Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[alexpoysky]

Hey there everyone! Alex Poysky here with a new game for you. This time I'm not publishing it or anything, it's just a nifty title the company I work for is publishing.

Our player base happily calls it "My Little Meth Lab" is it's an Alchemy store simulator!


You'll be living in a small town that will thrive on your Alchemic skills.

The game itself is made in Unreal Engine

The game itself is more akin to a game like Stardew Valley or Harvest Moon than something like Slime Rancher, although having said that the game holds a very strong aesthetic resemblance to the latter!

In it, you slowly grow your humble abode into an Alchemy store and supply the entire town's adventurers with the materials and potions they need.

Pretty soon you'll be using catalysts like it's nobody's business and running a thriving economy based on medieval herb growth  .

Make sure to explore every nook and cranny to find those hard to obtain herbs!

The titular gardening aspect is reminiscent of Harvest Moon

Running your own shop is based on customer needs and the prices you put obviously.


Feel free to let me know what you think! I'll be happy to pass the info along to the dev, a friendly guy by the name of Ruben!

The game itself has a demo here 

https://store.steampowered.com/app/935400/Alchemy_Garden/

for those of you who don't want to buy EA titles before trying them out.

Have fun you all!

[askovdk]

(* Disclaimer: This is based on the screenshots and a quick look at the Steam page, - I may be completely wrong! *)

It looks good and sweet, but I honestly don’t see anything special, so my default question would be “Why should people play this instead of another semi idle shop game?”.
This is absolutely not an attack on you or your company, but a reaction to a game industry, where (IMHO) it seems like publishers see something in the market, ask themselves “can we make something like this?”, and if so, then do it without really adding to the genre.

For alchemy games I would like to see a lot of creativity. Sure, there will be basic recipes, but with alchemy there is so much room for tweaking the production flows.
When was the ingredient harvested? How? In what soil did it grow? How was it stored? How is it pre- and post-processed?
There could be an entire dimension of competing alchemists about making the best and/or cheapest potions, including industrial espionage (and sabotage).
“Big Pharma” (https://store.steampowered.com/app/344850/Big_Pharma/) had elements of such gameplay and creativity.
(Edit: Writing the above made me remember a game a friend had on the Amiga: Dragon Lord
https://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/dragon-lord/screenshots/gameShotId,6674/)

So again, it looks nice, but I get frustrated when I see (a lot of?) effort put into a product, that I predict will disappear in the sea of "good, but nothing special" releases. 

[Iduno]

This is nice-looking, but is it complex enough to give the players options of how to play/have replayability?

Hopefully the non-store parts will be better than recettear. The store parts were almost good enough.


edit: that reads a bit negative. I'm hoping it's able to take the lessons learned from previous games like recettear, and make something better, including having more than one way to play, but not tacking on a way to play that isn't very good (the dungeon crawling portion wasn't great in recettear). Your mention of competing for recipes sounds like you might have something interesting going on. I assume sourcing rare herbs, and competing to find out which kinds of soils have which types of effects on your herbs first are also included.

[forsaken1111]

Can I develop dubious additives to dilute my remedies and snake-oils in order to sell false hope to the townspeople while making massive profits?

[alexpoysky]

Hey guys! I've asked the dev, Ruben, to make an account here at bay12 and he's working on it, it just requires a manual activation and he'll be on to speak with you all!

He's asked me to let you all know there's a demo available on the steam store page and that he'd love to hear your feedback on it, and if you like, to join the discord!

[MadSushi]

Hello everyone, I'm Rubén, the developer of Alchemy Garden.

I started the game in a game jam with some friends in 2017. Once we finished the prototype we uploaded it and the game had a lot of acceptance! So I decided to take development more seriously and exploit the game's potential.

Alchemy Garden is not intended to be an alchemy simulator, the alchemy part is based on finding components, treating them with mortar and testing mixtures on the alchemy table and seeing if there is a result. You can sell the potions, or you can drink them, some will cause temporary beneficial states, such as running faster or levitating.

As for obtaining resources, you can explore the environment to find all kinds of plants, minerals and crafting components, or you can also buy seeds and plant them in your garden.

The garden has two purposes, one is to use it as an orchard to quickly obtain components for your experiments or to sell them in your store. Another would be the decorative one, in Alchemy Garden there is no grid to plant in your garden, so you can create your own landscapes around your houses.

You can also have a small shop where you can sell your items to the inhabitants of the town, with the money you earn you can buy furniture for your home or to expand the store, components, tools, and even larger houses.

There is still a lot of work to do, the game is in the Alpha stage and I try to update the game with new mechanics and content every week.

If you have any questions about the game either from the development side, how in the conceptual part I will be happy to answer!