Alchemy Factory Review - I Haven’t Slept in Three Days and I Blame the Conveyor Belts

Review
Written By NLM Team

If you ever looked at a conveyor belt and thought it would be better if it was feeding a potion to a terrified medieval peasant, welcome to your new addiction.

A colorful gameplay screenshot from Alchemy Factory showing a complex, automated production line of conveyor belts, grinders, and sorters processing raw materials in a quaint medieval town square.

I went into Alchemy Factory expecting a cute, cozy little distraction. I expected to brew some potions, sell them to the locals, and maybe plant some herbs. Instead, I blacked out and woke up 40 hours later. I was unshowered, I had forgotten to eat real food, and I had turned a quaint fantasy village into a sprawling industrial hellscape in the name of profit. Turns out it is an industrial revolution simulator disguised as a wizard game, and it has its hooks in me deep.

The Itch You Can’t Scratch

We need to address the elephant in the room immediately. This is Satisfactory or Factorio, but shrunk down to a scale that doesn't require a hyperloop train to navigate.

The genius here is the compactness. In other factory games, I spend half my life running across a barren planet to fix a power pole. Here, everything is tight. It is voxel-perfect. You snap machines and belts together like magical Legos in a confined space. It feels intimate, almost claustrophobic, but in a good way. You aren't building a mega-complex for a faceless corporation; you are building a Rube Goldberg machine in your backyard to pay the rent.

The Loop of Greed

The core gameplay loop is deceptively simple and horrifyingly effective. You buy raw materials, you automate the processing, you craft the goods, and then you sell them in your shop.

That shop element is the secret sauce. In other automation games, you usually feed resources into a black hole called a "Space Elevator" for arbitrary points. Here, you are selling directly to customers. You see the gold flow in. It gives the factory a tangible purpose. You aren't just making "iron plates." You are making items that the dead-eyed, terrifying NPCs in this town actually want to buy.

And yes, the NPCs are terrifying. They have the soulless stare of a shrek background character who has seen too much. But I don't care about their souls. I care about their wallets.

The Medieval Grindset

While the automation is satisfying, the early game feels like manual labor in the worst way. Before you get your systems fully running, you are essentially a glorified delivery boy. You are running back and forth, refilling boxes, watering plants, and manually crafting intermediate parts.

It is tedious. It creates a friction that almost made me quit in the first two hours. But then you unlock the next tier of automation, and suddenly, you never have to touch that specific resource again. It is a relief, but the scaling can feel off. I found myself building dozens of flax nurseries just to keep up with demand, turning my magical workshop into a glorified plantation.

Where is the Wizardry?

My biggest gripe, and it is a substantial one, is the aesthetic disconnect. The game calls itself Alchemy Factory, but it feels more like Industrial Park Factory.

I wanted purple robes, bubbling glass vials, and mystical energy. Instead, I got bricks, gears, and potions sold in unappealing leather sacks. It lacks the "wonder" of alchemy. You are basically running a hardware store that occasionally sells mana potions. The art direction is functional, but it feels a bit soulless. I want to feel like a wizard, not a shift manager at an Amazon fulfillment center.

Co-op Chaos

If you have friends (lucky you), the multiplayer integration is surprisingly solid. One person can manage the shop and the quests while the other descends into madness trying to optimize the pipe network. It helps mitigate the manual fatigue of the early game significantly. Just be prepared for your friends to mess up your perfectly aligned belts.

A first-person view in Alchemy Factory showing the player character, an alchemist in blue robes, standing behind a wooden crafting table with a potion vial on it, inside a workshop filled with ingredient storage bins and furniture.

The Verdict

Alchemy Factory is a dangerous game. It respects the time-honored tradition of "just one more optimization" until the sun comes up. It has great bones, a satisfying loop, and a unique shopkeeping twist that sets it apart from the titans of the genre. However, it desperately needs a coat of magical paint and some pacing adjustments to truly feel like a fantasy game rather than a medieval sweatshop simulator.

If you like seeing numbers go up and conveyor belts go brrr, buy it. Just don't expect to see your family for a week.

Score: 8/10 - A potent brew of automation crack that needs a bit more flavor.

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NLM Team
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