You know, in theory, a passage familiar to the genre should appear here about how the best features of Stardew Valley and Harvest Moon intersected in another “life simulation”, giving rise to a new heir to cozy farm stories. But no, this time everything went according to a completely different scenario. It’s like someone decided to change the classic formula of the genre with Monster Harvest, and as a result, a strange but interesting game called Potion Permit was born.

It has everything that fans of life simulators usually expect: exploring the world, character development, leveling up crafts, collecting resources, interacting with residents and trying to create a special atmosphere of a small town. However, the combination of ingredients itself feels unusual — as if the recipe has been slightly changed, adding alchemy, experiments and a touch of randomness to the usual mix.

And, perhaps, it is this non-standardness that makes the game noticeable against the background of dozens of other representatives of the genre. Potion Permit is not trying to be another copy of successful projects — it is looking for its own path, albeit uneven, sometimes controversial, but certainly not devoid of ideas.

Potion Permit Free Steam Account

Here is another representative of the indie scene, who at first glance impresses with a vivid visual presentation, but after a couple of minutes confronts the player with harsh reality — behind a beautiful facade hides frankly weak gameplay. The only thing you really can’t find fault with is the artistic style. High-quality pixel graphics, rich colors and neat detailing create an atmosphere of cozy adventure, where it’s nice to just walk around and look at the surroundings.

However, there is a dissonance behind the showcase of the pretty world: the movements of the characters sometimes look so unnatural that they knock them out of the game rhythm. Even my daughter, glancing at the screen, immediately noticed that the animation was lame, and the dog accompanying the hero moved as if it had been put together piece by piece. And, alas, this claim is true: Many NPCs behave strangely and nervously. Nevertheless, the visual composition as a whole remains attractive, and the artistic style compensates for the technical flaws of the animation.

There are also pleasant finds. For example, a system for transmitting emotions through animated emoticons. This approach enlivens the dialogues and adds expressiveness to them, even though there are no familiar portraits of characters, as in Stardew Valley. The same emoticons accompany various game interactions: whether it’s fishing, where they signal fish behavior, or other mini-games, the solution looks fresh and organic, enhancing the overall gameplay experience.

As for localization, the developers are pleasantly surprised here. The game has been translated into many languages, including Russian, and the quality of the translation is pleasing: the dialogues are easy to read, the jokes sound appropriate, and the meaning is not lost. Although there are rare fragments of untranslated text in the interface, in general, the Russian version is executed at a high level and helps to immerse yourself comfortably in the plot.

The very plot of the story fits into the canvas of the genre, but without the classic cliches like an uncle with a will or an abandoned farm that needs to be restored. Moreover, there is no habitual agricultural routine here at all — no beds, watering or harvesting. And this fresh approach to the gameplay structure makes the starting point much more interesting than you would expect from a typical life simulator.

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Potion Permit Plot

The game’s plot introduces us to the quiet provincial town of Lunbury, a place where peaceful life has long been overshadowed by a protracted conflict with the arrogant metropolitan Medical Guild. But the situation changes when the mayor’s daughter becomes seriously ill, and the local medicine man is powerless. Out of desperation, residents decide to take a step that they have avoided for years: They summon a young but talented alchemist-healer. He arrives in Lunbury with a minimal set of tools and his faithful dog, and receives all the other equipment — from a boiler to a small clinic – already on site.

Then your own story begins. You will have to make diagnoses, study the symptoms, collect rare ingredients, brew potions, help the sick, gradually gain the trust of local residents and figure out what caused the long-standing dispute between the province and the capital’s medicine. On paper, such a set of mechanics looks fresh and exciting, a kind of harmonious mix of a life simulator, RPG elements and adventure gameplay.

