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Potion Punch is a series of Time Management Game made for mobile devices. It was developed by Monstronauts Inc.

The first game was released on 2016. The game begins with Noam, an old potion maker, having a magical accident that turned him into a gnome. Then a hooded stranger (that is, the player character) came in and decided to help Noam run his potion shops. That's about it for the plot.

Gameplay-wise, the player has to serve colorful potions to customers that visit the shop. The potions can come in a multitude of colors, but the player only has access to the basic colors. To access the other colors, the player would need to mix the potions together. For example, to make Green Potion you would need to mix Yellow and Blue Potions, while to make Brown you would need to mix all Red, Yellow, and Blue together. While initially there are only three basic potions, the game gets harder as more basic potions are added and the customers start ordering multi-layered potions with additional items on the side.

The second game, Potion Punch II was released in 2019. It takes place three years after the first game, continuing the story of Noam and the hooded stranger (now revealed to be a woman named Lyra) traveling the world looking for a way to turn Noam back to human form, all while opening magical shops in the locations they visit. Compared to the first game, the second game has considerably more plot, with Noam, Lyra and other characters having dialogues in-between the stages.

Gameplay-wise, the game throws out the increasingly-complex potion making, limiting it to the first shop. Instead, it opts for making other magical trinkets in each new location. For example, the second location has you carving runes and drawing scrolls, while in the third location you sell mushrooms and lanterns. This lets each location have their own gimmicks and mechanics, making them feel new and fresh.


Potion Punch provides examples of:

  • Accidental Truth: When Kara stops by Shroudland Shrooms before level 17, Lyra turns off the lights and blames "Shadow Fiends" for stealing the light. Fourteen levels later in level 31, you actually meet Shadow Fiends, and they disable your Light Scroll. Stealing the light indeed.
  • Alliterative Name: The shops in the second game have two-word names that start with the same letters e.g. Peakwood Potions, Eversand Enchantments, Shroudland Shrooms, and so on.
  • Anti Poop-Socking: The achievement for playing the game for one hour straight is called "Take a Break, Please".
  • Artifact Title: In the second game, you only make potions in the first shop. In the other shops you sell other items like runes, scrolls, swords, popsicles, etc.
  • Berserk Button: Noam is seriously obsessed with blades, to the point he refuses to let you use the ones you make in Fortshire to fend off Ice Fiends.
    Noam: DO NOT TOUCH THE BLADES! These fiends are not worthy of their craftsmanship!
  • Blackout Basement: Shroudland in the second game is a dark marsh where the sunlight can't get through and you need the Light Scroll to light the place up. This forms the gimmick of this level, as you can't serve customers in the dark, but you need the darkness to grow mushrooms and catch the glowing bugs for your lanterns. Properly turning the Light Scroll on and off is crucial in the level. To complicate things further, sometimes Shadow Fiends will appear and prevent you from turning the lights on.
  • Boss Battle: Every ten levels in the first game, you encounter a boss customer that will order much more complicated items than the regular customers. However, no other customers will arrive until they leave.
  • Bribing Your Way to Victory: You can buy coins and gems with real money, which can be used to buy certain upgrades and boosters that ease gameplay such as infinitely restocking your supplies or making customers even more patient.
  • Bruiser with a Soft Center: Claudius, one of the guests in the second game, is a champion gladiator who also take care of stray kittens.
  • Call-Back: The second game has several to the first game.
    • Right after the level that introduced Layered Potions, Lyra and Noam comment about how they used to make seven-layered potions and wonder what they were thinking. Seven layer is indeed the highest number of layers a customer can order in the first game, although only limited to the bosses.
    • Boar and Mosstache's profiles mention Ironboar Mines and Wildwoods Forest, both locations in the first game and where they respectively serve as the bosses.
    • In one early scene, Noam comments that Brown Potions are popular in Starluck Village, the first location of the first game.
    • When you reach Crimsonpass, Noam comments that it reminds him of Wildwoods Forest. Similarly, Drywinds remind him of Monstro City.
  • Captain Ersatz: Some of the special guests in the first game are blatant references to other medias, such as Mondolorian, Kent Ketchum, Letty Go, and other bootleg characters.
  • Color-Coded Elements:
    • In Eversand you can sell runestones. Fire stones are red, Ice stones are blue, and Earth stones are green.
