Review: Potion Permit (Nintendo Switch)

Potion Permit is a role-playing adventure game developed by MassHive Media and published by PQube. It packs everything you need in a cozy title. Between foraging, curing residents of the town, and battling enemies, there’s never a dull moment.

Your character is a chemist, moving to Moonbury to help heal the mayor’s daughter. The problem is the residents don’t care for alchemy and prefer traditional healing methods. So, not only do you need to heal the residents with potions, but you also need to gain their trust along the way.

One thing I love about this game is that it isn’t slow in the beginning. In similar games, you have no money and need to build up your income before you can do anything. In Potion Permit, this isn’t an issue. You can sell potions you make, sell ingredients you forage in the wild, and earn money by healing the residents. It adds up quickly, allowing you to upgrade your tools, house, and cauldron easily.

The game is pretty simple and well-balanced, and there’s always something to do to move forward. For example, when I first turned on the game on a Saturday morning, I blinked, and eight hours had already passed. That’s how easy it is to get sucked into Potion Permit.

There are many moving pieces to this game. The biggest one is exploration and potion-making. Your character has a cauldron in their home where they can make various potions to sell or use for healing when a resident gets ill. When someone gets sick, you diagnose them by playing a quick mini-game, such as Simon says, or a rhythm game. Then, you make a potion to heal them.

Potion-making is relatively simple, too. Potions are a puzzle where you must add ingredients to fill the shape. Each component has a specific shape, similar to Tetris-style blocks. To make the potion, you must figure out how to make the pieces fit together. To start, your cauldron can fit five ingredients, but you can upgrade it at the blacksmith a few times to have the cauldron fit up to ten pieces.

Once a potion is made, you can bring it back to the resident to heal them. You have about four in-game days to recover them before they lose trust in you. Luckily, the puzzles were easy enough, and the ingredients were easy to come by, so I always healed my residents immediately, earning the maximum trust and money.

But how do you get ingredients in Potion Permit? You explore the wilderness surrounding the town! The map is relatively large and is split into four sections, one being the town itself. The first area you unlock is a forest biome. To get ingredients, you can cut down trees, bushes, and other plants. In addition, there are monsters and wild animals to fight. They’ll also drop items you can use for potions. In addition, these items can also be sold or used to fulfill resident quests. All the resources come back the next day, so you can easily stock up on certain supplies.

Resident quests are like a side story to help boost your friendship with each person. Every person in town has their own story going on behind the scenes. If you talk to them once a day, you’ll eventually fill the meter, unlocking a cutscene to see more of their story. Honestly, I wasn’t as into this feature of the game. There wasn’t much reward for it all, and the cutscenes were plentiful. So, it felt like they interrupted the flow of the gameplay.

However, the game does keep you busy. There’s always something to do, whether helping a resident, stocking up on supplies, fishing, hanging out at the arcade (yes, there is a whack-a-mole mini-game), and more. My only complaint is that Potion Permit is a little too easy. But on the other hand, I got completely sucked into the gameplay and had a hard time stopping for the day. If you’re looking for a low-maintenance, cozy game, definitely check this one out.