I had a ton of fondness for Potionomics when it came out in 2022—as did PC Gamer, apparently, as we gave it an 87 in our Potionomics review. In case you missed this charming gem—it's a shop simulator by Voracious Games about inheriting a bunch of debt and a potions store. The way it handles selling those potions (and competing in competitions) is via deckbuilding—with the protagonist gaining new sales tactics from the people she interacts with, then flogging her wares in Slay the Spire-style battles.
It's a genuinely gorgeous little thing. Everything from its UI, to its character designs, to its animations are designed to give you a lovely little fuzz of belonging, and it helps that its mechanics all slot together satisfyingly, too. Alas, it had a few key problems when I played it that stopped me from finishing my playthrough—problems that are now thoroughly fixed via a major update that dropped yesterday.
First up—being a game where time is a concern, Potionomics had this weird friction where you could end up in an XCOM-style death spiral if you wasted your time in those early days. This made it mechanically engaging, but often meant new players would spend a few hours getting invested before realising they were screwed. Well, now there's difficulty options you can change at any time.
On that time restriction, one thing that always bothered me was how Potionomics ended. Mostly in that it did. It had this Persona-style deadline cutoff date where the credits roll and that's basically it—which would be a fine way to structure things if it was a short game, but I didn't finish my playthrough and I'd sunk about 30 hours into the thing. Well, now there's an endless mode after the story's finished, so you can tie off all your little romance arcs.
Speaking of, it was that long playtime—a good thing under any other circumstance—that also frustrated me when it came to the game's romance options. Potionomics is filled with a cast of lovely, well-written characters, but you only ever get to smooch one in a playthrough and, given the fact said playthroughs last dozens of hours? It sucked. Well, no longer—there's a "Free Love" mode you can toggle on when starting your game that lets you be as polyamorous as you'd like.
And I haven't even gotten to the biggest feature here which is—voice acting! You can see an example of that below. It should be noted that while this trailer for the "Masterwork Edition" cites consoles, all the new features therein are just free updates for the Steam version.
In a moment of what I can only assume is divine madness, the developers have added voice acting to the game two years after its release for its major story cutscenes. Now if you don't mind me, I'm going to sit here pulling my non-existent hair out over how to spend my very limited free time, seeing as I'm knee deep in Metaphor: ReFantazio (which is really quite very good), soon to play Dragon Age: The Veilguard, and have absolutely just added a Potionomics playthrough to my list of things to do. I don't think I'm going outside for a while.
