Indie games have come a long way over the past 15 years. From a tiny subset of the industry that only art-house tossers talked about to a huge wave of constant new games that threatens to drown any player who tries to dive in. Well, today’s indie game is Alchemist: The Potion Monger, a soft RPG about breaking down and changing various elementary substances to create new potions and formulas. Does it do enough to differentiate itself from the competition? Well, yes, but not necessarily in the best way possible.
What Is Alchemist: The Potion Monger?

Alchemist: The Potion Monger is a lite-RPG where you play a personified animal-person who wants to open up their own alchemy store. You have to explore the world to collect various resources from all over the place, whether that’s foraging, farming or killing enemies. As your pantry of ingredients grows, so does your stock of potion recipes, and before long, you’ll find yourself a successful potion vendor in your own right, assuming you can make it that far.
It’s relatively clear that the developers behind Alchemist: The Potion Monger are a small team, or at least I hope they are. Despite the console release, this game is incredibly janky. The animations are stiff, and the world has a lot of subtle problems, from the way that characters move around to the overall visual design of most of the environments. If you don’t mind a jankier indie experience, then you probably won’t care, but it’s worth noticing as the overall level of polish is indicative of the end experience.
Starting Out Well

The opening hours of the game aren’t too bad. You start out setting up your new cottage, then you head out to collect resources from the local area. With your basic tools and resources, you can produce a variety of interesting and useful potions, both available to sell to folks via contract and available to be used by the player to help in their exploration. A great example of this is the use of some poison potions to clear the giant vines that surround your home, allowing you to access the local town where you can sell your wares and buy new equipment/recipes.
It’s not long before you’re also being tasked with taking down strong opponents, forcing you to either invest in stronger equipment or create some truly earth-shattering potions to deal constant damage to your enemies. It’s worth noting that the combat is pretty simple, mostly relying on your own ability to avoid taking damage by moving away from your enemies between swings. Because it’s so simple, it’s possible to defeat most enemies without taking any damage, but to do this, you really need to wrap your head around the…interesting hitboxes that the developers have given the various hostile mobs you’ll find in the world, especially the slimes.
Well, at Least We Started Out

It is at this surprisingly early stage that things really began to fall apart. During my playthrough, as I unlocked the more advanced alchemical machines, I hit a stumbling block. One of the machines that was very necessary to make progress just upped and disappeared as soon as I placed it down, and there wasn’t a decent way of replacing it. I have no idea why my equipment just upped and disappeared like that, but it makes half of the potions that I need to make way harder without it.
Beyond that, there’s just not that much to keep you coming back. The janky world produced for the game isn’t without its charms, but it’s all treading well-trod ground, and without a compelling story, characters or mechanics, it’s tough to produce a reason why someone might want to actually play this game for longer than about 30 minutes to an hour, and that is being exceedingly generous.
The Verdict

Alchemist: The Potion Monger is as janky as indie jank can get, and then some. Realistically, it’s clunky, it’s repetitive, and it’s a little bit broken as well, making it a hard sell at the best of times. When it’s also coming out at a time when the gaming market is more oversaturated with great indie titles, well, you might as well sign the death certificate now. If you’re a furry or just really into making potions, then you might be able to squeeze a bit of fun out of this, but you’d be better off playing one of the Atelier games instead.
Developer: Art Games Studio
Publisher: Art Games Studio
Platforms: PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch
Release Date: 25th September 2024
Gaming Respawn’s copy of Alchemist: The Potion Monger was provided by the publisher.