Given the current situation, I was craving a cozy game that creates a fantasy world full of adorable creatures and good feelings, so I decided to give The Last Alchemist a try. While The Last Alchemist definitely offers beautiful graphics and a serene alchemical experience, it’s just too short to have much replay value. Your opinion on this point may differ, however.

Action ahoy!

You play as the titular last alchemist, although you begin the title as an apprentice and sole survivor of a plague that wiped out your village. You have not escaped unscathed, however, and despite your growing skills in alchemy, you have been unable to find a cure, only a way to slow the plague’s progression. As such, the game begins with you willing to give alchemy one more chance, but you don’t have much choice in doing so since you are so weakened by the plague. Before the title begins, you have returned to the observatory of your old, deceased master, desperate to find a cure.

There you will meet the Agari, who were once friends of your master. Now it is up to you, as the last alchemist, to gain their trust while racing to save your own life and preserve your master’s legacy.

Notes on verification

Okay, I’ll be the first to admit, the Agari are adorable. They’re little mushroom creatures, many of them named after mushrooms you’d see in the real world, and they’re your main conversational partners throughout the game. The rest of the visuals are straight out of a storybook, conveying the serene atmosphere that so many games in the cozy genre try to create. The general aesthetic leans heavily towards cottagecore as well, which only adds to The Last Alchemist’s atmosphere.

As the name suggests, gameplay mostly consists of crafting essences and the machinery needed to distill your alchemical concoctions, and The Last Alchemist typically does this via puzzle games. Several of these games are built on the same engine, so be aware that you’ll need to be able to place items where they need to go in order to solve the puzzles. While none of the puzzles are necessarily too easy, some of them can be more difficult, especially if your spatial awareness is on the weak side. Thankfully, none of the puzzles get into frustratingly difficult territory, so the difficulty is never greater than the reward.

One of my favorite aspects of the title is that the main currency is knowledge, which is just really good as an idea. It encourages and rewards experimentation and exploration, and it values ​​knowledge. The Last Alchemist features an encyclopedia where you can record all of your discoveries, so you don’t have to worry about having to memorize everything you learn. This is just another way the title encourages you to value knowledge and understanding, and honestly, we should probably all learn to value those a bit more than we do.

The other important stat to keep an eye on in The Last Alchemist is stamina. Remember, you’re playing an alchemist stricken with a deadly disease, and this plague ravages your body, so you’ll need to take plenty of breaks to rest and restore your stamina. Honestly, this decision by the game developers strikes a great balance between maintaining immersion in the story and avoiding interruptions for long breaks. Any long-time Sim or Dungeons and Dragons player can tell you how frustrating it can be to have gameplay interrupted in this way. I’m not sure if the developers intended the title to be an exploration of what it’s like to live with a chronic illness, but the gameplay certainly invites players to think more than a little about what that must be like.

The stamina mechanic also dictates how far you can go to harvest the plants and herbs you need to distill to create your essences. Unsurprisingly, gathering the raw ingredients is a big, big part of the game, but you’ll need to use your resources wisely because even though plants and herbs are plentiful, you can only harvest from one spot once every seven days. Yes, you read that right. Not only does this wait time guarantee that you don’t burn through resources without restraint, it also lengthens the game by serving as a mild punishment for making a mistake. If you run afoul of this mechanic, you can take some time to build furniture and otherwise customize your workspace, revealing the basic framework of the game as a simulation, albeit with a more developed fantasy component.

As a player, you can measure your progress by how easily you get around obstacles. The Last Alchemist naturally blocks access to certain resources by using rocks or other obstacles that require you to mine a certain essence. However, if you haven’t discovered that essence yet, there’s not much you can do to progress. If the game has a weakness, it lies in this particular design element. These blocks artificially extend the length of the title. Yes, all obstacles tend to do that, but in The Last Alchemist, it feels particularly purposeful, especially given the amount of time you have to spend grinding just the right essence. The answer to that is that it can be so much that you forget exactly what you were doing in the first place.

In brief

Overall, The Last Alchemist is an engaging, leisurely simulation that invites you to think about recognizing your own limits and pushing them responsibly. The story is fairly straightforward, involving a redemption arc and forcing you to make connections along the way, but straightforward isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Not every gaming experience needs to involve complex story themes, and The Last Alchemist offers engaging puzzles with enjoyable gameplay, but also asks you to think a little about your own fragility.

The Last Alchemist is available on Steam for $19.99.

Wandering thoughts behind the keyboard

1. There is no controller support, by the way, so you have to rely on The Last Alchemist’s fixed controls.
2. I won’t call the Alchemist’s illness an invisible illness since he actually walks around with a prosthetic limb.
3. The drag and drop system can be a bit tricky. While it’s not so bad that it affects gameplay, it can be frustrating.

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