Game: Potion Permit
Genre: Adventure, Simulation, Indie
System: Nintendo Switch (also on Steam, (Windows, macOS) Xbox One, and Playstation)
Developers | Publishers: MassHive Media | PQube
Age Rating: US E | EU 12+
Price: US $19.99 | UK £16.99 | EU € 19,99
Release Date: September 22nd 2022
Review code used, with many thanks to PQube.
Autumn can be melancholic, but life sims provide a space for meditation and emotional maintenance. Potion Permit acknowledges its own restorative power by focusing on healing. Wandering through the gorgeously pixelated world, it’s clear how much care developers put into this game, from detailed idle animations to the satisfying crunch of resource gathering. The day-to-day rhythm of small-town life is a serene one—but how does Potion Permit measure up?
A New Chemist in Town
You’re a chemist from the capital, summoned to Moonbury to investigate new diseases. There’s another doctor on the outskirts of town named Matheo, your rival, who relies on homoeopathic remedies. His treatments have stopped working so it’s up to you to nurse ill townsfolk back to health. Your arrival is not met with immediate warmth or gratitude. Instead, villagers distrust you and your methods. Over time, you will earn their favor. Alongside your goal of gaining approval, you will also investigate environmental disasters and uncover a mysterious past involving other chemists from the capital.
A Day in the Life
An average day in Potion Permit is comprised of many tasks including cooking, potion making, completing requests, decorating your room, exploring, fishing, befriending residents, and taking on part-time jobs. Altogether, these activities give you more than enough to do, though it might not seem that way in the first few hours.
Don’t be fooled by the slow, puttering start. Tutorials are drawn out; the days feel unproductive, but mechanics gradually build on one another and quests accumulate. It’s one of those games that revels in its own plodding rhythm. Several hours in, I found myself searching for a lost notebook, crafting a potion to eliminate invasive slime puddles, and investigating a plant-devouring insect. My initial frustrations (sluggish movement speed, spaced-out tutorials) abated as the game opened itself up to me, revealing its simple but plentiful delights.
Diagnosing and Brewing Remedies
Potion-making should be familiar to anyone who has played the Atelier games. You spend most days gathering ingredients in the wilderness and using the appropriate tools (a sickle, axe, or hammer) to harvest resources. Brewing occurs through a puzzle game, where you mix and match ingredients in your cauldron. You can overcome challenges by stocking ample ingredients and upgrading your cauldron to accommodate more puzzle pieces.
Patients will appear in your clinic on a regular basis with ailments (itchiness, bruises, and rashes to name a few). Diagnosis involves one of several mini-games involving memorization or timed button presses. If you’re looking to decompress, then look no further. If you’re hoping for a challenge, however, then you might want to search elsewhere. Potion Permit isn’t interested in punishing players. Instead, it provides a checklist of simple but satisfying tasks.
Exploration
Medical treatment encompasses only a fraction of gameplay. Most days you will venture into the world and farm resources. This means gathering flowers and herbs, hammering rocks, chopping trees, and even battling monsters. Potion Permit boasts a much larger map than I initially expected, with various progress-locked regions like a desert, a sprawling grassland, and a snowy mountain range to name a few. The same basic resources and monsters respawn every day, creating impressive breadth but questionable depth.
One of Potion Permit’s more puzzling aspects is that it tells a story about healing and repairing environmental damage, yet it gamifies destruction as you reap natural resources. I felt strange about this inconsistency, but it does make for an engaging gameplay loop.
Friendship, Courtship
When you talk to a resident of Moonbury, you will see their affection increase on a green meter. You can gift townsfolk Moon Cloves, a tea that symbolizes friendship, but these cloves are a scarce resource rewarded only after healing a patient in your clinic. Moon Cloves make gifting feel more deliberate, forcing you to prioritize certain relationships over others. Events and quests can also advance relationships. After you’ve advanced your friendship with someone, then you can access new information in your journal. Several villagers are also romanceable, though this system isn’t as detailed as other life-simulations like Story of Seasons or Stardew Valley.
Some Concerns
As with many Switch games, Potion Permit struggles with text and performance. When I first opened the game, I had to squint to read the tiny dialogue. I grew accustomed to it after a while, but I’m disappointed that a larger text option isn’t available, especially for the docked play. Performance issues are negligible (a frame drop here and there) except during rainy days which cause massive frame drops. I’m not usually a stickler for framerate, but when my character stutters across the map and controls have exaggeratedly slow responses, then an otherwise peaceful game becomes frustrating. Here’s to hoping this is fixed with a day-one patch.
Conclusion: A Restorative Retreat?
Potion Permit has grown a lot since LadiesGamers previewed it nearly two years ago! While the final game sometimes lacks depth in its numerous systems, it compensates with breadth and charm. It manages to be meditative without feeling melancholic. The days flutter away, but there are no seasonal changes. Suspicious townsfolk will gradually warm to your presence as you repair your clinic and heal various ailments. It’s more a game about revitalization than it is about the passage of time, yet I could spend many more hours in Moonbury completing quests and concocting potions.
Final Verdict: I Like it a Lot. 