Little Alchemists

Designer: Matúš Kotry

Artists: David Cochard, Štěpán Drašťák, Dávid Jablonovský, František Sedláček

Publisher: Czech Games Edition (CGE)

Players: 2-4

Age: 7+

Time: 20-40 minutes per game

Played with review copy provided by CGE

Little Alchemists is a seven-chapter campaign game with each chapter taking about 30 minutes.  Chapter 1 is a simple deduction game that introduces the core concepts and each subsequent chapter adds new twists or complexities, none of which will be revealed here. This makes it a bit difficult to review, but it is worth reading this review to determine whether the game is for you. 

Little Alchemists is a follow-up to Alchemists, also by CGE. Although published seven years later and designed by the same designer for his daughter, the game is not a children’s game like Gulo Gulo and Giro Galoppo. It starts slow but ramps up to where an adult won’t be bored. This is not to say I would bring it to game night with all adults as a main course. It could be an opener while waiting for others.Little Alchemists is about making positions from raw ingredients. Let’s say I have a feather, a chicken foot, and a frog.  I can combine any two of them to get a potion.  When you combine two different ingredients, it could make a green, red, or blue potion.  You only know what it makes by using an app on your phone that scans the two tiles and tells you the result. In one game, a frog and a feather might make green, and in the next one, they might make red, depending on the random seed in the app. 

The app is important for a few reasons. The game cannot be played without it, as it facilitates gameplay and teaches the new aspects of the game as you open new modules (chapters). Since you start with a randomly generated letter code, several people using their phones can synchronize, or you can pass one device around the table.

Why do you care about making potions? Several reasons, including selling specific potions to visitors for coins, learning more about which ingredients make which potions to sell to future visitors, publishing theories, and more you will uncover in the later chapters.

Little Alchemists is not a cooperative game. The goal is to have the most points (gold plus other points) at the end of the game. The end game trigger varies from game to game but seems about right in terms of how much you know when it ends.  You can earn money by publishing correct theories, selling potions to visitors who want specific colors, and perhaps other ways as well.

Little Alchemists is a deduction game that starts with six raw ingredients and three kinds of potions you can make. A single ingredient cannot be used to make all three potions, so you have to figure out which ones are possible with which ingredients.  For example, a plant might make red or green, but not blue.  This information will be useful later.

To be clear, this is not solely a game about making potions because you need to publish theories about which ingredients make which potions. I’ll leave that and a few other twists for you to discover more about on your own. It lets you spend points upfront to try to generate more later as well as other choices.

The app is well done and the game has repeatable play potential at every level. As one level becomes too easy, the next one unlocks. The rule book has pages you cannot open until you are ready to move on by having stickers that prevent you from seeing those pages.

The game is an enjoyable progression that starts out too easy for adults and ends with a challenging game. It is a good game for families or those who like colorful graphics It has charm and cleverness in the design. The art reflects the nature of the game, as it is appealing to kids and was likely purchased by their parents to play together. It is an enjoyable game with an educational feeling. If you want a pure logic puzzle, you can play it that way, but some of the modules make it more than a Vulcan recess activity.

I played it with my family to get a sense of how it would go over. We have adult children and everyone thought it was a nice family game, but were not clamoring to play it again and again. As noted, we were not the target audience, but the final chapter provided enough challenge for us to play it a few times to see all it had to offer.

I have a few minor caveats that feel important if you play it with all adults but are irrelevant if played as a family game.

The game does not have even turns, so going earlier in the turn order can give you an extra turn over the others. Given the way the end game can be triggered, players earlier in the turn order can use this timing to their advantage.

This game has luck. If we each start with different tiles and I learn how to make a certain potion on my first try and then make the one I want to sell to a visitor on my second try, I can be up quite a bit on the other players who happened to make different potions due to chance. 

If you are trying to avoid screen time, the app is completely integrated into the game, but you cannot easily surf the web while playing, as it takes some attention even when others are making potions.

In short, this is an excellent family game that concludes with a game you can play regularly if you all enjoy it. Who knows, you might even seek out its big brother after finishing this one.

Thoughts from other Opinionated Gamers

Matt C: I showed this game off to some extended-family nephews over Thanksgiving break and it went over well. I believe these were probably 7-10 year olds. They were just about the right age and I wouldn’t go too much earlier as it was a bit tricky to help them figure out the app and how to track their decisions. Eventually, one wants to do a bit of clue-like sleuthing and that was just a bit out of reach of some of them.

As Jonathan mentions, there’s luck involved and there’s an advantage to going first. The first bit is acceptable for the shortness of the (early) game. While it went over the heads of the other players, I found it unfortunate that it wasn’t set up to give everyone the same number of turns.

The game “unlocks” at a certain pace, based on players’ performance in the game. We didn’t play very far into the campaign but I felt the unlocking criteria to be rather “artificial” and just a way to stretch out the game. In the interest of exploring more of the game we simply jumped into the next box after our first and second games (thus getting through 3 levels in 3 games…) I don’t feel like we missed out on much by doing so. (Normally, you have to do well enough to earn “keys” which are used to unlock the next box. Depending on performance, that may mean playing a specific level 3 times before moving on to a new box.)

At present, I find it quite hard to rate the game, as I’m only part-way through the levels. The level 1 game is way too simple (and thus the random factors really come into play) while the level 2 game seems pretty good for kids. Level 3 is a stretch for some on the younger side to play well (there’s more to track) so I have to wait and see what happens as the game goes on. One can go back and play at any level, so it could be one of those games where you just slide up or down in levels, depending on the players. Hopefully the last unlock will end up with a fairly decent (if lightweight) game that could be enjoyed by a wide age range.

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it! 
• I like it. Jonathan F.
• Neutral.
• Not for me…