Potion commotion is a cozy game about making potions for customers. We wanted to create the feel of working in a busy pub, but with a magical twist.

The game was made for my Collaborative Development module where I was the lead designer, in charge of the Level and Mechanics design, as well as editing the trailer together

Potions are created by combining at least two ingredients in a cauldron. Ingredients are made by taking a material and preparing it with a workstation, where each workstation has an attached minigame. For example, the healing potion requires Chopped Lillipeed, so the player has to take a Lillipeed from the plant pot, and then chop it up with the chopping board before then putting it in the cauldron

This system was designed to be easy to follow for the player, but still allows for a veriety of potion recipies and gameplay mechanics. There’s also some overlap between how ingredients can be prepared, which allows for even more possible potion recipies without overwhelming the player with too many materials or minigames

The level was designed in a way to maximize the distance between materials and the workstations that can be used with them, which prevents the player from spending all their time in one area of the room. For example, the Creatures can be used with the Chopping Board, Furnace, or the Incubator, and so those stations are placed far away from the Creatures shelf

Since the Enchanter doesn’t have a counterparts in the real world, I had to design that from scratch. I wanted the feeling of creating a spell to cast on the ingredient, so I made a system where the player is presented with a symbol, and then has to create that symbol by combining lines together.

I used a pentagram as a base, due to it’s connections with occultism, and traced over certain parts to create six base lines that can be combined together to create runes

Potion Commotion is available to download on Itch.io for free!