Alchemy is a process of transformation, creation and experimentation. A study from medieval times, it focussed itself on trying to turn base metals into gold, or discover a universal elixir; something with magical properties to cure all that ailed you. It preceded chemistry, a modern-day alchemcy, in so much as that it feels magical. Whether that’s fighting disease, what we eat or how we understand the world. To the layman, such as I, it feels magical.

This is something that developers Antler Studios have leaned into with The Wilds of Dacrima: Field Notes from a Poorly Supervised Alchemist and his Unruly Clockwork Companion (yes, that’s the actual title, henceforth known as The Wilds of Dacrima)! The studio’s debut game is a puzzling platformer where you seek out exotic ingredients to brew potions. Said potions help you explore Dacrima as you seek out the cure to ‘The Great Rot’, an ailment afflicting the population (and their buttocks) back home.

Tayte Modern

You play as Edric Tayte, a senior British gentlemen (by our calculations), and world renowned alchemist. Edric is sent to Dacrima to cure what ails us. You are chartered there on behalf of Potentium a ‘big pharma’ type organisations who wants to find the cure for The Great Rot, and have the resources to do so (or so we are led to believe).

It isn’t long before you happen upon a stowaway robot, codename L-P1N (pronouned ‘Elpin’) who is keen to assist you in your endeavours. Somewhat, trepeditiously, Edric accepts L-P1N’s help and they set off into the wilds of Dacrima to seek out what wonders await them.

Dacrima itself is a lovely world with multiple areas that have their own unique look and feel. From dark caves, and moody swamps, through to mountainous cliff edges and mysterious temples; there’s some great environments to explore.

As you explore, you discover remains from previous expeditions that Potentium have sent, alongside references to a secret Garden of Eden type location called ‘The Grove’. Seems there’s more afoot than you may first realise. You regularly check in with your Potentium contact, Lorna Casely, who is suspiciously keen you stay focussed on potions, rather than all the intriguing things you are discovering.

Lend an L-P1N Hand

You’ll start by exploring the immediate area where your airship has landed. This sort of hub area, leads off to another three or four areas that you will explore to progress. You won’t be able to just head there though. You’ll need to gather humourously named resources and create potions to progress. New ingredients grant you new potions to brew which give you new abilities that you’ll need to solve the various puzzles scattered around Dacrima.

You’ll start with a bubble potion that protects you from fall damage (something Edric is particularly prone to). Later you’ll be able to augment it so you can use it to breath underwater for longer. Soon you’ll be firing sunlight at gleaming crystals, possessing statues, and levitating objects using L-P1N as a gravity well. The potions and their augments are fun and creative in their use.

The more potions, and augments you have access to, the more puzzles you can solve. Smartly, when you approach a puzzle area, the UI on the screen gives you the name of the puzzle and the potions required to complete the puzzle. I liked this smart addition as it saves you the headache of trying every combo you can think of, only to discover you’re missing a key component you don’t have yet, whilst also helping you track the puzzles.

Getting the ingredients isn’t always a case of “go to point A”. Some are attached to the wildlife of Dacrima, and you’ll soon be sneaking up on stags to grab antlers, or trying to grab the fur off of a flying squirrel mid-air.

Puzzling, Most Puzzling

Puzzle wise, they’re not too taxing. The Wilds of Dacrima’s puzzles consist of a mix of potion combinations and platforming to get to out of reach locations, or through locked doors. You’ll find ‘duet seeds’ scattered across the worlds that act like keys. Pop these in a plant and they’ll activate door way or mechanism, helpfully indicated by visible red (inactive) or green (active) line to its function. Some of these seeds require activating use the Sun potion you unlock later on, providing a temporary charge, adding a timed element to it.

I never found myself stumped by a puzzle. Some took a few goes more than others, but that was more down to remembering which potions and augments I have. That is, apart from one, one puzzle became broken and it was seemingly impossible for me to progress.

Bricked

There was a sequence where you have to get three ‘golems’ to follow you on to pressure plates to open a three-lock doorway. I’d done two of them, just the last one to go. You have to use the gravity spell to raise the golem higher, but I managed to get it trapped in a wall (pushed in by a moving barricade). And there it remains to this day. Thankfully, it wasn’t a mission critical puzzle, I’d have to start the game again to get back there and try again. This was a shame, because no amount of leaving the area, rebooting the game etc. worked.

