Alchemy map: steering the bottle toward a frost effect node

About this game

Developer: niceplay games · Publisher: tinyBuild · Platform: PC (Steam) · Art style: Hand-drawn & ink · Screen type: Campaign / World Map

More Potion Craft: Alchemist Simulator screens in the Gallery

What to study

Potion Craft turns brewing into cartography. The potion is a bottle icon on an exploration map, and ingredients do not add stats, each one draws a segment of the route, bending the bottle along its own trajectory (the selected Windbloom's card shows its path as a dashed line and explains the handling in one sentence). The craft is landing exactly on an effect node: the dashed trail and X in this frame are the player steering toward the frost effect, with strength decided by how close to the node's centre the bottle stops. Everything around the map supports that one spatial problem, the left panel is the route-so-far written as a recipe, the right panel is the pantry of possible next segments, and the bellows, ladle, cauldron and mortar under the scroll are the verbs that reshape the path. Frame at about 0:44 in the Gameplay Overview Trailer (Steam; manual extraction from the 1 frame / 2s filmstrip pass).

Patterns

How the screen is arranged.

map-nodes route-planning side-panel diegetic-controls

Components

Parts on screen.

Card Tabs Toolbar Grid List Map Progress bar Gauge Slots Toggle

Screen inventory

• the alchemy map fills the centre as a parchment scroll: undiscovered effects are faint clusters of books, bones and skulls, discovered ones resolve into icons, a snowflake and a heart sealed in bottle outlines, and the blue bottle icon sits mid-map with a dashed trail to an X beside the snowflake node, showing a brew in progress
• the left panel is the recipe under construction: a 'Map tracking' toggle, the title 'New potion', three ingredient icons already spent (counts 3 and 1), a bottle preview wearing a '?' label beside empty bottle, icon and tag slots, and 'Save recipe' / greyed 'Finish potion' buttons at the bottom
• the physical tools sit in a row under the map they act on, bellows, a ladle on a stand, the cauldron over coals and a mortar, so stirring, heating, grinding and pouring water are drawn as workshop equipment, not toolbar buttons
• the right panel is the pantry: an ingredient grid with stack counts (12, 11, 11, 1…) under tab icons, and the selected Windbloom card shows that ingredient's whole contribution as a dashed path diagram with the handling note 'Use it like a fan to cool off.'
• the persistent rail above the pantry reads day 34 in a green dial, 197 gold and popularity 11, and the goals list at bottom right ('Craft a potion', 'Sell a potion to a customer', 100 each) carries the hint that pouring water from the ladle moves the potion toward the centre of the map

Top 3 colors

#70543a 23%#c8a87a 18%#d2b385 18%

Top three palette colors by share. The remaining colors make up the rest.

Source and credit

© niceplay games / tinyBuild, Potion Craft: Alchemist Simulator screenshot: Steam trailers (Gameplay Overview Trailer / Early Access Release Trailer / Garden 2.0 update trailer), niceplay games, shown for design study and commentary. PlayCraft is an unofficial fan project, not affiliated with or endorsed by tinyBuild.

Source tier 2 (publisher-released) · screenshot: Steam store page · Steam page

Source details

Fetched 2026-10-25. verified 2026-10-25: manual extraction manual-map-44.png @ ~44s in the Gameplay Overview Trailer, MD5 4062039915da0b4938083d7d67ba05f0, from the verified-clean curl-shim download (134,704,160 B, MD5 a49b16b00b819b4c74a467c3a10552c1; full decode to null with -xerror exit 0, zero error lines, decode-steam-1210320-Gameplay-Overview-Trailer.mp4.err), inspected visually at full resolution (1920x1080 native); the map with bottle icon and dashed trail, New potion panel, Windbloom path card, tool row and goals list all legible; no trailer text or marketing overlay in frame

no published policy found (checked 2026-10-25); fair-use study use, takedown honored within 48h

Rights holders: see Copyright & takedown.