Potions: A Curious Tale Review (PC)

I’m not an alchemist, but I do know how to make a mean berry mojito under the right circumstances. In no way, shape, or form, though, am I able to conjure a herbal remedy that can literally move mountains — but that isn’t my forte, nor is it something that I want to achieve outside of the enchanting boroughs of Potions: A Curious Tale. In that world, such oddities are commonplace, as are the ingredients that ignite the fumes of such wild flavors and earth-shattering elixirs. It’s there, tucked away in the back pocket of a fledgling potion master, that I found my place on the food chain — berry mojito in hand, and utterly in over my head without the slightest clue how to solve first-world problems with a mint leaf and lime.

First and foremost, I’ll need to address the elephant in the room: Potions: A Curious Tale is an independent game that’s been in development for just shy of a decade. In light of its recent release, I did notice that, due to Electronic Arts stealth dropping a handful of old games onto the Steam catalog shortly thereafter, it fell a dozen or so spaces. Even still, I wasn’t about to blind myself in the ever-intrusive light of EA’s prolific torchbearers, as I had my eyes set elsewhere — mostly at the foot of a ‘My First Potion Set’ table in the alluring quarters of Potions: A Curious Tale, of all things.

Having spent a handful of hours conjuring various toxins and fumigating the crags and crevices of the luscious biomes of the elemental archipelago, I am, if only, just about ready to part ways with Potions: A Curious Tale and pursue another craft. The question is, will I miss it? Or better yet, am I likely to remember it?

The Art of Brewing

For the sake of embellishing the narrative, Potions: A Curious Tale is a crafting-adventure game based around—you guessed it—alchemy; specifically, a witch’s coming-of-age adventure that takes the fresh-faced student into a world where elemental magic is commonplace, and the vast majority of issues are solved with a good old-fashioned vial or two of refined elixirs. As the witch in question, you must set out to win over the favor of your peers—adults who, while natural guardians by trade, firmly believe that theory and experimentation are the defining characteristics of a successful witch. But there’s a catch: you want to learn everything about the art of potion crafting, and with hundreds of recipes to unearth and put to the test, you’ll certainly have your work cut out for you. Spoiler alert — a mojito isn’t one of the said recipes. Go figure.

If you’ve ever played the likes of Wylde Flowers or Potion Craft, then you’ll no doubt have a clear understanding of how the core mechanics work in Potions: A Curious Tale. For the most part, gameplay consists of foraging for ingredients in one of several biomes, and experimenting with various flavors and combinations in order to develop elixirs of all shapes and sizes. However, rather than settling for a simple craft-and-bin, rinse-and-repeat formula, A Curious Tale instead asks that you test your potions out on the field—a task that often involves having to confront one of several monsters out in the wild, as well as devise new strategies for whittling down potential foes in and around your settlement. For the record, I had no issue with completing such tasks; it almost rewarded me with a greater sense of achievement. And on that note, the accolades were certainly plentiful.

Finessing the Formula

Like a lot of crafting games of its kind, Potions is something that only gets better with age; the more time and effort you put into finessing the formula, so to speak, the more likely you are to accidentally discover unwritten recipes and other clever elixirs. It’s your job, as something of a field technician with a habit of succumbing to trial-and-error situations, to unlock these secret formulas, and utilize the tools that you accrue out in the wild to fashion new stat-boosting magics or defensive coolants that, with a pinch of luck, can naturally evolve into something extraordinary.

Of course, it’s a pretty straightforward task — earning your stripes as a fledgling witch, what with the bulk of the objectives being driven towards foraging, crafting, and brewing. But that isn’t to say that such tasks are even the slightest bit daunting, and it’s mainly thanks to the sheer volume of recipes that you can fool around with from the moment you acquire your first ingredient, to the point of having nothing left to learn. And even then, the world itself still offers a lot of additional content to sift through, including a handful of puzzles to chew through, as well as NPCs to befriend and utilize in certain sticky situations.

Fluid and Free-flowing

In the boatload of hours that I dumped into Potions: A Curious Tale, I never once had to eject myself from the experience to tweak any settings, nor did I have to make several attempts to return to the root of the world due to unforeseen technical difficulties, either. In fact, at no point during the journey was anything particularly unusual or half-baked; mechanically, it all sort of fell into place, which meant, in short, I was able to fully immerse myself in its casket of wonders and elemental mysteries from the moment I decided to sport the hat and vial, to the split-second I parted ways with the cauldron and set out for horizons across vast new shorelines.

With all of the above said, I did have one minor issue with the gameplay: its lack of hand-holding — particularly when it came to getting out and exploring several of the world’s regions. With no in-game map to course you through the layers and point you in the right direction, I did find that a lot of my time in Potions: A Curious Tale was spent aimlessly roaming about in search of the next story beat or NPC. It wasn’t a deal breaker, but the fact that I had to endure countless hours of mindless looping to and fro did, unfortunately, often dampen the overall experience.

Of course, I’m willing to give credit where it’s due: exploring the world and making numerous wrong turns is arguably one of the best ways to experience the game, weirdly enough. Sure, such endeavors can often lead to brick walls and a ludicrous amount of backtracking, but that never stopped me from wanting to alter my course and continue chipping away at the contents, puzzles, and uncharted territories.

Verdict

We use the word ‘cozy’ a lot when it comes to crafting and sandbox games, and it’s only very rarely that such titles are fully deserving of sporting such stripes. But as it turns out, Potions: A Curious Tale is exactly that: it’s a hearty little number with a whole lot of charm and character, and it doesn’t take long for you to realize just how much time and effort its independent creator poured into it to make it truly sparkle. It’s absolutely bursting with embellishments, too. From its elegant art style to its quirky characters, and all of the elegant intricacies that have been sewn between the margins — Potions: A Curious Tale does, indeed, present a worthy story that has enough bells and whistles to be heard.

Take it from me, if you honestly adore the idea of getting your hands dirty in a wealth of potential concoctions and formulas, then you’ll love just about everything that makes up the lion’s share of A Curious Tale. There’s a lot of freedom here, and thrice as many opportunities for you to flex your creative muscles and dabble in a copious amount of magic-centric situations. Also, there’s a surprising amount of depth to the actual crafting process, too—a process that I was always willing to throw myself into the thick of just for the sake of seeing what would sprout out of the cauldron. I didn’t always have a plan, but that was sort of the beauty of it; with experimentation came growth, and with growth came an abundance of knowledge that I could evolve.

To answer the question of whether or not Potions: A Curious Tale is worth picking up — yes, it most certainly is, doubly so if you’re looking for an excuse to brew till your heart’s content.