    • In Crimsonpass Charms, the magical totems each signify an element and indicated by colors. The Deer Totem is red and represents land, the Turtle Totem is blue and represents water, and the Hawk Totem is green and represents air.
  • Color-Coded for Your Convenience:
    • The Patrons in the second game are divided into four tiers, each with a different colored borders in the menu. Common patrons have white borders, Rare patrons have blue, Epic patrons have pink, and Legendary patrons have gold.
    • In general, to make items easier to distinguish, each item has a different color. Most notable are the potions, as they look exactly the same except for the colors. Fortunately the games also have Color Blind mode, which adds various shapes and patterns in the potions.
      • In the first game, there are five basic essences to make into potions (red, yellow, blue, white, and black). Two essence colors can be mixed to form up to ten secondary essence (red + yellow = orange, red + white = pink, and so on). Three essences can also be mixed to form tertiary essences (red + yellow + blue = brown, red + yellow + white = peach, etc). Peakwood Potions, the first level in the second game, follows the same mixing principles, but thankfully simplify it to only having red, yellow, and blue basic essences, therefore reducing the secondary essences only to purple, green, and orange, and the tertiary essences only to brown.
      • In the first game, guests can ask for gel add-ons to their potions, indicated by a colored symbol. Health Gel is indicated by a red heart, Stamina Gel by an orange lightning bolt, and Mana Gel by a purple star.
      • In the first game, guests can also ask for their potions to be cooled (indicated by a glowing blue aura) or heated (indicated by a glowing red aura).
      • In Eversand Enhchantments in the second game, you can make scrolls using colorful inks from colorful squids. Similar to the potions, there are three basic colors; red Guts, yellow Zeal, and blue Calm. They can be combined to make purple Moxie, green Peace, orange Will, and brown Grit inks.
      • In Shroudland Shrooms, the three mushrooms you can grow and sell are the Blue Boletes, Green Spikes, and Red caps, each having the respective colors.
      • In Shroudland Shrooms, you can also sell colorful lanterns, made from glowing bugs. This time, it uses the additive colors. There are basic red, green, and blue bugs. Putting red and green bugs in the same jar make a yellow lantern. Red and blue makes magenta, green and blue makes cyan, and putting all three together makes a white lantern.
      • In Tropicvale Treats, there are three popsicle flavors you can sell, indicated by colors. They are taro (purple), caramel (dark yellow), and lime (green).
      • In Crimsonpass Charms, the amulets can be made out of one of three types of wood: cherry (light purple), walnut (brown), and maple (light green).
  • Color-Coded Stones: In Fortshire, you can sell three types of Gemstones. Emeralds, which are green, Sapphires, which are blue, and Rubies, which are red.
  • Degraded Boss: Polly, Boar, Mosstache, Good Knight, and Prince Cubbington are all bosses in the first game. Since the second game lacks the boss customer mechanic, they return as ordinary customers, although they're all in the Epic tier.
  • Early-Installment Weirdness: In the first game, goblin customers only appear in Monstro City. They speak in gibberish and you need to activate the Goblin Scroll to understand what are they ordering. This is scrapped in the second game and goblins are treated just like any other customers.
  • Elemental Embodiment: The second game has the Wisps and the Fiends.
    • The Wisps help you make items you make for the patrons.
      • The Ice Wisp in Tropicvale Treats let you make popsicles and let them stay frozen. However, activating the Wisp also freezes the fondue fountain, so it's vital to turn the wisp on and off at the right time.
      • The Nature Wisp in Crimsonpass Charms activate the magical totems so that you can imbue the fleeces with their power.
      • The Fire Wisp in Drywinds Deli let you cook steaks faster. However, if you're not careful it can also overcook the steak faster.
    • The Fiends, on the other hand, hinder your progress and they are commonly met as "enemies".
      • The Shadow Fiends in Shroudland Shrooms turn off the Light Scroll and prevent it from being turned on, so you can't serve customers until they're driven away.
      • The Ice Fiends in Fortshire Forge make the forge too cold, preventing making new ingots and stopping Smelters from smelting ores.
      • The Fire Fiends in Tropicvale Treats prevent the Ice Wisp from being activated and make popsicles melt faster.
      • The Wind Fiends in Drywinds Deli put out the fire from the charcoal, preventing you from cooking steaks.
