Instructions
Alchemy Shelf
Start with water, fire, earth and air. Mix two things from your shelf and see what they make: 116 finds in a hand-written web of recipes, from steam and mud to dragons and rockets. Ten minutes on the clock.
- Year
- 2023
- Era
- Daily Puzzle
- Genre
- Puzzle / Discovery
Free, no sign-up. Keyboard, touch or gamepad.
How to play
- Arrows move over the shelf, Space picks the item under the cursor (pick two to mix), X clears the bench, Enter asks for a hint, F twice ends the run.
- Esc pauses.
On touch
- Tap two things to mix them.
- Tap a bench slot to take that item back.
- CLEAR, HINT and DONE are buttons; PREV and NEXT turn the shelf pages.
Every run starts on the title screen. Pause any time with P or the pause button; calm mode removes flashes and screen shake.
Maker’s note
The recipe graph is written by hand: 4 elements and 116 recipes, 120 items in all, each reachable from the elements (a test walks the whole graph, rejects duplicate pairs and checks every name against the site's kid-safe filters). A new find pays 10 plus 6 per step of depth from the elements; six featured finds picked by the seed pay double and wear a gold dot. A new mix takes a third of a second, mixes you have already tried are free and instant, and a hint (six per run, 10 seconds apart, 25 points each) names a mix that makes something new. Finding all 120 ends the run with a bonus for time left. Ten minute run cap.
The Eracade workshop
Target scores
- 1300
- 2700
- 31,200
- 41,800
- 52,500
- 63,300
- 74,200
- 85,200
Each target is a step up. Beat them all and you have outplayed the workshop.
The Daily Puzzle era, 2020–2026
One shared puzzle a day and a result worth passing on, in calm colour with soft, rounded edges.
High scores
The top ten runs are saved in this browser with your three initials. Nothing is uploaded unless you submit a ranked run, so clearing site data clears the table.
