I’ve always had an interest in alchemy, mainly because the term transmuted (pun intended) into what we now know as chemistry. While I was never very good at chemistry, I do enjoy learning about the elements and how they interact with one another. Whether I was watching Bill Nye or some teacher down at the Carnegie Science Center, my eyes were peeled to what was going on. “Alkemia: Destiny’s Recipe”, a game that’ll be launching on Kickstarter sometime in August of 2016, will task players with becoming the Grand Alchemist by saving the land of Alkemia via the synthesizing of the Crest of Creation. Before we begin, I’d like to thank the folks at Kinsoul Studio for reaching out and providing me with a prototype for preview purposes. It’s important to stress that prototypes are not often reflective of the final product, making everything seen here (including the rules) subject to change.
Alkemia: Destiny’s Recipe: 2-6 Players, Ages 14+, Average Play Time = 20 Mins Per Player
“Alkemia: Destiny’s Recipe” is chalk-full of unusual terms, so let me start off by explaining the most important one: “SEED” (Spiritually Enriched Elemental Deposits). Essentially, it’s the game’s currency. You’ll be collecting them by discarding regents and finding them naturally and spending them to activate special tiles called curious sites and for bartering, among other things. SEED can also be used in conjunction with a depleted item to satisfy the ingredient of the Crest recipe.
Confused yet? Don’t worry, I was too at first. Like I said, lots of terms to get a handle on. The main goal of the game is to craft the Crest of Creation. To do that, a player must reveal and satisfy all six of their individual recipes and unlock their artifact. Recipes are automatically revealed as players craft items. Items are crafted via reagents, which can be harvested out in the foraging field. So in other words…gather reagents, craft items, reveal the recipe for the Crest of Creation, make it, unseal your artifact, and win the game. That, in a nutshell, is “Alkemia: Destiny’s Recipe”.
The game is played over a series of rounds (or weeks). Each week consists of three phases:
1. Field Phase – Beginning with the player who has the starting player token, they’ll move their player piece and spend actions in order to interact with the field. This means collecting reagents and interacting with curious sites. Once everyone has had a turn, then the week moves onto phase two.
2. Alchemy Phase – In this phase, all players (at once) craft items using any reagents they may have. Once everyone is finished, play moves onto phase three.
3. Crest Phase – This is essentially a clean-up phase where players perform steps in a particular order. This includes sacrificing reagents or items to craft a Crest recipe, flipping over the Sprout of Endless Possibilities card if you have one, unsealing and flipping your artifact card if you have satisfied all of your base crest ingredients, discarding reagents cards to add SEED to your forge, and turning depleted items upright so that they can be used again next round/week.
Play continues until one player crafts the Crest, winning them the game. Obviously, there’s a bit more to it than that, but those are the highlights.
One thing I didn’t mention was that each player card / character has their own special ability, making it vital that you use it as much as possible to help you craft the Crest and other items you may need. In addition, players will be able to craft unique aspiration items that have very special powers, though can be treated as a regular item in that it can be depleted when used, be sacrificed to satisfy a Crest recipe, and etc. Artifacts are also pretty unique, doesn’t cost anything to use (unless it says otherwise), and doesn’t take up room in your inventory. Your hand size, by the way, is unlimited until the start of your next turn in which case you must discard down to ten.
Moving around the field is also a bit strategic in the sense that each tile has both arrows and numbers. The former tells you which tiles you can move to and the number indicates how many field actions it’ll cost to do so. All players start with 5 actions on their turn, though they’ll roll a D3 and add that value to it to determine their total action count. Gathering on fertile fields will reward you with the appropriate elemental type of reagent cards, based on the tile you’re currently standing on and what color/symbol it contains. You can gather from the same tile three times before it’s exhausted, but you and other players will be allowed to use it after your turn is over. Curious sites require one SEED to use, but offer a wide variety of effects that may assist you in your journey.
Overall, “Alkemia: Destiny’s Recipe” is a pretty neat game. It takes some time to get used to the terms and how gameplay flows, especially while you still have to look up what some of the curious sites actually do and how they behave. I was drawn to the crafting element this game offers and as an added bonus, crafting items can be done in a number of different ways. Since you don’t know what you’ll need to make Crest recipes right off the bat, players may opt to craft what they can as quickly as possible while others might opt to hold onto cards that might help them in the future whilst preventing others from seeing what they’re up to.
Once again, the game will be launching on Kickstarter around August of 2016, so go give it a look (link below) if this game sounds interesting to you!
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Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/827090433/alkemia-destinys-recipe-0
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