Tycoon and management games have been a mainstay of the PC gaming landscape ever since Sid Meier delivered us the excellent Railroad Tycoon back in 1990. You know what else is a longstanding feature of video games? Potions! The super-convenient method of instantly restoring health, magic, or giving you Samson strength is as endemic to gaming as a keyboard-and-mouse, yet it's fair to say that potions and business management games have existed on different parts of the gaming spectrum… until now.
Yes, Potion Tycoon has just launched on Steam Early Access to challenge our complete lack of assumptions on what a game about growing a potion business in a fantasy world might look like. It combines deep management simulation with a whimsical hand-drawn art style to deliver a magical concoction of the kind you've never played before.
Once you've set up shop in your stone-keep building, you'll need to acquire the resources to start brewing up your signature mixtures. You can either compete for resources or grow your own at home–from magical plants to mysterious fungi–and you'll need the finest ingredients if your budding business is to thrive.
Next, you'll need staff, so who better to hire than those hard-working goblins as staff. With each of them wearing unique outfits to reflect their roles, you'll have warehouse goblins to carry crates between the chambers, research goblins make your production lines faster with better machinery, and brewing goblins to bring your alchemical conceptions to life.
As your business grows, your clientele will improve and new opportunities will arise. Woo your loyal customers with fancy furniture, and an eye-catching storefront to make you the talk of the town. Eventually, you may get VIP customers with lucrative contracts for you to fulfil, giving you the opportunity to take your business to the next level. But do make sure to honour those contracts, because failing to do so could hurt your reputation–and even the best machinery won't help a business that becomes known to not follow through on its jobs.
There is a lot of hands-on work to get your business thriving, and you'll find yourself responding to dynamic events that pop up, as well as market trends and the ambitions of competing companies. Once it's all in place, however, you can zoom out, soak it all in, and watch your well-oiled business in motion. True to the great management games, Potion Tycoon offers challenge and intricacy in getting things up and running, and then rewards you for your hard work by letting you kick back and watch your coffers fill up as your workers scurry around to keep it all ticking.
Potion Tycoon has already begun its business venture, and is out now on Steam Early Access. Head over to its Steam page to see what all the commotion is about. To see what else is brewing in the lab of the game's publisher, Daedelic Entertainment, go check out their Facebook page.
