game. Trying to evade horizontal hazards is a chore since the player model is taller than it is long.
- The player hitbox is janky. I've seen near misses count as hits, and brushes that obviously collide with me not count.
- There doesn't seem to be standard attack. Your only method of defending yourself is luring the enemies into traps or having damaging throwable potions on hand. If you run out of potions, you're out of luck. (EDIT: After a re-read of the store page, I see this was a deliberate decision by the dev. Not having a fall-back attack when you run out of potions seems like an unnecessarily harsh mechanic in a game other reviewers are calling "comfy")
- To add on to the above, I tried to look at the keybinds to make sure I wasn't overlooking a potential attack button, only to find there is no way to rebind keys in the pause menu.
- The potion crafting lacks depth. You can only mix a maximum of 3 ingredients, and each ingredient can only provide 1 of 5 possible elements used to draft potions. Potion crafting is also just done in a menu. I was expecting a minigame or some kind of skill test.
- The puzzles aren't very satisfying. I'm not asking for La-Mulana brain benders, but the ones I encountered during my play time didn't feel rewarding for solving.

I have a few other gripes, but I'll wrap this up. All in all, the gameplay loop gets old fast. I judge games by hours of fun per dollar, with 1:1 being the minimum benchmark for a satisfying game, and I don't think p:act can hit that threshold. Asking for $20 here seems like a little much.

This Game has Great potential The character, enemy and building art is fantastic and the concept is solid, the potion crafting and scale of the recipes is awesome though not without its faults and some of the puzzles are quite fun to workout, when i saw tiktok videos about it i thought i need to play this game, who wouldn't want to fly around on a broom as a purple haired witchy potion master, how could this not be great? well... allow me tell you.

There are better, cheaper games to spend your money on, this game is just lacking.

For a supposed 10 year development it leaves much to be desired honestly i am hoping that a mistake was made and a very early version was released, even if every asset was made by one person it would be a great achievement in half a handful of years, not 10, i heard 10 and thought well i should be able to get a week or more of game play out of it, no, 9hrs and its done, Combat is clunky what little of it there is, story unfortunately very short and very linear with few side quests and the Side quests there are are devoid of substance leaving much to be desired, its easy to be pushed out of bounds in certain area's which isn't game breaking but is definitely frustrating, there seems to be little to no change in the character appearance in dialog, everyone seemingly happy as ever when they are very obviously according to the dialogue not.

all of this wouldn't be a problem if it were in early access, and we knew the game were going to improve and build upon the base that has been laid, but this is seemingly full release.

I have no doubt that the game had passion behind it and the Dev should definitely keep working on it and develop their skills further with this project and other projects, add way more side quests of a greater variety and longer main quest, better battle mechanics as most "boss" battles are done in a few seconds, maybe some farm and garden systems to build up a reserve of potion ingredients without having to constantly pick up everything you see, though to be fair, one can leave an area and everything will re-spawn which makes farming an area for certain items easier but that constant repetition does get tedious.

Great game if it was close to the start of development not for a 1.0 release. maybe when its cheaper get it for small children other than that i cannot recommend this game i do however reserve the right to change my opinion in if/when the Dev fixes and builds further on there game, as previously stated there is a lot of potential here and it would be a shame to waste that potential.

Please Dev, please keep working and building upon this project, you have a great start and a relatively solid base it wont take much for your curious tale to be a great little game, Love definitely went into this game but love for a project only gets it so far, but you have started on what i hope is a greater journey, you may need to get help or build a better team but you can do it.

as with all my reviews if things change with that state of the game i will change my review until then i cant recommend people to get this game, too bare boned, to high a price and not enough to do.

Really suggest avoiding this, for a slew of reasons.

First of all, whether the dev realizes this or not, she's being really emotionally manipulative on social media. I'm guessing a lot of people who found this game already know this, but there's been a ton of complaining about EA releasing their C&C collection on the same day that this game dropped. I dislike EA as much as the next guy, but that's life. The reason that they got more attention than this game did is because they're better-made games that a lot of people really treasure. I promise EA wasn't trying to screw over any little guys when they dropped their games, so playing the victim on this is wild and comes off as a desperate plea to get more purchases.

Second of all, the positive reviews for this game are sketch as hell. Take a look through the profiles leaving the reviews. You'll find that about half of them are from profiles that have never reviewed any other games, are private profiles, are extremely new/unused accounts, have played for less than 30 minutes yet make sweeping comments on the entire quality of the game, or some combination of all the above.

