Welcome back avid board gamers! Join us as we review Familiar Alchemy by Digisprite. A venture of growing plants and brewing concoctions with a friendly familiar. Can you impress the Illustrious Alchemist Beira and become her new apprentice?
REVIEW
Familiar Alchemy Board Games Review
,What is Familiar Alchemy?
Familiar Alchemy is a 2-4 player game developed and published by DigiSprite. Each game typically lasts between 45-60 minutes whereby players grow and harvest plants to pop into peculiar potions. Each player also has a cute familiar that can aid them in their alchemical endeavours. This is all charmingly wrapped in Scottish Folklore.
How To Play
First we must set up the playing area. This game is perfect for around a coffee or dinning table which is wonderful! Each player chooses a familiar companion, alchemical notes which dictates actions on your turn and how to perform alchemy (more on that later), and a set of lovely flowery tokens. Depending on the amount of players, randomly choose novice and artisan brew cards and place them in the centre of your play space with novice brews face up. 2 player games have 2 novice and 1 artisan brews. Whereas 3-4 player games have 3 and 2 respectively.
Now you have your brews that you want to contribute to in the centre it’s time to populate your gardens. Starting with the player who did some gardening first and moving clockwise, each player chooses a plant to add to their garden. Then, the last player chooses another plant then it moves anti-clockwise. Do this one last time going clockwise. Each player should end up with 3 plants. These are to be added to their private garden. Lastly, look over the remaining plants, remove any duplicates, then each player picks one. These are added to the communal garden in the centre of the play space.
After that, we are ready to play! We have our private gardens, our gardening tokens, our helpful familiar, and the centre space possesses a communal garden and the brews from which players can contribute to. So, let’s play!
Gameplay consists of players taking turns with the aim to rack up the most points. To gain points you must contribute to the brews in the centre. You can gain extra points for having fully grown plants in your garden. To add to brews you must harvest ingredients. To harvest ingredients you must grow plants. With both your private garden and the communal garden to think about, games can become excitingly tactical. Do you keep to your own garden? Or do you harvest the hard work of others and transmute the harvest for your own purposes?
The turn order for players is quite simple. Firstly, you add 1 ingredient to a plant in the communal garden. Then you can make 1 main action and 1 transmutation in any order. Main actions include Channel (adding 3 ingredients onto your private plants), Harvest (cutting ingredients from a plant), and Brew (adding ingredients to a brew). Transmutation can upgrade ingredients, allow you to swap your plants with on in the communal garden, and swap ingredients on brews. Other than that, you have free actions whereby you can activate your familiar abilities, rearrange your ingredient pouch, and empty any unwanted slots in your transmutation area.
The game ends when the last brew is completed. So, the closer to that point in the game becomes an interesting rush begins to transmute all your ingredients to brew up more points. Not only that but to change focus and grow a beautiful private garden.
Overall, I find the setup and rules easy to pick up and increasingly exciting to delve into. They are simple and fun to learn. The grow, harvest, and brew idea allows for plenty of planning ahead. And you can be as strategic as you want seeing as everyone’s play area is on view. No hidden traps here. This creates an friendly and open environment where every game played is an increasingly bubbling cauldron of alchemical fun!
Gameplay
Riding the wave of how to play the game, the gameplay becomes more enjoyable with every instance your bring it to the table. The more comfortable players become with the rules, routines, and changing of plants, brews, and familiars can make this a charming edition to any shelf. It has such a positive aura surrounding it too. From the aspects of grown plants, adding to brews in a communal way, and the beautiful illustrations by Moniek Schilder, it all culminates into a delightful potion of green thumbed fun!
There are is a variation to the game too. The familiars players can choose have abilities. For instance, the Cu Sith (my personal favourite!) can duplicate 1 ingredient when you harvest. Having more ingredients that the other players definitely comes in handy. Also, this grassy hound is very cute! In the variation, players can opt to go about the game without these abilities for a more simple experience. This great to bring down the level of play especially if you have a younger demographic.
On top of this, the game is a nice balance of the tactile token placement resource management and point scoring mechanics. It’s oh so satisfying playing the Secateurs down on a plant to reap all the rewards in token form. Only then to grace them down onto a brew the next turn. Wonderful!
With regards to level of play, there are a handful of layers to this fantastic folklore alchemy activity. They all naturally progress as you play. You grow plants, harvest them for ingredients, and use ingredients for brews. It doesn’t take long to become comfortable with the basic mechanics. Then, you can throw transmutation into the mix. This adds a nice bit of tactical depth. It’s very satisfying swap an empty plant in your garden for a full one in the communal one!
The familiars are all wonderful too. Not only for their illustrative design but also there abilities. Each one adding an ability to your toolset that can give you an advantage in a certain aspect of the game. Once all four are in play, it can make for some exciting plays and game states. This is also true when the artisan brews come into play as they also have abilities that apply to all players. Complete them and they come online which can often ramp up gameplay even further. It’s truly an exhilarating snowball of an adventure.
Overall, I love the mechanics. All of them. Simple to learn with so much fun on the table. And something simple as an optional rule to play with or without familiar abilities is a nice touch for different types of games and gamers. It’s tactile, which is always great in my book, and from the get go creates a warming environment full of rewarding growth and development.
Conclusion
Familiar Alchemy is a green thumbed adventure filled to the brim with simple and rewarding rules, exciting and progressive gameplay, and all wrapped up in charming folklore which is beautifully illustrated. For the happy herbalists, gleeful gardeners, and wonderful witches of the world, this board game is definitely for you. But, even if you are not so green of the thumb, it has oodles of character based on point scoring mechanics which is sure to fill a night with fun!
9
