Alchemist's Garden

Cozy, addictive and way deeper than it looks. You explore a lot of locations, gather ingredients and brew potions to earn green essence, then use it to unlock the next area. Every location has its own ingredients, recipes and decorations to hunt down, and leveling up each area keeps your income growing. When progress slows, you prestige and spend crystals on a skill tree that makes every run faster. And yes, there's a secret endgame location. The pixel art is lovely, the loop is satisfying, and it's perfect to have open on the side. I loved the idea and I'm really looking forward to more updates. If you get stuck, I wrote a full English guide with every recipe, ingredient and decoration for every location xo

100% achievements in 2.5h Very much a digseum clone with the crafting mixed in I like the idea but it's only fun once per map The second time around or more, it adds an unfun unnecessary chore of crafting known recipes which is a downgrade from digseum And once some talents are unlocked this becomes irrelevant Needs a lot better execution

Alchemist's Garden looks and sounds cozy, but as an incremental game it wore me down long before I finished it. The foraging is the core of the game, and it never really changes. The pace of unlocking new areas was fine, but once you prestige you reset and do it all over again. Upgrades make a small difference, but they don't make the clearing itself any more interesting. Discovering recipes mostly comes down to trial and error, which feels like wasting resources. The scrolls that reveal recipe ingredients help a lot, and I'm glad discovered recipes stay unlocked after a reset. Running the shop didn't feel engaging. It's mostly there to turn potions into money, and the upgrades boil down to a bigger shop, more customers and more money. I decorated the shop, but only for the stat boosts. What drags the most is the downtime. There are a lot of transitions and a lot of clicking back and forth between menus, which adds to the feeling that you're repeating the same steps over and over. The cozy aesthetic and relaxing music are the game's strongest parts. Honestly, I wouldn't mind if the game leaned even harder into that side of it. It didn't take me that long to finish, but it felt longer because at some point I just wanted to get it over with. On the technical side, I didn't run into any issues. Overall, I can see the appeal if you're mainly after something cozy to have on in the background. As an incremental game though, the loop is too repetitive and there's too little change in the gameplay for me to recommend it.