In fact, perhaps the biggest conceptual flaw in Potion Permit is that its pacing means that things generally happen too quickly. Thankfully the developers have managed to find a way of presenting the frosty reception without the hostility being offputting to the point of making you want to put the game down, and thankfully it doesn’t take too long for the frost to start to thaw anyway. With most Moon-likes, most of the community are pretty happy to have you around from day one, and that warm welcome is a big part of what draws you into them almost immediately.

The initial hostility of the community is an unusual spin in Potion Permit. This whole concept is a little on-the-nose in its depiction of small-town xenophobia and criticism of the conservative resistance to new ideas, but the end message is an ultimately uplifting and good one, so it’s forgivable for being a little laboured. After all, there are a bunch of strong marriage candidates from among this group of pixel-gorgeous country bumpkins.

Soon enough you discover why, with previous potion peddlers being less than responsible in what they do to the community, and so you set out with two objectives: firstly, you’re out to help the community with their various ailments, and make yourself enough for a nice little lifestyle on the side, and secondly, you want to be a positive enough member of the town so they like you. They’re rude and the hatred seethes from every word they spit at you. The problem is that while the mayor and his wife are as hospitable to you as they need to be, given their plight, the rest of the community feel no such obligation to you. The basic idea of the game is that you’re a pharmacist, that has been called in from the big city to a sleepy little village to, initially, help the mayor’s daughter after she was struck down with a mysterious ailment. Related reading: The “big fish” in this particular pond is Rune Factory 5 on Switch. Whatever the reason Potion Permit is another one, and it largely succeeds, although it is perhaps a little over-ambitious for its scope. Or perhaps a bunch of people all decided at the same time that these games were a lot of fun, so they wanted to make their own. Perhaps developers are observing an increasingly tired and agitated community around them as the ongoing terrors of climate change, pandemics and political instability leave people desperate for an escape. A deluge of Harvest Moon/Rune Factory/Stardew Valley-likes have come out of nowhere, but there really has been a lot of them in recent months.

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