I will inspire you back to reviewing games (because you are a good writer and should do more of it) by sharing one I just wrote for Potion Permit :P
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I don't know who this game is for. I played for six hours, focusing on fulfilling quests and beelining progression, and I still felt like I was being held back from accessing the full range of possibilities. Potion Permit is like if Stardew Valley had a different art style and worse mechanics. You're a chemist, which is cool, but you're in a town of people who don't like you. You're a doctor, which is also cool, but your home and clinic are in shambles, and the gameplay loop is grinding out foraging materials in the local woods. The game has almost no interest in the actual idea of being a chemist or a village doctor.
The town and people in it are somewhat interesting, but a lot of them just feel like worse versions of Stardew characters. Like, the "homeless person" lives in a shack (still labelled a tent) and you overhear a conversation where he chooses to be homeless despite having plenty of money. That's really weird. There's one interesting character, and she's the apprentice blacksmith named Runeheart. Everyone else is an incredibly bland stereotype. Young rascal, upstanding nun, friendly barmaid, and the mayor is Mr. Monopoly. To befriend these characters, you must talk to them every day (they have one line per affection level, which they repeat every time you talk to them) and/or give them a gift, limited to the reward you receive for healing people.
The main draw of this game for me was that you're a healer/potion maker. But that means you're using your cauldron to make potions, which comes down to using the ingredients you've harvested (each of which gives you a 3- or 4-block tetris piece) to fill a pattern. Upgrading the cauldron gives you more space to add ingredients, so you can be less efficient or make more complex potions. Being a doctor requires you approach the sick villagers, who arrive in your clinic and activate a loud alarm, and listen to them say "my [body part] feels weird". Afterward, you hover over that body part and click "diagnose", leading to one of two minigames, either extremely slow simon says or extremely slow dance dance revolution. After succeeding in diagnosing the person, you automatically know which potion is required and can apply it with another click.
I gave the game a chance long enough to upgrade all of my tools, my cauldron, and to unlock the first forage expansion, but god it was soul-draining to get that far. Every advancement in the game requires money, in the realm of several hundred gold to over a thousand, but the only ways to get money are through healing people (one person might arrive every 2-3 days, and will pay you 150-300 gold for successfully treating them) or selling excess potions (this option opens up after several days, and is limited to a limited drop box that gets emptied once per day). The advancements also each require at least 100 wood and 100 stone, which require you to interface with the main gameplay loop, foraging. This requires you to hit a tree with an axe 3-5 times, netting you 4-7 sticks per tree, or to hit a stone with a hammer 3-5 times, netting you 4-7 pebbles. All trees, rocks, and plants (3-5 hits with a scythe for potion ingredients) respawn in exactly the same place every day, with no variety. Upgrading your tools lessens the number of hits required to forage, but not by much.
Once I opened up the expanded foraging territory, new creatures and plants appeared, but rocks and trees were mostly unchanged. They gave more pebbles and sticks, but not a lot more pebbles and sticks. That was the point where it became clear to me that the game wasn't worth playing any further.
Overall, Potion Permit is a series of systems that are severely underdeveloped. The art and music are inoffensive and pleasant. The townsfolk have interesting designs, but very little development or writing outside of the relatively rare quest, and even then it's nothing particularly special. The gameplay mechanics are boring, the prices relative to what you're able to forage require a ton of unnecessary grinding. And the main draw of the game, being a potion maker and doctor, is barely focused on in the game at all. If this game gets significantly better later on, that's unfortunate, because nothing in the first six hours was worthwhile.
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I don't know who this game is for. I played for six hours, focusing on fulfilling quests and beelining progression, and I still felt like I was being held back from accessing the full range of possibilities. Potion Permit is like if Stardew Valley had a different art style and worse mechanics. You're a chemist, which is cool, but you're in a town of people who don't like you. You're a doctor, which is also cool, but your home and clinic are in shambles, and the gameplay loop is grinding out foraging materials in the local woods. The game has almost no interest in the actual idea of being a chemist or a village doctor.
The town and people in it are somewhat interesting, but a lot of them just feel like worse versions of Stardew characters. Like, the "homeless person" lives in a shack (still labelled a tent) and you overhear a conversation where he chooses to be homeless despite having plenty of money. That's really weird. There's one interesting character, and she's the apprentice blacksmith named Runeheart. Everyone else is an incredibly bland stereotype. Young rascal, upstanding nun, friendly barmaid, and the mayor is Mr. Monopoly. To befriend these characters, you must talk to them every day (they have one line per affection level, which they repeat every time you talk to them) and/or give them a gift, limited to the reward you receive for healing people.
The main draw of this game for me was that you're a healer/potion maker. But that means you're using your cauldron to make potions, which comes down to using the ingredients you've harvested (each of which gives you a 3- or 4-block tetris piece) to fill a pattern. Upgrading the cauldron gives you more space to add ingredients, so you can be less efficient or make more complex potions. Being a doctor requires you approach the sick villagers, who arrive in your clinic and activate a loud alarm, and listen to them say "my [body part] feels weird". Afterward, you hover over that body part and click "diagnose", leading to one of two minigames, either extremely slow simon says or extremely slow dance dance revolution. After succeeding in diagnosing the person, you automatically know which potion is required and can apply it with another click.
I gave the game a chance long enough to upgrade all of my tools, my cauldron, and to unlock the first forage expansion, but god it was soul-draining to get that far. Every advancement in the game requires money, in the realm of several hundred gold to over a thousand, but the only ways to get money are through healing people (one person might arrive every 2-3 days, and will pay you 150-300 gold for successfully treating them) or selling excess potions (this option opens up after several days, and is limited to a limited drop box that gets emptied once per day). The advancements also each require at least 100 wood and 100 stone, which require you to interface with the main gameplay loop, foraging. This requires you to hit a tree with an axe 3-5 times, netting you 4-7 sticks per tree, or to hit a stone with a hammer 3-5 times, netting you 4-7 pebbles. All trees, rocks, and plants (3-5 hits with a scythe for potion ingredients) respawn in exactly the same place every day, with no variety. Upgrading your tools lessens the number of hits required to forage, but not by much.
Once I opened up the expanded foraging territory, new creatures and plants appeared, but rocks and trees were mostly unchanged. They gave more pebbles and sticks, but not a lot more pebbles and sticks. That was the point where it became clear to me that the game wasn't worth playing any further.
Overall, Potion Permit is a series of systems that are severely underdeveloped. The art and music are inoffensive and pleasant. The townsfolk have interesting designs, but very little development or writing outside of the relatively rare quest, and even then it's nothing particularly special. The gameplay mechanics are boring, the prices relative to what you're able to forage require a ton of unnecessary grinding. And the main draw of the game, being a potion maker and doctor, is barely focused on in the game at all. If this game gets significantly better later on, that's unfortunate, because nothing in the first six hours was worthwhile.
