Elixir Lane: Apothecary Games

Nextech Systems

Contains adsIn-app purchases

About this game

You are behind the counter of a small apothecary. Someone wants something bitter for their mother's cough. Someone else wants whatever you would take yourself.

The shop has six rooms now, and they all pay into the same till. Serve potions at the counter, put the library straight, blend an exact colour at the bench, sort the cellar's phials, tidy the store room's shelves. A coin earned anywhere is a coin you can spend anywhere, and being bored of one room is a reason to open the next, not to close the app.

NO ENERGY. NO TIMERS. NO WAITING.
This is the part that makes Elixir Lane different, so it comes first. There is no energy bar, no cooldown, and nothing that asks you to come back in three hours or pay to skip. Play for four minutes or forty. The game does not have an opinion about it.

THE COUNTER
Push a bottle up the counter with your thumb and let go. It slides under real friction, knocks into what is already up there, and if it meets its twin the two become one better potion. There is no landing marker: judging the weight of a shot is the whole skill, and you will have it inside a minute. A bank shot off the wall is a legitimate way to reach the back row. Eight lines of potions, fifty-six in all, and every one a different object rather than the same bottle in a new colour.

THE LIBRARY
Shelves keep arriving and want putting straight: silhouettes matched, colours gathered, heights ordered, series in reading order. Quiet, unhurried work with no timer and no way to get it wrong twice.

THE MIXING BENCH
Someone wants an exact shade. Pour measures from the bottles until your flask matches the swatch. The exact colour is always reachable, and every measure can be taken back out.

THE DECANTING ROOM
Racks of mixed phials, sorted one pour at a time until every phial holds a single liquid. Undo is free and unlimited, all the way back to the deal.

THE WAREHOUSE
Clear the floors crate by crate, and free what is pinned at the back.

THE STORE ROOM
Put the stock straight, three at a time. The shop posts what it wants; there is no move counter, no timer and no way to fail. The requisition waits for you.

A SHOP THAT GROWS
Gold buys permanent improvements: better shelving for the library, finer scales for the bench, a wider ledger for the store. Past that it builds the town itself — a well, an orchard, a market stall, and eventually a market hall over the whole lane. The notice board posts daily and weekly jobs across every room, plus a market day that waits as long as you need it to, and a day's work anywhere keeps your streak.

THE RECIPE BOOK
Everything you have ever made is recorded, with a line about what it is and where it came from, and stars for the ones you have made most. Each season the shop puts up a few limited editions — collect them while they are on the shelf.

• Works entirely offline. No account, no connection, nothing to sign up for
• One-time purchase to remove ads, if you would rather not see them. No subscription
• Sound and music as separate switches
• Portrait, one thumb, any hand