Elixir [Review]
Elixir is an atmospheric, dark, point-and-click adventure about alchemy.
Elixir. Credit: Moxu Projects
Elixir is the second game about alchemy I’ve played this week; this time, a point-and-click adventure instead of a crafting game. Unlike the previous one, Elixir is a dark and brooding game. I enjoyed it more, though I was frustrated by some design choices. If not for these choices, Elixir would be a far better game.
You wake up in a mysterious, isolated house with no memories. An old man greets you and teaches you the basics of operating the machines in his alchemy lab. The following day, he’s gone, and now it’s up to you to help the poor souls more helpless than you who appear in the house with mysterious ailments.
Elixir. Credit: Moxu Projects
In Elixir, you take several steps in your alchemical investigation. You must identify your “patient’s” ailment and create the right potion to cure it. If you don’t know the right mixture, you can experiment by making potions and drinking them yourself.
The game’s loop is built around a day and night cycle. Your patient arrives in the morning, and if you don’t cure them by dawn at the end of the day, they disappear; here is when experimentation becomes more necessary because when patients vanish, they pass their afflictions on to you. The day/night cycle was one of my big frustrations with the game. The clock is always ticking, and time passes very quickly; making a potion is a long, multistep process, and the timer doesn’t give you long enough to experiment. I wanted to be able to take my time to find combinations, but I couldn’t. Keep in mind that over 700 mixtures are possible.
Elixir. Credit: Moxu Projects
The game is controlled by the mouse, along with keyboard shortcuts to select inventory slots. You click to move, but object interaction is a little more complex. Most things around your lab, such as the ropes and levers that drive your machines, require you to click and drag.
You must take a long list of steps to make potions as you begin the game. You need to grab—or catch, in the case of critters—one of the potion’s ingredients. You open the distiller, drop in the thing, then close it. Then there’s a valve you must operate when you see the right color you need flowing out of the pot. This produces a crystal, which you must crush into shards by cranking a lever to lift a large rock and then operating another lever that releases the rock. Remember to lock that lever again to be ready for the next time you raise the stone. Then, you place a combination of five shards into another machine, which you operate by repeatedly pulling a rope to spin a wheel. Once that step is done and your ingredients are finally mixed in liquid form, you must utilize a spigot to bottle the potion. Woe be unto you if you forgot to close the spigot, and your potion goes straight down the drain.
Elixir. Credit: Moxu Projects
Repeating this long process repeatedly becomes irritating, and it is made even worse by most of these interactions requiring a click and drag, not just a click. It would be one thing if interaction with unique objects used dragging to make things more tactile, but when you have to do it repeatedly, it just becomes a chore. I should also mention that clicking on a rat running around the screen to catch it was much more challenging than it needed to be. There are more things you must do in the game to solve your mysterious situation, but the hurdle of what is required to make potions made me not want to continue; I see it as a design choice that will be a significant stumbling block that will turn off a lot of players.
The game’s pixel art is excellent—chunky and colorful but still appropriate for the game’s dark tone. It feels fitting for what is essentially a point-and-click adventure. The sound design made interactions feel more rewarding, at least when I wasn’t irritated by the required repetition.
I would have had a far better time with Elixir if not for the unfortunate design choices of the time cycle and repetitive complex interactions. Otherwise, the game is a compelling mystery with a great atmosphere.
Elixir is available for PC on Steam.
Overall Score: 6/10
Played on: Steam Deck
