Little Alchemy 2 Review – Intuition Meets Innovation

The Little Alchemy franchise nailed the formula of creating a game that’s fun, unique, and addictive with the first entry in the series. And based on the community’s wishes, the developers have also released a sequel, and the incremental changes it brings will be covered in our Little Alchemy 2 review.

Rather than straying from its predecessor’s mechanics, the sequel builds upon them, which was a welcome change endorsed by both veterans and newcomers to the series. The game now features several UI and gameplay improvements, introducing many more items to discover and craft with.

Story And Setting

Little Alchemy 2 is mainly a gameplay-centric experience, which is why it’s the only thing the developers work on. As such, it’d be tough to expect any groundbreaking storytelling, especially when the game’s purpose is primarily educational.

So while you could literally make a story by combining a few elements in the game, the franchise itself doesn’t have any ongoing narrative. It’s just you with a plethora of elements in a large, open space. You could of course imagine your own Little Alchemy tale as someone who’s mixing and matching to save the world, but that’s all up to you of course.

The setting, on the other hand, is focused on simplicity and relaxation. The interface follows the signature orange-purple theme with the newly added background music that adds a welcome ambiance while also trying to be low-profile. If you want, you always have the option to turn the music off if you prefer a more subdued atmosphere.

Gameplay

Little Alchemy 2 is a 2D mix-and-match crafting game where you can make physical items like a house or fabric, or abstract concepts like an idea or time. Its gameplay loop follows in the footsteps of its predecessor, where you combine specific pairs of elements to create new items.

All you do is pick 2 elements from the vertical bar to your left, drag them to the center, and place them on top of each other to create a new item. This can, in turn, be infused with other elements in different recipes to make more complex materials, and the cycle goes on.

Most of the combinations are based on logic or science, so you can combine elements with your personal reasoning. However, some of them require out-of-the-box thinking, like making Godzilla with a dinosaur and a city. So these crafty tactics encourage critical, as well as creative thinking, and reward you with unique discoveries.

Each new element you discover goes to your in-game inventory called the Encyclopedia, which tracks all the items you’ve uncovered in the game thus far. It also appears on the sidebar to your right where you can drag and drop it whenever you like. If you find your sidebar overcrowded with elements, you can always use the search bar on the top left corner to find the item you want. There are more than 700 items in the Encyclopedia, so you certainly won’t be finishing the game anytime soon!

As you continue the series of combinations, you’ll eventually craft special elements called Final Items. These are the last element of the series and mark their end since you can’t create any other items with this special element. Since they’re not a part of any recipes, they don’t appear on the sidebar and instead go directly into your Encyclopedia.

Of course, not every item you spontaneously create will always be unique. Like its previous iteration, most regular and Final items in the game have several recipes. This means you can make a certain item with multiple pairs of ingredients.

This mechanic does have its pros and cons, since on one hand, it makes the game much easier by giving you options to craft items with alternate ingredients. On the other hand, this could be a factor of frustration, since you’ll often find yourself accidentally rediscovering the same element.

Overall, the gameplay here is so simplistic yet charming that it offers a relaxing atmosphere where you just use your logic and clever-mindedness to think of possible combinations. It’s more of a learning experience for all age demographics which the gaming industry hasn’t yet replicated as finely as this. And apart from that, the loop itself never gets repetitive as the combinations always continue to become more challenging and intuitive to uncover.

It’s also worth mentioning that you can create a Little Alchemy account to save your game’s progress across all of your devices. The game also gives you the option to reset your progress if you want to rediscover certain elements again. 

Visuals And Performance

One of the biggest leaps by the game from its predecessor is definitely in the graphics department. The developers have completely revamped the theme of the game to make it look more stylistic. As opposed to the old, semi-realistic icons, Little Alchemy 2’s elements look much more simplistic, vibrant, modern, and visually appealing overall.

As far as performance goes, you can bet this game will pretty much run on anything. Even despite the noticeable visual overhaul, Little Alchemy 2 still remains as accessible as ever, with no tedious hardware requirements whatsoever. The game runs smoothly without any stutters on devices even as old as a decade.

The only way to play it on a PC is via browsers so the framerate is capped to your monitor’s refresh rate. As for mobile users, you can get it from either the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store. The app itself requires a minimum of Android 6.0 or iOS 11.0. On top of that, it’s roughly 50 MB on both types of devices, so it’s quite lightweight compared to most modern mobile games.

Verdict

Little Alchemy 2 breaks apart from the boring education narrative and offers players an enticing experience while still being intuitive. As you play, you learn, and the more you learn, the more you progress in-game. Simply put, it’s an interactive educational game suitable for all ages and backgrounds. It’s simple to learn, master, and eventually complete.

It’s a free-to-play game that you can play both on your mobile device and PC via the web. With more than 10 million downloads on the PlayStore and a healthy 4.3 stars review, the game has a massive community that clearly praises it. So I recommend giving it a shot and finding out if it’s up your alley. After all, you won’t be using any resources or spending hours trying to learn the gameplay loop, so there’s no harm in trying!

This has been our Little Alchemy 2 Review. While you’re here, consider checking out some of our other articles. 

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