However, reality quickly returns to earth. From the very first minutes it becomes clear: Lunbury welcomes you in a state close to desolation. The infrastructure looks like the residents have been indulging in endless holidays for years, forgetting about repairs and landscaping. The laboratory is destroyed, the hospital needs to be repaired, the lanterns are not lit, the park is overgrown, and the bridge at the entrance to the city is literally falling apart underfoot. Of course, all this is not an accident — the developers relied on a gradual visual transformation of the city, depending on how quickly you will establish relations with NPCs and progress through the story. As you progress, the streets come alive, the buildings are updated, and the atmosphere gets cozy and warm.

But, alas, the problem of the game lies not at all in the initial decline. The main problem is the complete lack of initiative on the part of the residents. It feels like the whole of Lunbury has secretly signed a contract for idleness, shifting any, even the simplest work onto your shoulders. A similar approach has already been seen in other life simulators, like Stranded Sails: Explorers of the Cursed Islands, and here we see the same picture. Instead of focusing on the role of a potion maker and developing medical skills, you turn into a versatile worker: a gatherer of herbs, a lumberjack, a miner, a stonemason and, at the same time, a hunter of local fauna for the sake of rare resources.

As a result, the lion’s share of game time is spent not on treatment or plot development, but on routine farming of ingredients and endless hikes through forests and mountains. At the same time, the medical mechanics themselves look as simplified as possible. Every morning, a patient appears at the clinic, who repeats over and over a set of template phrases like “I have a pain: …”. As the story progresses, the number of “pain points” increases, but the essence remains the same: a short mini-game for reaction or memory, then preparation of the necessary potion, a couple of seconds of treatment, and that’s it. The process lacks depth, and the emotions that a real gameplay of a doctor simulator should evoke quickly dissolve into routine.

Potion Permit gameplay

The game is literally built around the endless collection of resources — and it does it so obsessively that over time it begins to resemble not a cozy simulator of life, but a hardcore MMO in the Korean style. The basic tools — sickle, hammer and axe — give access to different types of materials and allow you to attack certain types of enemies. But there is almost no pleasure from the process: everything happens according to the same scenario. The problem is compounded by the fact that the game doesn’t just require a lot of resources — it requires an absurd amount of them.

Do you want to advance the plot? Harvest tons of wood and stone. Are you trying to build friendship with a character? Prepare the sickle — you will have to grind again. Have you taken up the quest? Forget about the story for a couple of game days and go collect materials. Would you like to improve your tools to speed up your routine? First, find the resources for the upgrade. Do you dream of opening a new location? Welcome to another strip of progress that needs to be fed with wood and minerals. Have you opened a location? Congratulations — new tasks are now waiting for you, requiring even more grinding. Even the desire to put your own laboratory in order or fix a hospital turns into an endless process of resource extraction.

To make it clearer what you’ll have to do most of the time, here’s a short list of your character’s “main professions”:

• A collector of herbs and reagents — you mow half a card every day;
• Lumberjack — chop down hundreds of trees for upgrades;
• Miner — mining ore and stone at every turn;
• Hunter — destroy the local flora and fauna for the sake of ingredients;
• Courier — you carry the resources of NPCs who do not plan to work themselves.

Games like Kitaria Fables have already shown how exhausting an inadequate resource balance can be. The situation is similar here, and even the extraction points are limited. At least they are recovering every day, otherwise the process would have become unbearable. But even in its current form, it’s unclear how the developers are confident that “spend 90% of your time swinging an axe and a hammer” is a fun gameplay.

And if resources are one half of the problem, then money is the other. The income is minimal, and the prices for improvements are so inflated, as if you are playing an economic simulator, not a casual stylized RPG. The materials that are so hard to obtain have to be spent on the preparation of medicines — then you dump them into a box where they are automatically sold. The process itself quickly turns into a routine: I collected resources, brewed a potion, sold it, and repeated it.

A special “thank you” to the developers is for the romantic line with the pirate. To complete almost any of her mini-quests, you need to collect certain types of fish. And fish, as luck would have it, is not caught the first time. Therefore, get ready to spend a few game days exclusively fishing — and this is far from the most inspiring activity.

