Potions A Curious Tale blends cosy potion crafting, addictive boss battles, and clever puzzles in a game that feels like Sunday afternoon Sudoku in Discworld.
This curious tale sees young witch Luna, a wide-eyed, kind-hearted girl who seems to see the good in all – even when some of the characters really don’t deserve her understanding. As an apprentice to her grandmother, a respected potion maker, you learn about ingredients to produce powerful attacks, buffs, and, of course, healing. In addition to exploring a wide and varied world of swamps, deserts, and tundras, you are entertained, helped, and occasionally hindered by the colourful characters that reside in the village of Old Haven.
The tutorials are short and don’t spoon-feed the player, instead relying heavily on experimentation and learning by doing. The creators clearly knew their target audience well, and the game has a fairly steady learning curve.
Although combat is fairly straightforward, the creatures you encounter throughout your journey grow in complexity, speed, and aggressiveness as you explore deeper into the world. Throwing whatever you have in your potion bag at them may work for the first few encounters and simpler foes, but by the time Luna has a broom, you need to think more about your environment and the power and elemental properties of your potions.
There are plenty of potions to create, too, with more than 100 to puzzle out and discover through experimentation and recognition of the patterns and properties of the ingredients you throw in ( although there are some curve balls thrown into the pot too). If you love a good Pokedex-style challenge, Potions has you covered with a plethora of bronze, silver, and gold creature and character cards to unlock.
However, about two-thirds into Potions, the difficulty begins to plateau. Despite some thrilling boss fights and great set pieces like riding your broom along a river of lava, once you’ve figured out the best types of potions to use in a given situation and have enough ingredients, even opportunities to increase your health reserves feel a little pointless. However, you do still need to keep collecting those cards to open up late-game areas, and the story is fun enough that you’ll want to see the credits, even if the challenge does taper off a bit.
Potions presentation is incredibly endearing, mixing fun character designs, with lovely hand-drawn environments, complimented by a wonderful score, and a surprisingly acerbic script, mostly down to the quips from Luna’s sarcastic cat Helios, that will make you want to press on to the end.
While on her quest to become a qualified potions master, Luna encounters all manner of creatures pulled from all over the place, from myths and legends to traditional folklore and even pop culture, including The Monkey King, Miss Muffett, and the obligatory Bowie reference, (there’s even an adorable little girl cuddling a famous tiger and his best friend).
In addition to a fairly decent, well-paced main campaign, there are several side quests to hunt out, featuring some great cameos I don’t want to ruin.
Overall, Potions: A Curious Tale is a fun, challenging, and surprisingly addictive romp that doesn’t take itself too seriously. Those who like a good dungeon crawler or a decent puzzler will find a lot to love and inevitably find themselves thinking they can do“just one more level”, until they’re inevitably late for work the following morning.
