Good evening, and welcome back for a review of someting totally different from the usual! Alchemistress Vivi is a little code-breaking game clearly inspired by the classic Mastermind or Master Mind popular code-breaking boardgame.

In this game we play as Vivien the with and alchemistress, she's adventuring with her (rather useless) associate Metin to find a powerful artifact, but she forgot her spellbook, so the only chance is to use some of the supplies to cast the spells needed to destroy enemies, traps or dangerous enhancements in order to survive and unlock the next scene and level!


Wait, Metin knows something about comic books (drawn by psychos!)? This guy is really suspicious!

Ok, so everything is simple and linear, but how does this work? If you know how Mastermind works, well this is the same concept, except with various potions replacing the colors. But wait! Before selecting them you have to check how many different possibilities there are, and this is indicated under the number of lives: 1 indicates that there is just one kind of item (so, find it and you're set!), 1-2 means that there is just one or two different items, and so on, 1-4 is the maximum difficulty because there can be one to four different items. But you also have to find the correct sequence, and each time you get one empty square for errors, a blue square for a correct item in a wrong position, and a green square if the correct item is also in the correct position.
So good luck figuring out the sequence!

You have eight possibilities to figure out the correct combination, after that you lose a life and you can restart the level, but with a new combination! There are three different difficulty levels, from the easy one with more lives that also enable saving, to the hardest one where you can't lose once or it's game over!

The whole simple game is set inside a sort of framework that is the short adventure of Vivi and Metin. This means that there are dialogues and images (standard assets but they are adequate) but you will probably skip all the scenes after playing once, because what really changes is the game, not the scenario. It's also a good choice making the game short since it's a rather simple concept, that has no sense if repeated for too long.


YES! We did it!

Verdict
I played at Hardcore (medium) difficulty (three lives and no savegama) and the first time I was defeated by the boss final form (laste level... UGH!) but the second time I took my revenge (always playing Hardcore, of course!). It's a short and simple game that's anyway well made and organized, I liked the interface and its layout, the range of difficulty settings, and I don't know how all this could be improved since nothing is left to chance. You can also delete your choice before confirming it, if you made a mistake selecting the wrong item. The story is simple but merges well with the rest of the game, and I think every player will play it just to see the ending once (that is a bit short, and I admit I expected a little more, anyway this is clearly not the kind of game you play for the story!).

Said this, found no issues, bugs or typos, my rating is 4/5. A simple and short but good and very polished game.