The areas you explore are well designed and the puzzles are organic within each zone which felt like great design to me. Exploring an area and clocking some jetstreams of air you can’t make use of yet because you don’t have the ‘wind’ potion, and having to log that in your mind to return later felt manageable in Dacrima. I know some games will have you scratching your head “where did I see that again?”.

Thankfully, there’s a handy little map and compass you can use to explore. Tie that to your journal, and I never felt lost when exploring, even though it doesn’t always give you directions.

Get Moving

The gameplay in the game works well. Edric felt a bit weird to control at first as Antler have given him a bit of an unusual gait, but you get used to it fairly quickly. You can command L-P1N to act as a platform for you, allowing you to reach further away ledges. I did find the ledge grabbing a bit hit-and-miss as to what Edric would grab hold on to, sometimes leaving me to plummet to my death.

Controlling and positioning L-P1N works really well and the team have done a great job making it clear where you are about to position your robot friend, alongside making each potion look and feel unique when being used.

Some of the movement felt a bit finicky, particularly in underwater sections. For any items you need to interact with underwater, lining Edric up correctly to be able to interact with a jellyfish or plant was more frustrating than it needed to be. There were also a couple of occasions where there was meant to be an interact element but it didn’t appear. On one occasion I’d reached the top of a platforming section for this to happen. Meaning jumping down and leaving the area to return, which thankfully did work.

Lovely Jubblies

The tone of The Wilds of Dacrima is one of light-hearted British humour. Edric and L-P1N have a great dynamic, and watching them become bestest buds (more from L-P1N’s perspective in the beginning) is fun to experience. There’s plenty of wit too. Whenever Edric needs to apply his alchemic abilities to clear some rot he’ll chant the ancient encantation “AAASSSPPAAAA-RAAAAGUUUUSSSS” or some other vegetable. It totally caught me off guard the first time I heard it, and it proper made me giggle.

There’s some great humour in it, alas it did become a bit repetitive in on occasion. On returning to the airship Edric remarks “You know I do enjoy being back out in the field” to which L-P1N replies “Edric, this is nothing like farmland”. It’s a great gag, but, as I am often told, jokes don’t need repeating that frequently (which did happen more than you would expect).

As mentioned previously, you’ll come across some humourously named ingredients including some “Jubblies” causing Edric to shoutout “Lovely Jubblies” (again big smile for me). You’ll also grab Fern’s Cotton (UK celebrity, Fern Cotton) as well as more traditional (and less humourous) ingredients like mithril and obsidian.

Budding Web Designers

If you’re thinking, but what about a murderous spider that wants to take out Eldric and get its own cutscenes of it failing to do so, multiple times? Well you’re in look, because it’s there. I love the idea that someone had a spark of inspiration and said, “what if we included a spider that sounded like a cockeny gangster crossed with Smeagol from Lord of the Rings.”

Of course, if you encounter any spiders in the game proper, you’ll need to use your alchemic magic to distract them, by charging a crystal with sun energy.

Rot Can You Do?

Unfortuantely, The Wilds of Dacrima has a few rough edges. I encountered a few bugs during my 10 or so hours with the game, some noted in this review already.

The most disruptive was in the final sequence (no spoilers) where you have to navigate some small platforms whilst being attacked from above. The game hard crashed on several occasions, forcing me back to desktop. Thankfully the checkpoint system is fairly forgiving so it could have been worse, but it could have been better.

Early on in the game, if you approach a deer / stag, they run off making a noise, and yet I found that noise following me around that area, wherever I went. Even when there was no deer in sight, it sounded like it was right behind me.

Visually, there was a weird bug where the checkpoint icon sat above anything else on the screen, obscuring subtitles.

The most persistent annoyance, and not a bug, was the speed of the cursor in the menu. My word, is it slow. Not only that, but when I tried to switch to mouse to be quicker it dragged and didn’t seem to work very well. And I certainly couldn’t use my computer normally while the game was open (I couldn’t access the Start menu and navigate outside of the game when it was open).

I know the team are working hard on releasing patches, so hopefully these niggles won’t be around for long.

Gold, or Green?

The Wilds of Dacrima is a fun and good humoured puzzling platformer. It embraces its potion ’em up exploration well with smart design choices and satisfying gameplay. For Antler Studios’ debut game, it is an impressive feat, one that is slightly marred by some bugs, and finicky controls. Perhaps a little longer over the bunsen burner was needed.

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The Wilds of Dacrima released on 12 May 2026 for PC.

Gamer Social Club would like to thank Antler Studios for the review code.