Have you been curious about Little Alchemists, the new streamlined version of Alchemists designed for younger players and their families? We’ve packed a lot of information in our Official FAQ below! Check it out to learn more about the game ahead of its Gen Con launch!
Q: What is Little Alchemists about?
Little Alchemists is a family-friendly deduction game that’s designed to grow with the curious minds of young players. It’s a game for two-to-four players that’s based on the original Alchemists game released in 2014, offering a streamlined standalone version of that experience that’s geared toward younger players and their families. The game plays out across seven unlockable chapters, with each new chapter adding components and mechanics onto the previous one. This lets the game’s depth and challenge scale with the age and skill levels of players.
Q: What do you do in the game?
In Little Alchemists, players are competing to make and sell potions — it’s like running a lemonade stand, only the lemonade is magic. The game starts with simple concepts and mechanics — you’ll start by gathering and combining ingredients for brewing potions to sell to adventurers that pop-up. Potion craft is handled by scanning combinations of ingredients with the companion app, which reveals the results for you to mark down on your potion crafting pyramid.
As you collect keys by achieving your potion-making goals, however, you’ll unlock new chapters that gradually add more components, mechanics, and complexity to the experience. This expands the types of potions you can craft, weaves in special goals and abilities, increases the deduction challenges, and incorporates other surprises into the mix.
Q: A kids game? Will it be for adults too?
The first chapter offers a very simple introduction to the basics of ingredient gathering and potion making. By mid to later chapters of the game, however, the gameplay expands into more complex territory, offering enough of a challenge for average board gamers to enjoy. It’s not as heavy as the original Alchemists, but the deduction elements do reach a comparable level of depth by the last chapter of Little Alchemists.
Playing Little Alchemists is also a great way to get acclimated to the basic of the deduction gameplay in Alchemists. It can be a useful stepping stone to learning the full euro game, as there are many common themes and mechanics found in both. If you haven’t played Alchemists and want to try something heavier after trying out Little Alchemists with your kids or family, then it definitely helps with the learning transition.
Q: Does the game require the app to play? How does it work?
Much like the original game, Little Alchemists does indeed require downloading a free companion app to your smartphone or tablet. The app is required to scan ingredients when brewing potions to determine the results. It also will have some other helpful surprises in it when it launches, too.
Q: Is there an educational component to the game?
Much of Little Alchemists’ gameplay is designed to help young players feel smart and grow their skill over time as the game grows in depth and complexity across its seven chapters. The potion making gameplay and ingredient deduction grid is particularly helpful for developing childrens’ deduction and logic skills, as they’ll start off with simple tasks and graduate to more complex challenges.
Q: What if my child wants to play it but is too young?
One of the other fun things about Little Alchemists is the way that it grows with players. Even children who might be too young to play the game by themselves can still have fun with it if you sit with them and guide them through it. Small kids who might not understand the deduction mechanics yet can help you with scanning the ingredients with your phone, picking out the correct potion based on the result (since they’ll see the completed potion on the screen), and then finding a proper spot to place the potion on the deduction triangle.
During our playtesting, we found that this activity was fun and stimulating for kids who were too young to play a full game of Little Alchemists.
Q: Does the game require any reading beyond the rulebook?
For the most part, the first five chapters of the game do not require any reading. The last two chapters incorporate gameplay elements with some minimal text on them, but they’ve been designed to also be easily understandable without needing to read them.
Q: What’s different between Alchemists and Little Alchemists?
Alchemists is a heavy euro game with complex deductions, worker placement, and lots of depth. Little Alchemists keeps many of the core gameplay elements, but simplifies and streamlines them for younger players and their families to grasp. We’ve simplified some areas of the game and removed the worker placement aspects, but you’ll still be obtaining ingredients, brewing and selling potions, and making deductions and publishing theories. Little Alchemists also is chapter-based, with new gameplay elements layered on slowly over time. Each chapter beyond the first is contained in a sealed box within the main game box. When you achieve the required number of keys to unlock it, you’ll unseal the next chapter’s box, add its rule sticker to the rulebook, and gain access to new components and mechanics.
Q: Why haven’t you shown more of the full game yet?
One big reason is we want to avoid spoilers. The later chapters of the game add cool new mechanics and elements to the gameplay. We want those to be a surprise for players, so we aren’t showing many of them off right now.
Q: When will Little Alchemists be released and how much will it cost?
Little Alchemists will be launching at Gen Con in the US with a MSRP of $49.95. You can pick up a copy at Gen Con or look for one at your Friendly Local Game Store!
Q: When will I have a chance to see more and play more?
We’ll definitely be demoing Little Alchemists at Origins, Gen Con, SPIEL, and PAX Unplugged. Here’s more detailed info on where to find us at upcoming cons this summer.
Q: Where can I learn more about the game?
You can learn more about the inspiration and development of Little Alchemists in this article on the CGE Blog.
We’ll be posting more designer diary articles on the Little Alchemist game page on BGG as well as the CGE Blog in the coming months. Be sure to subscribe and follow the game on BGG to get updates when new content about Little Alchemists drops!