BG Alchemy
| title: | BG Alchemy |
| url: | link |
| download page: | link |
| license: | freeware |
| genre: | Puzzle Games |
| developer: | Spoonbill Software |
| platform: | Windows |
| release: | July 2018 |
| features: | text, sound, visuals |
| last edit by: | Dark |
Description
BG Alchemy is spoonbill's accessible version of the popular flash puzzle game "alchemy" originally developed in 2002 by Popcap games (makers of the popular bejeweled series. The game is best described as some sort of Frankenstein melding of Uno with the common four in a row game, though of course as an alchemist messing with the laws of nature that is entirely appropriate..
The game is played on a 9 by 8 board of exactly 72 squares. Each square composed of lead. As an alchemist, it is of course your main job to turn lead into gold, and you will complete each level when all cells of the board have been turned golden. To turn a cell into gold, you must play an alchemical rune to that cell. Each rune has both a type (based on the signs of the zodiac), and also a colour, so you will see runes such as red Capricorn, blue Leo or Aqua torus. A rune can only be played next to another alchemical rune of either the same type or colour, thus, a blue torus and a green torus could be played next to each other, whilst a red Gemini and a red torus can be next to each other. The problem however, is that as the board fills up with runes, finding places to play new ones will be a struggle, especially in squares that are surrounded by runes of different colours or types. Fortunately, there are several answers to this. Firstly, if you manage to complete an entire row or column of runes across the board, all the runes will vanish (leaving you with golden cells), thus freeing up a lot more space. Also, your alchemical bag of tricks contains a few handy tools, such as stones which function as wild cards and which can be placed next to runes of any colour or type without penalty, and skulls which can be used to scorch a rune from the board leaving a free golden space behind which you could put runes on, as well as freeing space around that square for other runes.
Unfortunately, if you have no where on the board to place a rune, you'll have to drop it into your forge, do this too many times and your forge will overheat, putting an explosive end to your alchemical ambitions, though happily your forge will cool down over time as you play more runes to the board.
The ultimate aim of the game is to progress through several levels, turning all spaces from lead to gold, and eventually raising your score enough to be declared grand alchemical emperor. Unfortunately, the number of runes and colours will increase on higher difficulties making it less likely that you'll find matching spaces on the board to put them. Since the game can go as far as 15 different rune types (all twelve zodiac signs plus trident, Chalice and pentagram), with seven different possible colours, your job can become truly mind boggling.
Though obviously a game that requires good spacial logic, Ian Humphreys has included a number of handy shortcuts to make life easier for those reviewing the board with sound. As you might expect, you can move around the board with the arrow keys. Shift up arrow however will move you to the highest scoring space that you can place your current rune, whilst shift left and right arrows will skip you through alternatives. Since completing rows and columns of matching cells earns major points and removes runes from the board, its not always advisable to go with the first option. going. Hitting alt plus arrows will tell you what is in the cells around your current position without altering that position. Hit c or r to jump around the board directly to runes of the type or colour of the rune you need to play next. Should you want to drop your current rune into the forge, hit the d key. Use F to see how many cells remain to finish the current row or column, and hit f3 to see how many lead cells you need to transmute into gold to finish the level, and hit l to jump to the next lead cell (handy if you have a skull and are looking for the most convenient rune to cleaar.
As always with Spoonbill's titles, there are high contrast graphics provided for vision impaired players, and the window can be maximized to make life easier. The game uses Microsoft Sapi for sound output, contains some midi music files for background, and best of all its free.
BG Alchemy is a game with a pretty steep learning curve, but if you've a mind to test your skills of spacial logic and transmutation it might well be worth a try.
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Updates: entry 2 Feb 22 and description 2 Feb 22