Miracle Merchant
A VERY DIFFERENT KIND OF HOME BREWING. $2.99 | www.miracle-merchant.com
INDIE GERMAN STUDIO Tinytouchtales’ has a bit of a reputation when it comes to crafting compelling solitaire-style card games, so it’s no big surprise that its latest title Miracle Merchant also treads that well-worn route. While it also keeps the medieval fantasy theme of its forebears, rather than slaying monsters or creeping through castles, MM plops you into the shoes of an apothecary, where you’ll brewing up magic potions to meet the demands of your customers, and your objective is to clear a deck of cards while racking up as many points as possible.
The potion-brewing process involves combining a total of four cards, selected from different coloured ‘ingredients’ piles (blue, green, yellow or red) into the best possible recipe with the cards you have on hand. Each punter has a specific colour ingredient you need to include, alongside a secondary ‘desired’ colour that, if used, will give you bonus points. How many cards of each colour you play, and how those cards are placed in relation to one another, is what decides how many points each potion is ultimately worth. Throwing a spanner in the works are a number of randomly-distributed ‘black’ cards, which, when drawn, will block access to whatever coloured pile they’ve come from and, when played, actually subtract points from your potion — well, unless you can successfully counteract through skilful placement of other cards.
That may all sound a little complicated, but play for just a couple of minutes and it becomes second nature. There is some overarching strategy involved, too. As the game progresses, you need to be careful not to run out of cards of a specific colour, lest you require them for a customer further down the queue. Brewing a potion with a score of less than 1 also results in an instant game-ending fail. It ends up being a fun and highly-replayable juggling act.
While Miracle Merchant is certainly polished and well-presented, it lacks some of the depth of its predecessors — all there is to do is chase higher scores, so there’s not a whole lot of incentive to keep coming back.