Developer: Miju Games
Publisher: Miju Games
Platform: PC (Steam)
Tested On: PC (Steam)
Abracadabrew – Review
Witches have been a staple in fantasy for a very long time and are almost always accompanied by the same few things: black cats, brooms and, most importantly here, brews. Abracadabrew takes the true and tested partnership between potion-crafting and witches, putting its players in the shoes of a group of apprentice sorceresses as they prepare their brews.
Story
Abracadabrew’s story revolves around a group of witches and their fight against a tyrannical king who has outlawed magic. Through the creation of potions, the witches can stand against the oppression imposed by the monarch, who is attempting to hoard all the powers for himself.
The game’s story is little more than a justification for the gameplay, which could’ve been completely omitted without harm. It is only told through a short dialogue before each level and consists of pure “tell don’t show”, making it all but irrelevant. That said, an attempt at a story is still welcome even if improvable.
Graphics
Abracadabrew’s graphics are made in a quite nice paper-like aesthetic with soft colors. The game also contains a good quantity of different potion components, adding a slight variation from game to game. On top of this, there are different skins for playable witches that can be unlocked by progressing through the levels, up to 24 of them. It’s nice to see a party game step away from the typical visuals that are now used for games such as Overcooked, Catastronauts, etc.
Sound
The game’s sound is well covered with a good soundtrack and SFX. Each level has a different tune that will play throughout it, with the quite nice detail added of speeding up more and more as the timer nears the end. The SFX are also quite varied, with one for each of the different actions and effects in the game. That said, the basic ones will repeat a lot, being featured in every single level.
Gameplay
Abracadabrew’s gameplay could be classified as a puzzle party game, in the same vein as others such as Overcooked. The main focus of the game is to bring the different elements composing a potion to the cauldron in the correct order, resetting the whole chain upon failing one. Players are also able to sprint in order to move quickly from one point to the other, something pretty much required later on.
As the game progresses, the difficulty will increase, with more complicated requirements for the potions getting involved. A few examples of these would be the “all but” modifiers, which mark the next component as anything besides the one represented. Throughout the levels certain negative events may also trigger, these varying from area to area and being intended as handicaps for the player.
While simple, these random events may range from very impactful to minor annoyances. In order to rid themselves of these, players will need to step on the marked magic circles and spam their interaction button to clear them. A few examples could be darkness or bats obscuring vision, “enemies” dropping wrong items in the cauldron, or strong winds.
As a party game, Abracadabrew has a strong focus on co-op, this coming in local mode but available online thanks to Steam Play Together. What this entails for the gameplay is an unfair balancing that doesn’t account for the differences between one and several players. Most of the levels will require a good amount of retries in single-player, with close times and reliance on RNG for the random events. On the other hand, playing in co-op simplifies everything as long as there’s good communication, the difficulty not increasing at all.
There is also another major issue with the game, this mainly being the repetitiveness. With all levels relying on the same few gimmicks, playing for long periods of time may become grating, offering little variation after a while.
Conclusion
Abracadabrew is an entertaining little game for all kinds of players, although it may be quite a better experience for those playing with others. With a selling price of $11.99/€8.04/£10.47, Abracadabrew is worth its price, accounting for multiple players being to play with a single copy. While entertaining, we suggest not picking this one up for a single-player experience, due to the bad scaling of the difficulty levels. You’ll have a lot more fun with friends, and with proper communication.
Personal Opinion
“I found Abracadabrew to be quite an entertaining game, one which triggered the completionist in me. I wouldn’t feel satisfied until I obtained all stars in each level, which, while possible, is quite hard in single-player unless RNG is in your favor. Playing with a friend was quite more entertaining, seeing as we could complete levels with fewer retries and barely any drawbacks besides the occasional resetting due to a wrong item. There is also another thing I’d like to mention for those who like me have the “night light” mode always on in their PCs: certain colors become really hard to distinguish. Due to the night light, things like pastel hot pink and pastel orange became almost identical, forcing me to get up and stare at them for a moment to distinguish them. This also applied to the dark blue and green items and at times even the dark orange and red. While it may seem like a particular issue with a simple solution, it is quite probable it also applies to other monitor settings or lighting settings depending on the user. I’d personally recommend Abracadabrew, but mostly to those with people to play with since doing it alone can become both repetitive and straining (mostly due to the amount of button mashing).”
Abracadabrew - Review,
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