It's not... a BAD game. The art's solid. The music is good, fade-into-background type music. The concept of first turning the disorganized items into something before shelving them seems cool....

But it didn't click with me.

Things I hated:

- Multiplayer-exclusive achievements.

- More expensive than the Librarian game.

- There's no in-game clock to tell you how long you've been working at it but there are achievements for doing it in a certain time. I think the time was still running when the game was 'paused' as I could see the magic abilities cooldown timer still ticking on the pause screen.

- Not a zen experience.

- As far as I can tell, you have to hold down the left-click button the entire time you're carrying an object or you'll drop it. My hand is dead.

- Most sorting games start out chaotic and then start to feel like things are getting under control, but because this game requires 3 - 6 items to make a potion (and there's more than enough items for a single potion set because the ingredients are used in multiple types of potions), it got MORE overwhelming as more shelves were completed as the excess items were being depleted so it became harder to complete a potion set (without magic) because I couldn't find one or two items in what remained, so I had to toss the other ingredients off to the side rather than be able to clear them, with no way of safely storing them for later.

- The 'recall lost items' statue does not recall lost items. It takes all of the items that haven't been shelved or put in the cauldron and randomly respawns them somewhere else in the room: upstairs, downstairs, on and behind chairs... found a leek on a top shelf my second playthrough with magic. The only way I could have seen it without the magic highlight is if I'd jumped. The potions being stocked on the shelf did not displace the small item.

- The magically-locked door eats items. Used magic multiple times trying to find the last ghostberry only to finally find 1/4 of it sticking out of the door.

- There's no table of contents for the potion book and there are over 100 pages. Looking for the recipe of the last few potions you haven't made or a particular potion set that goes on a nearby shelf? Click click click click click click click next or previous page till you find it....

- Putting potions on the shelves is awkward. They float every which way when you're carrying them and when you release your hold to drop them on the shelf, sometimes they fall down in front of the shelf and sometimes they fall sideways on the shelf and don't register....

- It's almost impossible to organize the ingredients before shelving as the slightest bump from your character pushes objects around and it's not even obvious what's getting relocated because it all happens down on the ground outside of the screen's view if you're looking forward. Thought I had cleared the upstairs of items only to find one sitting in the middle of the path. Only way it could have got there was by getting kicked along as I walked all the way up the spiral stairs from below....

- If another object is even slightly in the way of the object you want, especially corners of leafy veggies, the object can't be picked up. Walk forward to grab something, kick the items around you into the something you're trying to grab... have to remove all the displaced objects before grabbing the item you wanted...

- Potions can't be removed from shelves after placing them there. There's an achievement to brew all 30 ultimate potions together and you only get magic skills if you complete a shelf... there are probably some shelves that could be completed without running out of ingredients for all the ultimate potions? But I got that achievement without magic as I didn't want to sit there and try to figure out which ones were safe.

- The magic doesn't really do much anyways. It's not auto making a potion or shelving things for you. It just tells you where the shelf for the potion you're holding is or highlights the items you're looking for.

- There's no congratulatory message or stats if you get through all that and reach the end. Very unsatisfactory.


It's not... a poorly made game. The effort is there. The object displacement gripe is a conscious decision on their part. It just wasn't the experience I was looking for.

As a single player game? I can't recommend it - it's too repetitive and there are too many steps that repeat for most of the recipes. However, for multiplayer? As long as it works smoothly then yes, definitely could be a lot of fun here.

Because I *can* recommend it to at least one group of players, I'll give it a thumbs up but I want others to be aware it's very tedious and that's coming from someone who loves these kinds of games.

Really cute game in the tidy up genre with good cosy vibes. The art style is utterly charming, the organisation is definitely one of the more satisfying styles that I've played and the addition of potion making and different ways to prepare ingredients offers something a little different.