If you’ve never heard of the original Alchemists and are wondering what Little Alchemists is about and how it plays, we’ve got you covered! In this article, we’ll give you a quick overview of the game, walk you through some of the key gameplay mechanics, and also explore how the game expands over time across multiple playthroughs.

What is Little Alchemists?

Little Alchemists is a family-friendly potion making and deduction game for two-to-four players that’s based on the original Alchemists game released in 2014. It offers a streamlined standalone version of that experience that’s geared towards younger players and their families. You don’t have to be familiar with the original game to enjoy Little Alchemists, but you will find some familiar themes and mechanics across both games. Think of Little Alchemists as the younger sibling to its bigger brother.

In Little Alchemists, you and your cousins stumble across your grandpa’s dusty old alchemy set and decide to start tinkering around by mixing ingredients and making magical potions. You soon decide to open up a lemonade stand to sell your concoctions to adventurers. As you improve your alchemy skills, even more wondrous opportunities open up to you over time. 

Gameplay focuses on combining different ingredients to craft potions. Every time you make a potion, you mark the result on your deduction grid which provides helpful information about each ingredient combo. Beyond selling potions to adventures to earn coins, you can also eventually gain additional points by writing successful theories with deductions based on the potions you’ve made.

Like its predecessor, Little Alchemists utilizes a free companion app to facilitate the potion making process, while also handling some of the more complex behind-the-scenes game logic so players can focus on the fun. Though it’s app guided, the gameplay itself resides in the realm between the physical and the digital world. After your turn is done, you must pass the tablet or phone loaded with the app to the next player for their turn.

The app serves as a tool for interacting with the physical game components, by letting players scan ingredients to brew magic potions, make clever deductions, and unlock other surprises, It also offers tutorials, helpful gameplay reminders, and animated cutscenes.

What exactly do you do in the game?

Potion craft is the heart of Little Alchemists’ deduction-based gameplay. You’ll be making potions across each chapter, but the very first chapter of the game offers a very basic introduction to the core game loop, which  expands in depth and complexity in later chapters.

Behind your player screen, you’ll have a selection of starting ingredient tiles, a few coins, and a bottle to mark when you successfully sell a potion. On your turn, you’ll initially focus on brewing potions to learn which ingredients make which types of potions (note: this changes game to game, thanks to the app). To make a potion, you simply place two different tiles into the slots behind your player screen, scan them with the app, and mark down the resulting potion in secret on your triangle grid. You’ll then discard your spent ingredients, draw two new ones, and pass the app device to the next player. Every potion you make teaches you a little more about different ingredient combinations in the current game. You also may choose to spend coins to purchase additional ingredients to improve your chances of trying out new potion combos or recreating specific potion types.

During the early rounds of the game, this gives you an opportunity to begin learning which ingredient combinations yield which potion types. Soon, however, adventurers will begin to show up, offering you the opportunity to try to brew a potion of the type they’re looking to buy. When you do this successfully on your turn, you’ll mark that adventurer with your potion token and earn some coins. Each adventurer will only buy one potion from each player, and there are several different adventurers in the stack.

At the end of the day, the shop closes and the game ends — whoever has the most coins wins!  Sounds simple enough? It is! Only things get a lot more interesting the more you play.

How does the game expand?

Little Alchemists is designed to grow alongside the skill levels of players. Inside the main game box, you’ll find six sealed boxes of various sizes that each contain secret goodies to uncover. Unlocking new chapters adds in new physical components and mechanics that layer in additional ways to score, new potions you can make, and other gameplay surprises. These gradually make the game deeper, more strategic, and more complex over time.

So how does this all work? After you complete a game in the first chapter, the app will give all players a puzzle that they can work together to solve based on what they’ve learned. If they complete it successfully, they’ll earn a key sticker which is placed in an available slot on the next chapter’s secret box. Beyond the first chapter, players will earn keys depending on how quickly and effectively they completed the deduction portion of the game. Sometimes you’ll earn multiple keys in a playthrough. When all keyholes in a chapter box are filled up, you’ll then unlock the next chapter’s content to incorporate into the game.

Starting in Chapter Two, for example, you’ll have a new option to take on your turn: sharing a theory! Instead of making a potion on your turn, you can choose to write a theory — using the app to select an ingredient and which potions you think the ingredient makes. If you are correct, you’ll mark that ingredient on a new board and gain a gem that adds to your score. If you’re incorrect, you’ll let other players know you were wrong, and take a broken gem that counts negatively against your end game score. This is just one example of how the game expands. By the seventh chapter, you’re playing the full complete game in all of its depth.

If you’d like to see what all of this looks like in action, check out our How to Play video below. Also thanks for reading! You can find more articles about Little Alchemists on the CGE blog here!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckSs51fIYoQ