Review: Alchemist Shop Simulator has all the right ingredients, but the recipe is a little off

In Alchemist Shop Simulator, you have a bit more freedom in how you play than most. Making potions will always net you more profit and even help toward quests and achievements, but if mixing isn’t your thing, you don’t have to! In this shop sim, you can literally buy low from the vendor across the street and resell at a higher markup in your own shop. 

It blocks you from some aspects of the game, but you can absolutely make a thriving business model by just reselling if that’s the game you want to play. 

Alchemist Shop Simulator: The Alchemist will see you now

Alchemist Shop Simulator has a few things that you can do. You can run around the area grabbing up magical ingredients that grow wild and random to store for later potion use. You can scour every nook and cranny for free money bags (there are 13) for easy cash and an achievement when you’ve found them all. You can buy from the vendor and resell in your own shop. You can help the townsfolk by fulfilling requests that they leave on your notice board outside. And, you can simply make potions. 

That was quite a bit to pack into one sentence, so let me break it down as best I can for you. 

When it comes to ingredients, you want to make scouring the area part of your daily tasks. You don’t get to pick what you find and the same thing won’t necessarily regrow, but it’s the easiest way to get ingredients. The second way to get what you need is to buy components for potions from the vendor – some of these are exclusive to him – or to buy seeds from him and then grow them in your own backyard. 

Growing is very simple. If you have a pot, you can plant the seed and then you just need to make sure that it stays hydrated. If it doesn’t wilt from dehydration, then you’ve got yourself a potion ingredient!

When it comes to using your ingredients in potions, I feel like Alchemist Shop Simulator has the smoothest setup to achieve that. You make your potions upstairs and everything you need is at hand. In fact, to make potions, you basically have to step into an area and then you have to specifically click to step out of it. This means that you’re not going to accidentally do something you don’t mean to because of controls that may be shared in the rest of the game.

Step right up and snap into place

I enjoyed the process of making potions because the recipe is right at hand, gives you step-by-step instructions, and even tells you what you’ve done so far so that you’re never lost. There’s some interactivity here, too. Sometimes you’ll have to turn the fire on to heat the mixture or turn it off to cool it, you need to stir the contents, or even grind ingredients into a powder to add in. 

All in all, the system is very forgiving and it’s hard to mess up if you’re paying attention. 

Once you have your potion, you can either sell it in your shop or deliver it to whoever may have requested it.

As for requests, I’ve noticed that they come in two flavors. Your requestee will either ask for a potion or for supplies. For potions, they usually ask for it by name, but sometimes they’ll just tell you what their goals are and you have to figure out which potion correlates to that request. And for supplies, it’s as simple as buying from the vendor and packing it up.

For selling objects, it’s a straightforward process, but it’s tedious. I mentioned that the vendor is just across the street, he’ll only have a limited amount of items to sell per day and not everything will be in stock. When you purchase items to resell in your shop, they’ll be delivered next to the vendor’s stall.

Your items will show up in boxes and you can only carry one at a time. So, you’re stuck in this loop of grabbing a box, walking it across the street and into your shop, stocking the item, burning the box, and then heading back across the street for the next palette. If you’ve ordered ten different things, then you’re doing this ten times in a row. 

There and Back Again: An Alchemist Shop Simulator Tale

This is the most grueling part of gameplay. I have no clue why it’s this way, but it’s decidedly the least enjoyable bit. And before I get into how you make sales, I just want to elaborate on something I said earlier. When I mentioned burning boxes, that’s the only way to get rid of them. If you don’t chuck them in the fire, you’re just throwing them into the corner until you dispose of them through sacrificial flame later.

Once you’ve got all of your items ferried over and on shelves, you have the option to adjust the prices, but it does affect how likely people are to buy something. I just stick with the set prices because it’s easy and when you’re doing the parade back and forth across the street to get the shelves stocked, you’re just ready for customers to show up.

Like with most simulators, your customers will bring things to the counter, give you money, and you’ll have to count out exact change. What’s different is that you’re doing it by an abacus. While it’s a cute attention to detail, it’s kind of a pain because each bead on the abacus relates to a different value, and the only way to know what that is is to hover or memorize. Thankfully, if you make mistakes, you can get your money back, so you won’t lose anything.

Other than that, it’s just the hidden satchels of money lying around. Some of them are very much out in the open, but others are harder to find. 

Despite the inconvenience of getting items into the shop, I feel like Alchemist Shop Simulator is one of the better ones when it comes to the medieval, potion-making theme. I’ve seen a few pop up and this one sits at the top.

If you want to try it out for yourself, you can get Alchemist Shop Simulator over on Steam for $11.99. If you want to check out a different game we enjoyed, then you can look at our review of WYRMHALL: Brush and Banter.