  • An Entrepreneur Is You: You play as a shopkeeper. You run potion shops in the first game, while the second game expands your inventory.
  • Exactly What It Says on the Tin: According to the loading screen Flavor Text, Drywinds is dry and windy.
  • Excalibur in the Rust: The "Legendary Blade" Noam forges is no bigger than a butter knife, but just poking a stale loaf with it immediately revitalizes it to "fresh out of the oven."
    Lyra: Huh, so that dinky little thing is magical after all.
  • Excuse Plot: In the first game, Noam gets turned into a gnome in a magical accident and Lyra helps him run his potion shops. That's the first minute of the game and that's all the plot bits you get. Averted in the second game, which has significantly more story and dialogue.
  • Family Theme Naming:
    • In the second game two of the Patrons that visit your shops are Dawn the acolyte and her older brother Dusk the templar.
    • Another pair of siblings are the two dwarf bakers Krem and Kuster.
  • Featureless Protagonist: The hooded stranger in the first game, which only appears in the intro sequence and never seen again, as you're playing from their perspective. In the second game, they become an actual character, a woman named Lyra, while you're now playing as another Featureless Protagonist.
  • First Town:
    • Starluck Village in the first game is your first potion shop. There are only a few types of items to sell, and the customers rarely order anything complicated.
    • Subverted with Peakwood Potions in the second game. Despite looking like a standard shop in a woodland setting, its flavor text mention that even advanced adventurers have trouble crossing through the forest. Justified, since Lyra and Noam are already experienced from the travels they did in the first game. Gameplay-wise, its potion mixing mechanic is actually one of the most complicated gimmicks among all the stores despite being the first location.
  • Five-Second Foreshadowing: In relation to the Shadow Fiend's first mention in Shroudland (level 17) to its first appearance (level 31.) Lyra mentions something odd in Eversand level 31, something different from the Illusions you'll be familiar with by that point. Three levels later, you'll encounter a Shapeshifter Nobu.
  • Freemium Timer: Downplayed in the second game. Entering a stage by itself costs nothing. However, entering a stage with Workers costs Mana to summon them, and you can't use Workers if you don't have the Mana. Mana regens naturally over time, but can also be refreshed with the premium currency.
  • Funny Octopus: In Eversand Enchantment in the second game, you can sell scrolls, which are made from the ink of various colorful squids.
  • Gameplay and Story Segregation: In one scene in Crimsonpass, Farah and Willard help you ward off Vultures. Neither of them can be summoned in Crimsonpass, as Farah is limited to Tropicvale and Willard is limited to Fortshire. The Worker who actually handles fighting Vultures, Bobbi, is nowhere to be seen in the scene.
  • Hollywood Mirage: Eversand's Illusions, fake customers that disappear when you try to hand them an item or just tap them. The first one you encounter is usually Bart The Basic.
  • Intrepid Merchant: Lyra and Noam (and you) travel the world in a quest to find a cure for Noam's condition, all while setting up various shops in the locations they visit.
  • In the Hood: You're playing as the hooded stranger in the first game, whose hood cover any distinguishing features they have. In the second game, they took it off and reveal themselves to be a woman named Lyra. This is lampshaded in one Flavor Text, where Noam never figured out Lyra is a she until she took the hood off.
  • Item Crafting: You typically start with only raw ingredients in the shop and you need to process them into the end products served to the customers. They include mixing colorful essences to make potions, growing mushrooms, catching glowing bugs to make lanterns, forging metal ingots into swords, enchanting fleeces with magical totems, and so on.
  • King Incognito: The Queen of the Forest in Crimsonpass turns out to be the Nature Wisp you've been working with since the start.
  • Land, Sea, Sky: In Crimsonpass Charms in the second game, one of the item types you make is fleeces imbued with the power of three magical totems. The Deer Totem represents Land, the Turtle Totem represents Water, and the Hawk Totem represents Air.
  • Lootbox: In both games, used to unlock and level up new guests. In the first game, you can spend coins to send a Gacha Mail to a random special guest to unlock them. If it lands on the same guest, they level up instead, making them pay more. In the second game, you can "Host a Party" to have a chance at unlocking new patrons. If known patrons arrive, you get tokens for that patron. Collect enough tokens, and you can level up the patron, increasing tips, patience, and experience gained.