But all of that aside, it wouldn't be fair to leave a negative review without having actually tried the game. What I played didn't really feel too great. There's no control rebinding, or even a control menu. It takes 20-30 minutes of walking around before you get any sort of sprint capability. No local maps means that you might be finding yourself backtracking quite a bit. Character motivations are bizarre at times (ex: MC treating Emily like a friend at Yaga's house - why?). Characters go from just meeting each other to talking like good friends very quickly. Thematically, it makes sense to have to be at a cauldron to make potions, but it just isn't fun when you're in the middle of a boss fight or reach a spot where something in particular is needed, and you have to reset a fight or backtrack after making more potions. Potion making is also kind of tedious, since you can't have the recipe book open while you're adding ingredients, so may have to go back and forth between recipe book and cauldron frequently. Map movement is weird (ex: when in level 4 of fairy forest, going back a level put me at level 1 instead of 3). A world map function directly from Granny's house would have been much appreciated, because it's really annoying to spend the 10-15 seconds leaving the hut and walking to the world map every single time you return home. Hitboxes can be questionable. Animations are clunky and slow, especially having to wait a second every single time you pick up a resource. A lot of missions boil down to "go find X thing somewhere in X location", leaving surprisingly little motivation to engage with potion making. If a character requests an ingredient as a side quest and you already have that ingredient, too bad - you have to go find another. I know most of these sound nitpicky on their own, but when it all piles up, in makes for a tedious and unpleasant overall experience. On the bright side, a lot of those things can probably be updated and patched with time. There might be a gem hiding in this rough, but in its current state, I'd strongly recommend passing on it.

Heard about this game via TikTok, and really wanted to enjoy it, as I've played many other cozy potion-related games in the past.

Unfortunately can't give this one a recommendation. The art style is passable, but doesn't really do much to get me excited. The combat is trivial and frankly skippable for the entirety of the time I played it, which isn't a good sign. The story is basically non-existent, which is a bit of a miss for a cozy game, especially with the user-defined tags boasting "story rich." I didn't have a sense of where I was progressing to, besides the consistent fetch quests I was receiving with only the barest attempt at justification.

Really cute character designs, and a solid on-paper concept that don't seem to be realized in this version.

Don't let the positive reviews fool you

Most, if not all, of the positive reviews are from people who were manipulated to feel empathy. Empathy towards a game that is so far below the standards/quality of the price they're asking for, especially after all the time and money wasted to "complete" it.

This game was backed on Kickstarter for over $65,000, and went completely quiet/dark for YEARS until their backers started demanding refunds.

The game is not from a solo-developer, it was a team, larger if not equal to some other indie games that are not only more entertaining, but are actually cheaper than this one. Not to mention those games were in development for a much shorter time period.

TL:DR - This game is overpriced for the content and enjoyment potential. There are several other games on the market that are cheaper, and better than this one.

You'd actually be able to find better games for FREE. It's on par with the free games you'd play on Newgrounds.. 10 years ago

I must admit I fell for that fake marketing on social media and how it was developing for 9 years by a single person (which either wasn't or they did something wrong because this game is NOT a product of 9 years development). I felt the empathy for the "developer" of the game but now knowing that it was all made for clout I wish to not support the game anymore.

"Emotionally manipulative marketing on social media"

"A game is below the standards/quality of the price they're asking for"

I can’t believe I’m saying this considering the 10 year claim, but this feels like something that was developed for only 6 months following a game jam. There are so many other better games out there worth spending your money on. Plenty of them are made by women with less recognition too, if that’s your thing.

So I’ll share my pros and cons, but first I will list what seem to be 2 major bugs(or very poor design choices).

• When making potions, I was clicking the increase number button. The number was not going up, but it was consuming my feathers anyway. Clicking the down arrow did not return my feathers. They were just gone.
  
• At one point in the middle of my game I was trying to open my settings to see if I could rebind my keys(you cannot), and I accidentally hit the “credits” button. When I escaped out of this, it had teleported me to Granny’s house. No confirmation button or anything, and I didn’t remember where I was before. Not sure why going into credits kicks you out of your game.
  
  Okay for the pros:
  
  
• I thought it was clever the first time I learned I could lead enemies into traps
  
• The music is nice and soothing
  
  That’s it for that list. Now for the needs work:
  
  
• The dialogue is incredibly cringey and cliche. Even the characters themselves, including Luna, are uninspiring and cliche’d. A third grader might have written this.
  
• The art and animation are so inconsistent in style and quality all throughout the game. It’s like they were all done by different artists without any consideration of matching styles. The building/furniture perspectives are also inconsistent. Some things are painterly and some things look like clip art. Almost like the game was asset bashed. A cactus, an apple tree, and some alien-like giant blue mushrooms are all part of the background in one single space. I understand it’s “fantasy”, but even fantasy is consistent among itself. In some houses you go inside and it’s top-down, others you’re in first person. It feels jarring.
  
