Mobile Gaming Review: Little Alchemy

Little Alchemy

Genre: Puzzle
Developer: Recloak
Platforms: Android, iOS

A review by Amelia Wellman

Little Alchemy starts you with four basic elements (air, water, fire, and earth) and lets you tap and drag your way through hundreds of element combinations to find dinosaurs, unicorns, and spaceships!

Within Little Alchemy are 560 elements to create. Simply drag a starting element to the left of your screen and overlay another element with it. It starts simple with basic rule of thumb combinations: earth and fire are lava, water and air is rain. The next layer is pretty easy as well, air overlaid with lava will get you stone, earth and air gives you fog. From what you could call the third tier onwards, things get a little less intuitive. How would you get a peacock? Or a telescope? Or the dinosaurs promised in the summary? And what’s this I’ve heard of lightsabers and jedis?

The possibilities are seemingly endless as you combine, combine, and then combine again. It can get a little bit frustrating if you’ve combined everything you think will mix and nothing happens, but breaking through the brain block will often get you a couple new elements to mix together and see what happens. The frustration to fun factor is never to unbalanced as to have the game be too easy or unbeatably hard.

Little Alchemy comes complete with achievements to earn at important milestones and you play it completely at your own pace. There’s no time limit or set amount of moves before having to wait for more, so there’s no pressure. Mix and match the elements as you please.

Best of all, Little Alchemy is completely free. That’s such a rarity in mobile gaming! It’s free to download and free to play with no in-app micro-transactions or annoying pop-up ads. It’s a thing of beauty.

The Verdict
Check it out! Little Alchemy is an interesting game. Very simple and straightforward, but challenging as well. It’s hard to master, but the frustration will never outweigh the fun. There’s no feeling of grinding here. Plus the complete lack of ads and micro-transactions means no temptation (or need) to drop actual money to win, all you need to do is combine the elements in any and all ways and maybe, just maybe, find the mythical unicorn it promises!

Little Alchemy is available now on Android and iOS.

.