The Smile Alchemist Review (Your lil brother!)
This game follows the very adoreable Nayc in his efforts to become the best alchemist he can be!
In terms of the look of the game, it's bright and it's cheerful. The characters are all drawn in a very cute way and things pop and animate in a pleasing, satisfying way.
The gameplay is essentially what you would get if you made an entire game about crafting. You wont find action stages to explore or survival scenarios to endure. It's all for the joy of crafting, so you should know if this is the kind of experience you want! If you love MMO crafting or the crafting part of any game, you will love this. Unlocking different areas to send unlockable crafters to. Watching them get better at their job and return with more resources for you to use to further your alchemy. You will have sales targets to achieve and special orders, but there's never really any pressure and you can go at your own pace. The most satisfying thing by far though is filling out pages and pages of your big collection book of everything you can craft, as well as your badges and achievements, unlocking bonuses every step out of the way.
As far as pacing goes, it can be easy to get a bit too obsessed with making everything... Or get tempted to make the bear minimum and rush. The trick is in finding a balance I'd say. The game does a good job to prompt you to try different systems. For completionists though, there are quite heavy requirements to unlock some end game things and get the last few achievements, so i'd pace yourself with that too. I felt that requiring such a high amount of collecting to unlock some important end game stuff was a little much. But I still enjoyed the game enough to power through it!
It's a pretty chill time generally and something I honestly struggled to put down. Thats the mark of a fantastic game, especially for the price. I say go for it!