Hi all, full English version of Alchemia has been just released for download. You can get it here. Extended version contains 5 additional playable levels and 9 new locations.

Events will lead the little hero into previously undiscovered areas of underground halls to create a soul that would help him to save the forest. Puzzles are more complicated and harder than in free version, so we hope that players will spend more time in dark tunnels and high towers of strange underground city.

After many months of work we are happy to announce that new extended CD version of Alchemia has been recently released in Russia and some other Eastern-European countries!

It has been published by Snowball Studios, same company that published Machinarium. German version should be available shortly (at the end of June), English version should be available for download at the end of May.

Extended version contains 5 additional playable levels and 9 new locations, and also game soundtrack created by Julian Winter.

Events will lead the little hero into previously undiscovered areas of underground halls to create a soul that would help him to save the forest. Puzzles are more complicated and harder than in free version, so we hope that players will spend more time in dark tunnels and high towers of strange underground city.

We would like to thank Snowball Studios for publishing Alchemia – this is a great opportunity for us to bring our game to wider audience.

However, I would like to know what do you – players – think about one thing: Currently the whole game is available to play for free. It has not been sponsored yet, we don’t use excessive advertising to beat every possible penny out of it, and the only way how we currently make some money is placing the ads banner next to the main screen of the game. In future, we would like to find some possibilities how to make some additional revenue from our hard work. That’s why we are thinking about asking some symbolic payment (let’s say $7) for downloading and playing the extended version.

What is your opinion about it? Would you buy the game?

Also, some players didn’t like the dialogues in the game. I have to admit that they are probably right – I will try to decrease the number of dialogue boxes in extended version to a minimum essential level.

If you have any suggestions/questions about story of extended version, better dialogues in free version (we can replace the current ones), funding, promotion, puzzles, about anything that could make our games better and played more, please let us know (comment).

Tomas

One summer night in a deep forest, strange events bring little hero and his misfortunate companion to underground caves and dungeons.  They discover a city hidden in the dark, with it’s white stone houses, long bridges, strange mechanic creatures and people skilled in ancient alchemic techniques. However, the way back is closed and there seems to be no other way out. Is the little hero able to help his new friend? Will they escape dark tunnels?

Alchemia is a classical point&click adventure game, but also has some innovations. Many puzzles cannot be solved simply by clicking the objects in right order or in specific time, but you will have to use your brain a bit more and really understand the mechanics of the game. We hope this will draw players  more into the game. However, in case of problems, there is a walkthrough available in each level. You can also load any level anytime by typing the level name into “load level” field. We have also added  one small but important feature – levels in the game are being loaded while playing, which saves quite a lot of time.

We have decided to add dialogues (in form of text boxes) to the game in order to better explain the story. It is not necessary to read them because they won’t help you to solve the puzzles, but sometimes they might help for example to describe items that are going to be picked up.

There is also a small inventory in some levels, but it never contains more than one item.

Alchemia has it’s own original soundtrack created by Julian Winter. I think the music fits the game perfectly. The instruments are non-electronic, there is mainly an acoustic guitar and there is also plenty of sounds recorded by Julian – falling stones, dripping water, night birds, cave echoes etc.

We plan to create an extended version soon, containing four or five additional levels. But it all depends on how people will like the game, so please feel free to give us some feedback.

We really put a lot of effort into making of Alchemia and we hope you will enjoy playing it at least as much as we enjoyed creating it.