No sooner had I published last week’s post about Msyterium did I check my email and see Asmodee Digital sent another press release confirming that their digital adaptation of Horrible Games’ Potion Explosion, will ALSO be launching in December as well.
It is certainly going to be a great holiday season for digital board game fans!
For the uninitiated, Potion Explosion is a fantasy-themed set collection, puzzle game in which players are trying to collect ingredients from a central board to craft potions.
Players are students attending the Horribilorum Sorcery Academy for Witty Witches and Wizards, attempting to impress their Professor, Albedus Humblescore, and rise to the head of his class by crafting complex and valuable potions. The goal is to be the student who has crafted a set a potions with the highest cumulative value by the time the end game scenario is triggered.
Unicorn tears, dragon smoke, ogre mucus and fairy dandruff! Gather your resources in the dispenser, and compete with ingenuity to collect ingredient marbles of the same color to trigger explosions! The more identical marbles collide, the more ingredients are collected through chain reactions to cook up your magic beverages. Combine the correct ingredients to create stunning potions such as the Elixir of Blind Love, the Potion of Prismatic Joy or the Sands of Time. You can also drink potions and benefit from their magical effects to collect more ingredients to be placed in the player’s dispenser or directly into a rival’s inventory.
The marble picking is sort of similar to a match-3 game and causing cascading matches can be really rewarding, allowing players to rapidly collect the ingredients they need. Drinking completed potions to either enhance your abilities or hamper your fellow students will be key if you want to ascend the ranks. They can also help you to manipulate the ingredient marbles to set up rewarding combos.
Each of the potions falls into different categories and students can earn special Skill tokens either by repeatedly mastering the same potion three times or by crafting a variety of five potions with differing effects. These Skill tokens are worth 4 points each at the end of the game. If the supply of Skill tokens gets depleted at the at the end of any player’s turn, or there are no more Potion tiles available, the end game is triggered.
The app will support both solo (against CPU opponents) and both local and online asynchronous multiplayer with configurable turn timers to keep things moving.
I have been beta testing the app version and it looks great with colorful animations and graphics and is super fun and easy for newcomers to jump right in.
You wont have long to wait, because the app should be available in early December on iOS and Android for $6.99.
