Potion Permit is an indie game recently released by MassHive Media to mostly positive reviews on Steam. I've had the pleasure of putting around twenty hours on the game and I'm hear to share my honest opinion.
Let's start with the positive. Potion Permit is an adorable game with Stardew Valley vibes. You play a chemist who recently moved to the town of Moonbury. The story is interesting and the characters and sprites are adorable. It's your job to right the wrongs of the past and befriend the locals along the way. While there is action, it's not an action based game.
There is a little bit of action, as you do have to collect supplies from monsters and animals, but the game doesn't focus all that much on intense fighting - your job is to collect ingredients to help remedy the residents of the town when they fall sick. I especially enjoyed the minigames and puzzles that came with making potions. They weren't necessarily hard, but proved to be enough of a challenge to keep my interest. I enjoyed the idle and easy gaming and the opportunity to play something that wasn't meant to irritate me. It's a great game to play between Elden Ring and Fire Emblem on hard mode.
Like I said, the sprites and graphics were adorable and I enjoyed talking to the locals as they warmed up to me over time. That does, however, bring us to the negatives. The first being that I wanted more out of the game. The setup and storyline were new and interesting to me and the MassHive Media had plenty of opportunities to expand on what they had. They just didn't take them. I wanted the characters to have more in depth stories, I wanted to feel a little more emotion out of them, I wanted the story to have a few more twists and turns.
Other than the characters, the game does feel just a bit grindy. While I understand the need to go out and collect ingredients for potions, it was my constant shortage of money that irritated me. I understand collecting supplies to make things, but the prices of unnecessary things like decorations was just a bit too high. I would have loved to put more decoration in my room but when I'm choosing
between a bookshelf and upgrading my cauldron, because they're around the same price, I'll pick the useful one. Sure, once everything's completely upgraded, I'll go back to decorating my room, but right now I only have a bed.
All that said, I had a blast playing Potion Permit. The game is a breath of fresh air with everything else that's coming out. The gameplay itself is fun and I enjoyed playing something new. Do I think it could be improved? Absolutely. And MassHive Media is still releasing updates for the game. Am I going to go back and play it again? Also absolutely. I enjoyed it immensely and there's still so much more I can do. I look forward to pushing even further into the game and finally earing enough money to put a bookshelf in my room.
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