This idea was part of the 2025 game jam ideas project.
Potion maker
One Liner: A dialog driven potion maker game. Listen to customer stories and make judgment calls from incomplete information.
You are an apprentice wizard. As part of your apprenticeship you have been assigned to work the potion shop. You are given incomplete information from your master, and customers. You need to help the customers with their problems while experimenting with different potions to find missing information.
Who you choose to help and how, affects the world around you. Get to know the townsfolk of this town through their stories.
1. Briefing
Each morning you are given a brief from your master. The brief includes a new potion recipe, hints on locations of material resources, and some information about customers and the world.
The potion recipe provides the material resources required. But gives spotty information on the effects, and side effects of the potion. The missing information can be found by experimenting on your customers. Or from their stories (Spotty information about the potion)
2. Collect Material Resources
After the briefing you can try to search for material resources. You can use the information provided from the briefing from your master to help decide what area to search in. (Map of areas, click the area to search it)
After selecting the area to search, the system automatically searches and provides a report of the material resources from the search.
- 5x eye of newt
- 2x sprigs of rosemary
- 3 Liters of fresh spring water
3. Customers
Next three customers arrive, each one has a story about a problem that they have and what they have to trade. The stories provide additional information about the world. This information can be used to affect the other steps. There are tangents and useless information, as well as lies. You need to figure out what information is correct (See MURDLE)
Add comedic flair in these stories. There could be dialog options here that you could select to ask about different things.
What they have to trade varies from customer to customer. Some will provide gold, while others might be materials, resources, or other services.
You only have time to make one potion a day. After reading the stories you need to decide what customer to help and how.
You may reject the customer if you don't have an appropriate potion for their problem, or they don't have enough money or resources to pay for the materials, or you don't believe their story and think they will do harm with the potion. (More about this later).
Or you might accept a customer that doesn't have enough to trade if their story rings true with you.
4. Choose and mix the potion
You choose a potion that you think might help solve the customer's problem. It's not always black and white, you have to make a judgment call based on the story if one potion is better than another. If you choose the wrong potion. The customer will have side effects or it won't help the customer.
Add the ingredients to the mixing pot, say some magic words and the potion is created. (Maybe add a mini game here)
You give the potion to the customer and the effects are immediate. You get the results immediate afterwards. You can use this information to update what you know about the customer, or the potion.
Notes
- There are bad people in this world that will tell you a fake story to get the potion that they want. You need to use the information that your master tells you to determine who the bad customers are. (Think papers please)
- Two truths and a lie. Every round there is a bad customer that you need to detect and ignore their information or punish with experimenting with potions that you don't quite understand yet
- Nothing is straight forward, You need to piece together information about the world from what people tell you. Make your own notes and experiment on customers to find more information.
- The main game mechanic is reading the customers stories, and your master's briefings, then using that information to make informed decisions later on.
Prior art
Strange Horticulture - I have never heard of this game but it came up during a search for potion making games. It has similar story telling elements.
Coffee Talk - Listen to people's stories and provide them with drinks that you think will help them with their lives. This is entirely dialog driven.
VA-11 Hall-A: Cyberpunk Bartender Action - Similar to coffee talk, listen to people's stories, then provide them with a drink that is suited to their story.