  • The Lost Woods:
    • Wildwood Forest in the first game, an enchanted forest where the elves live, as well as an ancient living tree named Mosstache.
    • Crimsonpass in the second game, a magical forest filled with Nature Wisps. Wicked Hags and Evil Spirits also live here, and they will come to disrupt your shop. Noam even comments that it reminds him of Wildwood.
  • Money Multiplier: All Workers have the ability to increase the money you gain one way or another, whether by increasing the price of the items sold, a flat bonus for each customer served, increasing the customers' tips, getting bonus money for each fiend defeated, and so on.
  • Monster Town: The aptly named Monstro City in the first game. The level's main gimmick is the goblin customer, who speak in a gibberish language so you need to use the Goblin Scroll first to understand their orders. In addition, there are also Red Goblins who will try to steal unattended coins and Evil Eyes that bother your customers.
  • Mundane Utility: Might as well be the name of the second game:
    • You're using tamed magical beasts in order to run a shop. Among other things, you use dragons to grill fish, gargoyles to chop mushrooms, ice spirits to make popsicles, and other things.
    • You can summon the spirits of heroes to aid in shopkeeping. For example, you can summon the spirit of Queen Kayle Lizzie, a famous dragon tamer, to control the dragons so they don't burn the fish they're grilling. One of the most mundane utilities is probably Farah, a powerful mage whose duty is placing fondue sticks on the table. Even the game acknowledges this, as Kara calls them "Heroes", but Lyra and Noam as well the game itself call the spirits "Workers". The workers themselves for the most part find their jobs a refreshing break from the usual epic quests.
  • Palmtree Panic: Eversand in the second game is a tropical island filled with sandy beaches. However, the gimmick is that the tropic heat can ail your game, like creating heatwaves that make customers less patient or creating Illusions as fake customers.
  • Patchwork Map: Present in both games. In the second game, for example, you have the Eversand beaches located next to the swampy Shroudland, separated by a small strait. The volcanic Fortshire is located next to the icy mountain Tropicvale.
  • Play Every Day: In the first game, you can complete a daily task for a reward, which resets every 24 hours. If you can complete the daily tasks for 30 days in a row, you'll receive a special prize.
  • Potion-Brewing Mechanic: The basis of the games. You mix various colorful "essences" to make potions of the appropriate colors and sell them to the customers.
  • Punny Name: Some characters have this kind of names. For example, there's Polly Tee Sean, a parrot beastkin who works as a mayor. Another example, the crystal spirit named Diya Munn.
  • Randomly Generated Levels:
    • In the first game, each Day is randomly generated, except for the boss customer every 10 Days, and even then their orders are randomized. This can lead to easy days where the customers order nothing but the simple-to-make snacks, or to hard days where multiple customers order three-layered potions made out of tertiary essences at once.
    • Averted in the second game, where each normal or challenge stage has a fixed sequence of orders from the customers, although it still randomizes which customer will come to the shop. However, once you've finished all normal levels for a location, you unlock Classic Mode and Endless Mode, which are randomly generated.
  • Rule of Three: In the second game, typically each type of item you sell have three variants, usually differentiated by their colors.
    • In Peakwood Potions, there are three basic potions: red, yellow, and green, with the more advanced potions being combinations of the three.
    • In Eversand Enchantments, there are three colored squids, which produce colored inks used to make sigil scrolls. There are also three types of stones used to make runes, and there are three types of runes that can be carved into each stone.
    • In Shroudland Shrooms, there are three types of mushrooms you can sell, colored blue, red, and green. There are also three types of colored bugs you can catch to make lanterns.
    • In Fortshire Forge, there are three types of metals to forge the swords from: bronze, iron, and steel. There are also three gemstones you can sell: emeralds, sapphires, and rubies.
    • In Tropicvale Treats, there are three flavors of popsicles: taro, caramel, and lime. There are also three ingredients for the fondue: marshmallows, berries, and mini-donuts.
    • In Crimsonpass Charms, there are three types of wood to carve the amulets from: cherry, walnut, and maple. You can also sell fleeces imbued with the powers of three totems: Deer Totem, Turtle Totem, and Hawk Totem.