Graphics and visual world of Potion Permit

Beautiful pixel graphics, pleasant music and a calm atmosphere mask a much crueler truth: the game is based on a meaningless and endless grind. Wood, stone, herbs, fish — it all boils down to a monotonous cycle of “get —carry—do — get-again”. Assignments often resemble the classic “go there, I don’t know where, bring something, I don’t know what.”

The situation is aggravated by the need to constantly look for the right NPCs. In most games of the genre, each character has a house, a daily schedule, and familiar routes. But here the characters live according to some kind of chaotic, completely illogical system. Yes, shopkeepers can be found in the workplace, but this is only a part of the population. The rest of the NPCs are either sleeping, wandering, or disappearing in an unknown direction.

An example? You are welcome. The mayor’s wife: she sits in a cafe for a couple of minutes in the morning, then knits at home for a few minutes, and the rest of the time she’s not there at all — as if she’s falling into a parallel reality. The blacksmith’s daughter is also unique: if she is not in the blacksmith, she lies on a bench at a random point in the city, completely inactive. And this kind of illogic is repeated with almost all the characters.

The study of the residents themselves raises many questions. Many of them look like they are assembled according to a set of old cliches: redneck, “typical Asian”, cinderella, the silent nun, and so on. And here it is worth noting an unexpected plus: localization really smooths out the angularity of the original characters, making the images much more pleasant.

But the problems are still noticeable. For example, Rue is the daughter of the mayor, to whom you owe your appearance in the city. She is presented as an adult character who is available for romantic relationships, but she behaves like a nine-year-old child: she collects red flowers, talks only about her favorite color, waves her arms, and lives with her parents. Or take a character with a split personality, or Victor, who is either crazy or really communicates with ghosts. There are oddities in almost every character — it seems that we are not in a quiet province, but in a branch of a psychiatric hospital.

In addition, there is no change of seasons or even an elementary calendar. On the one hand, it gives you freedom: you are not limited by seasons and can complete tasks at a convenient pace. If you don’t have time today, continue tomorrow. Most quests don’t have hard deadlines, and that’s really a plus.

But the overall picture is marred by the lack of depth and elaboration. The game constantly creates a feeling of early access: unpolished mechanics, unfinished systems, a sense of incompleteness. Some elements can be improved with patches, but some of the problems seem to be built into the very foundation of the game — and it will be impossible to solve them without a major overhaul of the gameplay.

Potion Permit System Requirements

How to play Potion Permit for free on Steam via VpeSports

Sometimes it’s so nice to escape from the noisy real world to where you are truly welcome. Potion Permit is just such a place: the town of Moonbury lives its quiet, slightly stubborn life, but as soon as you set foot on its paths, it seems to breathe a sigh of relief: “Finally, our new doctor has arrived.” Everything here breathes history — from the old bridges by the river to the forest, where every branch seems to hold a secret. And the further you go, the more you will feel that this world is becoming a little bit yours.

So that you can dive into this atmosphere without expensive subscriptions, complicated instructions or boring settings, we have prepared everything in advance. A short registration — and you are already on the threshold of your alchemy workshop, where the smell of herbs, the cauldron is bubbling, and the assistant cat is lazily watching you mix the first potion in your life. No technical dancing with a tambourine — just an easy start and a path that you form yourself.

Your emotions are sincerely important to us. When you share your impressions about your trip to Moonbury, we will definitely read them. Sometimes a comment may linger a bit during moderation — after all, we try to keep the atmosphere of warmth in the community. But it’s worth slightly correcting the text, and it will definitely appear, and a notification letter will arrive in your mail.

If you want to stay closer to the life of the game, take a look at our Telegram. There we share not only news and updates, but also the small joys of the community: tips from players, discussions, mini-guides, and stories about the funniest “pharmaceutical” blunders. And if you suddenly get confused in the recipes, can’t find the right ingredient, or just want to clarify something, the “Complete Game Guide” section and our chat are always open.