the Greatest Alchemist | Donut Dog Games
Do you like inventing things?
Play: the Greatest Alchemist
Let’s be honest: the idea isn’t original. The first time I played a game like this was during the golden age of Flash games— maybe 20 years ago. And right away, I wanted to make my own version.
In 2010, I did. It featured 11 categories and 90 elements. I showed it to five friends… and no one else.
So what’s changed? Why now?
Recently, I came across a similar game created by someone else—and I thought it was brilliant. The developer reused the same icons for multiple items and used text labels beneath each one to differentiate them. When in 2010 I made my version, I believed every icon had to be unique, and I didn’t include any text to explain them. That made creating 90 distinct elements incredibly difficult.
if I can reuse icons and simply add text for context - that’s easy. Why I didn’t think like this before?
Here is an example of one category:
To be fair, not every category looks like that. And I promise - if the game gets popular, I’ll revisit the design. At the very least, I’ll adjust the colors so that no two icons are identical.
So, what does the current version offer? There are over 700 items, grouped into 40 categories, with more than 2,000 possible combinations—many items can be created in multiple ways. I originally aimed for 1000 - but if I did, I probably would have never launched the game. It takes a lot of time to think of combinations and when draw the icons, even if you reuse some of them.
How do you play?
At the top (or bottom) of the screen, you'll see a list of elements. Click one to place it in the center. When you add two elements, they try to combine. In case of success you get a new element. And then… you keep going, mixing and matching until you’ve found them all. That’s it.
Honestly, I don’t expect many players to have the patience to discover every single item—but if you’re having fun along the way, that’s what really matters.
One last thing. Designing colors and UI doesn’t come easily or naturally to me—unlike for some people. You can see the current version of the interface at the top of the article. For comparison, here’s how the previous version looked:
I think the current version is an improvement over first version, however it still doesn’t make me happy. I want to make it even better. So if you have any suggestions, please don’t be shy and let me know.
Play: the Greatest Alchemist