  • Runic Magic: In Eversand Enchantments. Originally, the three birds carved Raging (cross,) Lasting (diamond,) and Echoing (four dots) Runes that could be combined into Roaring (cross + diamond,) Persisting (diamond + four dots,) Howling (cross + four dots,) and Ultimate (all three symbols.) These were later switched out for individual teardrop, cloud, and star symbols.
  • ShapeshiftingTrickster: In Eversand, you meet the shapeshifters, a race of magical creatures that can change shapes to play tricks on others. However, you can distinguish them from the lack of eyebrows and their tail. Gameplay-wise, they'll try to order items like other customers, but if you serve them they'll just run off with the item without paying while sneering at you. Story-wise, you're trying to track them down in case they know how to revert Noam back into a human. Convincing them to tell you that is the main plot point of the Shroudland Shrooms section of the game.
  • Shifting Sand Land: Downplayed with Drywinds. Although it's located in a desert, it's an American-style desert rather than the standard Arabian one, and so it lacks many elements usually associated with deserts.
  • Shout-Out: Besides the Captain Ersatzes of pop-culture characters appearing as special guests, the achievements are also pop-culture references:
  • Slippy-Slidey Ice World:
    • Dragonfrost Valley in the first game takes place in a snowy mountain. While you don't get to slide on anything, the cold is an issue as it makes the customers less patient. Fortunately, you have a Sun Scroll that can warm the place up for a limited duration.
    • Played With with Tropicvale in the second game. The region is surrounded by icy mountains, but the town itself has warm weather for some unknown reason. The main conflict is that the icy mountains are slowly encroaching the town, and Noam has to sacrifice a chance of turning back into a human to save Tropicvale.
  • Sssssnake Talk: Spade, leader of the Shapeshifters, talks like this in Shroudland. By Noam's attempt to imitate this, it's a racial trait.
    Spade: Sssspade, you fool! You fell for the oldesssst trick in the book!
  • Straight Man and Wise Guy: Lyra and Noam has this dynamic. Noam often does or says something wacky, while Lyra is getting exasperated with or snarking at his antics.
  • Super Gullible: Kara believes her Noam and Lyra are using her heroes to assist in an epic quest, and she keeps falling for whatever story Lyra makes up in the moment. It takes her until the sixth location to get suspicious of them.
  • Standard Fantasy Setting: There is magic in the world. You use magical beasts like dragons and gargoyles to craft items you sell. Your guests include people from all the standard races, from humans, dwarves, elves, orcs, goblins, beastkins, and even gods. Their jobs include the standard fantasy classes like knights, rangers, mages, acolytes, and so on.
  • Transformation Trinket: The fruit of the Shapeshifters' sacred tree in the Shroudlands is the key to their power. Bad news, only Shapeshifters can use its fruit, and they can't just teach that. Good news, Spade heard of a magic stone more powerful than the tree. This kicks off the trip east into Fortshire.
  • Underground Level: Ironboar Mines in the first game, which is the second level. It introduces the dwarves as customers.
  • Untrusting Community: The Shapeshifters, if Spade is anything to go by. When you first meet him...
    Spade: Help yoursssself! Only true Sssshroudland denizenssss desssserve my resssspect!
    • By the end of your time...
    Spade: Legendssss of your sssshop travel far and wide. In that time, the Sssshroudlandssss have become... a better place. Our musssshroomssss have been prepared in sssscrumptioussss wayssss. Our sssswampssss now glimmer with the gentle light of your lanternssss. Sssspade issss pleassssed. You are true Sssshroudland denizenssss.
  • The Wild West: Downplayed. Drywinds Deli in the second game is a western-style steakhouse located in an American-desert setting. It's filled with sandhorn beasts, which you never see but is implied to be bovine-like, and you make steaks out of their meat. One of the workers you can recruit here is a sheriff.
  • Worthless Yellow Rocks: Fortshire, in Nobu's words, "has minerals like Eversand has sand." Convenient for selling gemstones constantly in the store, not so much for Noam and Lyra's dreams of Beverly Shire, Pinky the Unicorn Pony, and the Golden Dragon Cruise.
  • Wutai: Fortshire in the second game is Asian-styled. It's the hometown of the samurai-like knight Nobu, and the decorations for your shop include things like a torii gate, paper lanterns, and bonsai trees. One of the Workers you can summon, Bushido Bear, even uses a katana as his weapon.

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