Ways of Alchemy

Introduction

Ways of Alchemy casts players as a medieval alchemist: brew potions from card-based ingredient combinations, hire adventurers, discover recipes, and grow a shack into an alchemical empire, all while staying ahead of the Inquisition. Developed by RocketBrush Games and published alongside Gamersky Games, it launched on Steam on 22 August 2025 at NZ$26.29. Roughly a year on, its 122 English-language reviews sit at 79% positive, Mostly Positive. This review read all 26 negative reviews in that sample alongside a range of the positive side.

A genre comparison that mostly favours the game

Nearly every review in this sample, on either side of the aggregate, brings up the same reference point unprompted: Cultist Simulator, and its spiritual successor Book of Hours. That comparison mostly works in Ways of Alchemy's favour. "Pretty much a Copy & Paste of Cultist Simulator, but a GREAT ONE. Perfect if CS was not enough," reads one positive review. Even reviewers who don't recommend the game concede real quality: "I want to love this game, it scratches the Cultist Simulator style of game very well," reads one detailed negative review before detailing its specific problems. The card art draws particular praise — "way more detail than most people would ever notice without zooming in to admire it," one reviewer wrote — and the built-in grimoire, which tracks discovered recipes without needing an external wiki, is specifically called out as a genuine quality-of-life improvement over its genre inspirations.

Where the mid-game slows down

The negative-review sample converges tightly on a specific structural problem rather than scattered individual complaints: the opening hours work, and then the game's lack of meaningful automation becomes a real burden. "Enjoyable for the first 7-10 hours and then the slog starts to set in," one reviewer wrote. "There are so many ingredients that are a pain to acquire and progress very rarely give you anything interesting." Another, more pointed: "There is ZERO automation, you slowly clicking things to make a coagulation potion? thats basically exactly what you will still be doing 10 hours into t[he game]." A separate, recurring complaint ties directly into that grind: money and key crafting ingredients are bottlenecked together, so several reviewers report struggling to progress at all in the early-to-mid game, not merely finding it slow.

A smaller but real cluster of reviewers report something more serious than pacing: save corruption. One reviewer with 186 hours invested reports running into it directly; another writes plainly "Saves are broken... after many hours i got the bug again" in a review edited after the developer's own fix apparently didn't fully resolve it. UI friction compounds these issues for some — one reviewer reports right-click serving double duty for both placing cards and closing windows, risking an accidental loss of an in-progress card layout on a misclick.

An unusually active developer

What sets this review's overall assessment apart from many other small-scope indie titles in this library is what this review found checking RocketBrush Games' own public update history. Rather than the silence or single post-launch patch common elsewhere in this campaign, the record shows near-weekly activity: a November 2025 quality-of-life and stability update, a December 2025 content update adding cooking and new mechanics, a public "Looking Ahead" roadmap post previewing what's coming, and a run of hotfixes continuing into January 2026 — five months of sustained, documented support after launch. That same update history confirms the "Yule Spirits" holiday event some newer players found frustrating and confusing is real, intentional seasonal content rather than a bug, introduced in a dedicated December 2025 "Winter Treats & Yule Spirits" update. Steam's own achievement data backs up a game with real staying power for engaged players: completion declines gradually from 95.7% for the easiest goal down to single digits for the hardest, a steadier curve than the steep early cliffs seen in more thinly-supported titles.

Verdict

Ways of Alchemy earns real, specific respect from fans of its genre inspiration, with detailed card art and a genuinely clever grimoire system standing out even among its critics. The consistent complaint — a real slowdown into repetitive grinding once the opening hours pass, alongside a smaller but real save-corruption risk — is worth taking seriously before buying. But this review's check of the developer's own public record found unusually active, ongoing support months past launch, a real point in the game's favour that should ease concerns about whether its rough edges will ever get addressed.