Patchwork Potions
A downloadable game
Patchwork Potions is a solo journaling game about accepting a role as village witch in a cozy rural community. You will craft potions, explore the wilds, form relationships, and investigate mysteries. Play at your own pace and comfort!
The game includes a colorfully unique grid system which acts as both a record of your past and an oracle of your future. Starting with a blank page, you will gradually fill in grid spaces with colors corresponding to the themes in your journal. As you play, your individual arrangement of colored spaces will help you determine further writing prompts. No two stories will have the same pattern of colors and themes, leaving you with a unique visual representation of your journal when the game is over.
Patchwork Potions can be played by itself or as an encounter generator to another game of your choice--particularly Apothecaria by Anna Blackwell, the inspiration for this game.
This edition is a preview created in November 2022 for the TTRPGs for Trans Rights in Florida bundle. I intended to kickstart a fully laid out edition in early 2023, but that project has been paused. Please enjoy the plain text version with lovely cover art by @hellewoods!
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A truly cozy game with a very clever mechanic! I ended up writing over 20 pages when I played. I do think a bit of balancing is necessary though. I got into a Hearth-Old Witch-Familiar cycle of doom, and it became difficult as the game went on to find prompts I hadn't done already. I think a good place to start would be excluding the overarching category from the three-letter code. For example, Witchery has WRH, HWO, RRW, and XWR. That's four of six prompts that add another witchery patch to the grid, on top of the one that already exists! Removing the Ws from the Witchery category would provide some better balance. That's really my only complaint, I thought the prompts were fantastic and the experience was delightful. Thank you!
I'm glad you liked the game! Thanks for the kind words and the balance notes. My goal was to weight the prompts slightly toward the themes you are already focusing on so the grid doesn't end up being completely random noise, but the feedback loop may be a little too strong.
Oh for sure, I totally get where you're coming from. Thanks for responding! If you ever need a playtester for future versions, just let me know!
I've been playing this alongside Apothecaria and it's already spawned some of my favorite character moments :) I really like the method of generating prompts and it keeps me writing even in a slump. The cover art is beautiful, so I hope this gets a full-color expansion some day! <3
Thank you Romelia! I'm glad you are having so much fun with the game. A full release with color and layout isn't off the table but it's not my top priority right now. In the background I'm also noodling around some other games that use the same color-grid engine for generating prompts. I hope to share them someday!
I love this game so much! The prompt system is so unique, and I love how I end up with such a cool, fully-colored game sheet afterward, plus a unique story and a sigil! It's also fantastic that there are no limits on what players do, like I never just fail to do something or get forced to do something I wouldn't want to! 🧡
- ✨Beth