Will you surpass your teachers' knowledge and grow up to become the best alchemists in the land? Let's find out! It's time to grab your potion ingredients, sharpen your deduction skills, and get mixing!
Little Alchemists is a family-friendly deduction game that's designed to grow with the curious minds of young players. The game starts with simple concepts and mechanisms; you'll start by gathering and combining ingredients for brewing potions to sell. However, as you collect keys by achieving your potion-making goals, you'll unlock new chapters that gradually add more components, mechanisms, and complexity to the experience.
Not sure how to make potions? No sweat! Potion craft takes mere seconds with the free Little Alchemists companion app. To make a potion, players select two ingredient tiles, then scan them using the companion app loaded onto a tablet or smartphone. This reveals the combined result and lets players acquire and mark the corresponding potion knowledge on their secret player board.
With each potion you make, you'll begin to discover the secrets that lie at the heart of alchemy. Players will have to use clever deductions to figure out the arcane properties of each ingredient, then they can use that knowledge to their advantage throughout the game!
Over the course of seven chapters that unlock over multiple playthroughs, players will learn and master many new facets of the alchemy trade, preparing them for what's to come. Each chapter is designed as a replayable experience that expands on the previous chapter, with new layers of game mechanisms that add more subtle depth and complexity over time. Also, fully exploring the world of Little Alchemists will introduce you to many of the concepts from and better prepare you for the original Alchemists game.
—description from the publisher
- App-assisted gameplay makes it accessible for younger players
- Good component quality and innovative design (special screens/holders for ingredients)
- Clear and appealing colors/graphics that engage younger players
- App teaches players step by step, aiding learning
- Strong replayability through evolving content and unlockables
- App-assisted format can be a deal breaker for some players
- Some players were unhappy with changes to progression in a follow-up game
- Not every player may enjoy the app-dependent flow
- Array
- Fantasy
- Informational / review-focused
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- App Assisted — A companion app determines potion results and guides learning and play.
- App-assisted gameplay — A companion app determines potion results and guides learning and play.
- end game bonuses — The player with the most coins wins the game.
- Endgame condition by coins — The player with the most coins wins the game.
- Fulfillment and selling to customers — Players collect ingredients and craft potions to sell to customers for coins based on demand.
- Market and deck refresh — Used tiles are discarded, two new ones are drawn, and the market is refilled as needed.
- tile drafting — On a turn you select two ingredients from your supply to combine into a potion.
- Unlockables and progression — Progression via keys to unlock boxes and access more content; levels can change between games.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- I enjoy the act of discovering new potions and the fact that the app will change each game is really neat
- Little Alchemist is a fantastic blend of Discovery deduction and Hands-On experimentation
- the app makes it super accessible especially for the younger players
- the app actually teaches you how to play the game step by step
- there is so much content as you play you'll get to earn keys to unlock boxes with even more content
References (from this video)
- Family-friendly
- Engaging for kids and adults
- Learning curve to master evolving rules
- Alchemy and deduction in a family setting
- App-driven sessions centered on potion making
- Progressive rules with evolving sessions
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- App-driven progression — Sessions are driven by an accompanying app and rules evolve between sessions.
- Ingredient collection and potion scoring — Players gather ingredients to create potions and score points.
- Sequential session structure — Gameplay unfolds over multiple sessions with new twists.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- Little Alchemist a fun app driven family logic deduction type game.
- So great with all the kids, you know, everybody could play.
- Chronicles of Crime is that kind of quintessential app assisted.
- In the app, you will select which mystery you want to solve, which case you want to go on.
- You explore locations, and as you move your device around, it moves around the crime scene and you're looking and you're just shouting out the things that you see as you go.
- Animals of Baker Street is 100% app free. This is a good one to unplug, have the family play with the kids.
- I love Unlock as opposed to some of the other escape room type mystery games because you don't have to destroy anything.
- fully replayable.
- you can just hand this off to somebody else to enjoy and you don't have to reset it really that much.