One of my favourite games of all time is Heaven’s Vault. Its take on language translation engrossed me in a way few games ever have. Chants of Sennar followed a similar vibe, but with more puzzles. The Apothecary of Trubiz is a shorter, quainter take on the translation gaming genre. Here, we need to translate a book of potions to cure a village of ill residents who speak in a forgotten tongue. It scratches the same itch as the aforementioned titles, but acts more as a taster for the genre. I declare The Apothecary of Trubiz as a starter title for this fabulous sub-genre.
Players must survive ten days of potion brewing and curing (or killing if you get it wrong). There are five endings to unlock, and your progress and knowledge carry from playthrough to playthrough. That’s helpful as the endings require you to do very different things, like curing everyone perfectly, or choosing to ignore everyone! Each patient arrives with symbols of their ailments. They may have one or two to start with, but over the days, you’ll get more complex problems to solve. Initially, the game suggests to you that you can use the potion on your shelf, but with a bit of poking and prodding, you’ll start to realise that many potions can be brewed from this starter kit. Potions can be mixed, left overnight, or cooked to a certain temperature to generate new potions. As you discover this, you can fill in translations in your medical book so you can understand the method of your madness.
The book is your main source of success or failure. In it resides the mother tongue for the patients to understand their health concerns, labels for your potions, and flowcharts to follow. If a patient presents with multiple conditions, you’ll need to provide them with multiple potions. Get it wrong, and their condition worsens, and your reputation (and science itself) takes a battering. I enjoyed how the book was laid out, as it leaves some clever red herrings that you’ll learn from quickly.
Aside from that, I don’t want to give too much away because the fun is in the discovery. If you like solving cyphers or decoding text puzzles, you’ll enjoy The Apothecary of Trubiz. It does its trick well and doesn’t outstay its welcome. Your first playthrough will take about two hours, and on the assumption that you did fairly well, the follow-on playthroughs will range from 10 minutes to 30 minutes each. Whimsy, with a hint of deadly nightshade, and a lot of internal Duolingo! What a combo.
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