• The animations are in the same boat. It’d be one thing if everything was puppeted. Some things are, and other things just squash and stretch. The cat’s animations is the worst one. It doesn’t move even remotely like an actual cat. Considering the emphasis on the cat, you’d think some actual effort would have been put in here.
  
• It’s a weird choice that you can zone in and out of areas and everything immediately respawns exactly where it was. It feels like lazy game design. It’s boring, and can actually be frustrating, since there’s no indication when you’re about to leave a zone and the enemies will also respawn.
  
• The potion-making is disappointing. From what I experienced, every single potion takes exactly 3 ingredients. There are 4 different types(fire, water, earth, air) but the actual item itself doesn’t matter. You could use ivy, thyme or mushrooms for earth, and you get the same result. Yet the “mushdoom” counts as both yellow and blue, but you can’t use it as either or both - you just get ooze.
  
• There’s no indicator for how many reagents you have back at home. I’d like to know if I have enough of something so I don’t have to continue gathering things as there’s nothing fun about the mechanic.
  
• There is a “predicted result” panel, but the result only shows up if you’ve already discovered, so not exactly a prediction. The only way I encountered discovering recipes was just by trying random combinations. The UI is not very clean. For someone who is colorblind, it’s hard to see some of the icons and objects. The text is randomly different sizes on different reagent pages.
  
• Why is there no map of any kind, or any way to create one? You can teleport to Granny’s house but you can’t teleport back to where you were. So you have to memorize it I guess. And often you have to leave because you ran out of explosion potions or you don’t have a fire potion and they’re required to get past a certain barrier.
  
• I know the game is emphasizing potions, but please for the love of god put in SOME kind of basic attack. If you run out of potions and there are no environmental traps to use you just gotta try to outrun enemies.
  
• The quests are uninspiring. Just a bunch of fetch and deliver quests. The story and the characters are very shallow.
  
  Anyway. If you're an 8 year-old child who has never played a video game before you might enjoy this. If that's her target audience then hey, great! But if you're an adult who likes playing fun, polished games then spend your $20 elsewhere. This game should be $5 at most.

Honestly, it has a cool flash-game-like nostalgia to it, and as a millennial, I appreciate that, however, it's kinda boring, doesn't give a lot of explanation on parts of the game, so your left kind of wandering figuring out what to do. Story line could be a bit better. I would say if this game were $10, it would be totally worth it, but otherwise, nah. I think your kids might really like it, though.

I really wanted to like this game. I downloaded it after seeing the developer's video on TikTok. I think she mentioned it took 10 years to make, and the game sounded cozy with a slight challenge. I felt sympathy towards her so I wanted to try it out.

It is nothing like I expected. The game does NOT look or play like it took 10 years to make. Only being able to throw potions as a weapon would be okay if throwing potions could be sped up. I died a few times because I wasn't able to throw my potions fast enough. You can only carry a certain amount before you have to go back to grandma's house to brew and grab more. There are cauldrons in different areas of the game, but not nearly enough for how quickly I went through my potions. Sometimes I would brew a potion I thought I would need for a specific obstacle, but it turned out to be the wrong one... so back to grandma's I went to brew a new one and then had to walk all the way back to the area. You do have a gem that can transport to right to grandma's home, but in order to get back to where you were you have to walk or ride a broom. If you die while out and about, you lose ALL items you've collected and cannot get them back. I had many items, and after dying went back to see if I could collect them all in the spot I died... nope, all gone. Some of the riddles made NO sense. I don't know.. I just don't think this game is worth the price I spent on it, and I couldn't get into it. I would not recommend.

This is another title I wish I could rate positively, but there are just a few too many frustrations to warrant.

I love the premise, the artwork is adorable, and I like the puzzle nature of things. Where it falls apart is the combat, especially how the hitboxes work.

There are several required fights, with the large golems being the most visible of the issues. Your only weapons are potions you make, which have different elements, different aoe types, and different damage values. The problem is that you have a very long windup, and with how confusing the hitboxes of your character and the enemies are, it's likely you get hit before it goes off or you simply miss even though visually it should hit. Getting hit is the same. I had several hits, along with a death, caused by the golem hitting me when no part of its sprite was touching my character.

If you die, you lose all materials you have gathered since the last time you went home, along with all potions you have used. While punishing, it wouldn't be bad if the hitboxes made sense. Getting killed by what feels like cheap hits, only to have to re-grind up the rare materials you used is just added frustration.

Still, even though there's no trait system, this is probably the closest to a non-Gust Atelier game you can get. Experimenting with the crafting is fun, trying out different things to get new materials is also fun. I just wish the combat section and its frustrations weren't so bad so that I could enjoy the puzzle solving.