Potionomics: Masterwork Edition Finally Brings One of 2022’s Best Indies to Consoles
Time to get to work.
Running a small business seems like hard work. If you’re not dealing with unhappy customers and haggling with suppliers, you’re competing against hot demons and hoping a witch doesn’t drop by to collect on the loan you’re magically bound to. At least, that’s how it works in Potionomics: Masterwork Edition, which brings one of the best indie PC games of 2022 to PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch for the first time.
In Potionomics, you play as Sylvia, a young witch who inherits her uncle’s potion shop, along with the mountain of debt he took on to keep it running. By brewing and selling potions, both with their own unique mechanics, you help Sylvia raise enough money to keep the shop afloat, and maybe fall in love along the way. Potionomics: Masterwork Edition adds a handful of new features that were widely requested by players: Endless Mode lets you keep playing beyond the campaign’s bounds, Cozy and Capitalism modes add an easy and hard difficulty, and voiceover has been added for all of the game’s charming dialogue. The new edition is a standalone release for consoles and a free update on PC.
Even aside from its new features, Potionomics: Masterwork Edition is worth looking into for bringing one of the best shopkeeping sims out there to new platforms. The magical mercantile game won me over in its original release thanks to a smart combination of gameplay mechanics, a lovely art style, and razor-sharp writing.
Potionomics goes way more in-depth on what it takes to run your shop than many similar management games. You deal in potions, which means a good chunk of your day is spent procuring magical ingredients, ranging from various slimes and oozes to exotic monster parts, and you’ve got a few ways to go about it. You can pay an adventurer to gather them for you, after supplying them with a few potions from your stock to keep them alive. You can buy supplies directly from a wholesaler who changes their prices on a whim. Or you can invest in the local adventurer’s guild to potentially score rare ingredients if you’re willing to part with a lot of cash.
Running a business is a lot of hard work, even if you have magic to help you.
Then comes brewing, where you’ll mix dozens of ingredients together to make the perfect potion. Crafting is hard work in Potionomics, since you need to maintain a careful balance of magical elements called magimins. Rather than just dumping a few materials into a pot and calling it a day, you need to find the best formula, consider the bonuses on the cauldron you’re using, and give yourself enough time to let it simmer before you can sell it.
Making a sale is plenty involved, too. Haggling plays out through a card game that gets more complex as you go on, as you walk the thin line between getting as much money as you can from your customers and risking them getting fed up and canceling the sale. With all of these different minigames, Potionomics is a great simulation of the stress that running a business incurs — and the payoff for a job well done.
Sylvia’s neighbors can be customers, business partners, and even dates.
What really elevates Potionomics over its management sim peers is its characters. Every adventurer and merchant you deal with is a fleshed-out character with their own story and preferences. Instead of just doing business with them, you can get to know each one. Getting close enough can nab you rewards like discounts and additional cards for the haggling part of the game, and more importantly, it can lead to romance. Cozying up to your fellow villagers can result in some genuinely sweet scenes as you learn about each other, flirt, and eventually take your relationship to the all-important smooching phase.
Potionomics: Masterwork Edition’s new game modes ease some of players’ common criticisms of the original, including its punishing competition structure, which has you go head-to-head with other potion dealers every month to keep your shop alive. Or you can play in Capitalism mode to make it even harder, if that’s your thing. Plus, with the new voice acting, your digital crush can feel even more swoon-worthy than ever. If you’ve already played Potionomics, the new release could easily justify another playthrough, and if you’re been waiting for the console version, your patience has paid off as you get to experience the best version of an already great game.
