Game: Potions Practicum
Genre: Simulation, Fantasy, Casual
System: Steam (Windows)
Developer|Publisher: Megan Eder | Shared Pixel Dreams
Controller Support: No
Steam Deck: Uknown
Price: US $4.99 | UK £4.00 | EU € 4,50
Release Date: April 10th, 2026
A review code was provided, thanks to Shared pixel dreams.
What Is Potions Practicum About?
Potions Practicum is a shop management game where you take over a family potion store for a week while its owner is away. With little to no experience in alchemy, your goal is to learn recipes, manage customers, and somehow keep the business running long enough to survive the week. At least… that’s the idea.
Let’s see how good of a brewing master I am!
Gameplay, or Brewing Without The Spark
Before starting, there’s barely anything to adjust in the settings outside of text speed. No accessibility options really stood out during my time with the game.
Potions Practicum throws you directly behind the counter almost immediately. Your cat, Jinx, acts as a sort of guide during your first steps in the laboratory… although “guide” might be generous. This is, after all, the same cat responsible for dropping the grimoire into the cauldron in the first place. If you click on Jinx repeatedly, the cat throws snarky comments your way, which honestly became one of the few parts of the game that consistently made me smile, “Is this food? No? Then why bother me?”.
Jinx can also provide hints for potion recipes, although more often than not, the suggestions don’t actually match what customers are asking for. Which feels strangely fitting for the overall experience. Very quickly, though, confusion starts replacing curiosity.
The game explains very little about how its systems work, and not in a way that feels intentionally mysterious. I spent several in-game days unable to brew anything at all before realizing I had completely run out of firewood… a resource required for every potion craft and somehow expensive enough to make me wonder whether inflation had also reached fantasy worlds.
Customers arrive throughout the day with various requests, and you’re expected to figure out which potion fits their needs based on vague clues. Sometimes they tell you exactly what they want. Other times, the game seems to expect a level of improvisation that feels less like experimentation and more like random guessing.
There’s also a reputation system tied to customer satisfaction, although it never really became engaging enough for me to pay close attention to it.
The same goes for the daily structure itself. Shops close at 6 PM no matter what is happening, and each day quickly falls into the exact same routine. Unfortunately, that routine never really evolves.
I kept waiting for Potions Practicum to introduce something that would make the process more engaging: stronger customer interactions, meaningful discoveries, more complex potion crafting, anything really. Instead, the game remains surprisingly static from beginning to end. Even the customers themselves barely leave an impression. They arrive, drop a few fragments of dialogue or lore, receive their potion, and disappear again. None of these interactions feel connected enough to create a real sense of worldbuilding or attachment. At some point, I realized I was no longer playing out of curiosity, but simply hoping the game would eventually reveal more depth later on. It never really did.
Art and Sound of Potions Practicum
The game’s visuals are polished and heavily inspired by Ghibli aesthetics, with soft colours and clean environments. But sometimes, they almost feel too clean. Combined with the acknowledged use of generative AI tools, the world occasionally lacks texture or personality, as if everything has been carefully assembled without ever truly feeling lived in.
The soundtrack works better overall. The music stays light and energetic without becoming overly repetitive, which honestly helps during the more monotonous gameplay sections. It’s probably one of the few elements that kept the experience from feeling completely lifeless.
Conclusion
I didn’t have a pleasant time with Potions Practicum. Not because the game is difficult or frustrating in any dramatic way, but because it constantly feels incomplete. Systems are introduced without much depth, customers lack presence, progression feels repetitive almost immediately, and very little changes throughout the experience. More than boredom, what I mostly felt was distance. I kept waiting for the game to give me a reason to care more about its world, its shop, or the people walking through its doors… but that connection never really happened.
Potions Practicum has a charming foundation on paper, but for me, the experience never managed to evolve beyond that initial concept.
Final verdict: I Don’t Like It
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