Alchemia

puzzle game where you're given a book with codes and puzzles and solve them primarily through online research ❌The only interaction is turning pages ❌The game's price is too high ❌There's no option to enter answers ❌❌ Verdict: [b] Terrible [/b], [strike] Bad [/strike], [strike] Mediocre [/strike], [strike] Decent [/strike], [strike] Good [/strike], [strike] Very Good [/strike] (Rating scale for short games, retro indie simulator games, and similar) [quote]If you'd like to see more of my reviews, you can find them on my curator page: [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/45994324/admin/reviews_manage/]CuratorKingViking[/url] and on my group: [url=https://steamcommunity.com/groups/CuratorKingViking]GroupKingViking[/url] If you have any questions about my reviews, feel free to ask.I'm happy to answer them. All reviews are my own!!Best regards, King Viking Bezimienny, Polish Game Reviewer. [/quote]

Alchemia, developed and published by Matthew Brown, is less a conventional game and more an intellectual challenge presented in interactive form. It deliberately strips away most of the familiar structures associated with video games—clear objectives, guided progression, and feedback systems—and replaces them with a single, dense artifact: a mysterious alchemical manuscript filled with symbols, diagrams, and cryptic clues. The experience asks players not just to play, but to interpret, research, and uncover meaning in ways that extend far beyond the boundaries of the screen. At its core, Alchemia offers no traditional gameplay loop. There are no levels to complete, no visible progression systems, and no tutorial to ease players into its logic. Instead, it presents a collection of pages inspired by historical alchemical texts, each filled with encoded information that must be deciphered. The player’s role becomes that of an investigator, piecing together connections between symbols, language, and external knowledge. Progress is entirely self-driven, and success is measured not by in-game rewards but by moments of understanding—those rare instances when a pattern clicks or a hidden …

Schizophrenia-inducing. You cannot solve this. Good way to start wikipedia holes on esoteric stuff though. I don't even 100% want to put this down, because it has made me learn some sort of interesting fundamentals about alchemy, history, and other things like that, but it's extremely lateral, esoteric, and unspecific. I do not recommend it. If you do play it, try to see if you can get a friend who has a lot of puzzle experience. Do not ask LLMs for help because they are really very bad at this.

Super fun with a dedicated group and a whiteboard.

The game is lacking actual game elements, it's just a book with questionable design, those S letters and the colours are awful here and there. Alchemy as basic lore could be a wonderful choice for a game like this. The puzzles themselves are good and compex, although vay too vague most of the time and there isn't any help system nor any feedback if your solution is actually good. Can't commend it, the developer's other cryptography game - Cipher - is much better in comparison with it's proper difficulty scale, clean design elements, basic hint system and actual feedback. However, if you like very hard puzzles with zero hand holding (and not interested in anything else) it could click for you.

Scratches that same itch Cypher had, and I really wish more puzzle games took these games as examples.