Magic Potion Explorer

A cute little idle game that'll take around 2 hours to finish, more if you want to try the hard mode, which I tried once and am not sure if I'll bother. I don't play idle games so I don't have much in the way of points of comparison. It's very simple and the story, short as it is, is pretty cute and the music and ui are good. That last point is important, as most Japanese indie games play like no one has interfaced with a computer before and it's good to see that's not the case here. I was wondering what engine was used and found out during the credit roll that it used the same custom engine as One-Way Heroics and that pleased me. Like just having the tooltip mouseover's being lightweight and quick and having the game feel like it was actually supposed to be played with a mouse feels nicer than it should. The benefit of low expectations and all that. In short, pick it up on sale for a few bucks, as it's really no more than a couple of hours long and there's not much decision making process involved in normal mode, as you'll max out all or nearly all skills by the end of the game, but it's pleasant enough to play since it's short and the few snippets of story are fun. Basically the game benefits from a lack of stupid stuff and ends at an appropriate time. p.s. I immediately bought the developer's next game, kind of a spiritual sequel to Magic Potion Explorer, and from playing it for like 20 minutes, came away with a feeling of less was more. Will have to play a bit more to have a firmer judgement.