Build a real alchemical practice, from a hotplate in a shed.
You're eighteen, the marks were good, and there's no plan. A late-night rabbit hole leads you to a living tradition. So you build a lab from scrap and start fumbling through real procedures, and slowly begin to suspect that what you're doing actually works.
Watch the world run.
Rendered from the game's own 3D world — the same scenes you walk through in the demo. No mock-ups, no concept art.
Not a fantasy. A practice.
No robes, no spellbooks, no quill-and-candle aesthetic. Salmethic is set in the contemporary, real world: real cities, real internet, real money, real time pressure. The alchemy is depicted as a living tradition, drawn from lived experience: spagyrics, plant work, mineral work. Real results that could plausibly be reached, never "spells that work because the game says so."
A slice of life
Brew tinctures, but also mind the power bill, the shop prices, and how openly you sell. The mundane isn't filler; it's the foundation the Work is built on.
Layered for everyone
A complete, satisfying alchemy sim on the surface. A thinky game of patterns and discovery underneath. And, for those who recognise it, an authentic depiction of a real tradition.
The lane is empty
Potion Craft owns cozy-medieval; Cultist Simulator owns occult-abstract. Nobody sits where Salmethic sits: modern, grounded, occult-as-living-practice.
The simulation is real.
Temperature is its axis.
The science underneath the game is modelled, not faked: heat transfer, phase change, kinetics, energy and mass balance, running on real math and real physical constants.
Nearly every operation is, at bottom, the controlled application of heat. A new substance is a row of real constants (boiling point, specific and latent heat, density), not a new special case. Boil your flask dry and you lose the batch; hold a clean cut and the quality climbs. Gamification is a thin, honest layer over the physics, never a substitute for it.
Two ways to see the lab
On phones, the simulation plays as a streamlined 2D touch experience, built for one hand and a small screen. On desktop it runs as a walkable, first-person 3D world: step from the shed to the garden, the cellar, and the office (a classic 2D view stays a toggle away in Settings). One engine, two presentations.
Eight operations. One unbroken thread.
Grow or buy a herb, then take it the whole way: separate its three principles (Mercury, Sulphur, Salt) and reunite them into a finished tincture. Every step rides the same real physics.
DistillationSpiritus · the Mercury
Boil a liquid and catch its vapour. Water purifies; a fermented wash climbs to spirit.
CalcinationCinis · to ash
Burn a dried material in fierce heat down to its pale mineral ash.
DissolutionSolutio · the leach
Leach the soluble salts out of the ash into a clear lixivium.
CoagulationSal · the Salt
Drive off the water and crystallise the purified salt back out.
FermentationPutrefactio
A sugar must turns, over real days, into a fermentable wash, temperature-banded.
MacerationSulphur · the soul
Steep dried herb in spirit to draw the essence into a deep tincture.
StrainingSeparatio
Part the rich extract from the spent marc, which feeds the Salt branch.
RecombinationConiunctio
Reunite spirit, extract and salt into a graded Spagyric Tincture.
The shed, the garden, the cellar, and the office.
The shed
The lab. Rig the bench, set the hotplate, watch the still-head thermometer, and make your cut.
The garden
Grow your own materia in raised beds, under a real day-night sky and passing weather.
The cellar
Ferment a must in the vat, and dry herbs in the cool dark below the house.
The office
The computer: read the forum archive, study the library, and keep your bookmarks.
The lab keeps working when you don't.
In-game time outruns the clock and keeps flowing whether you're playing or not. The simulation continues offline, up to a two-day cap, then waits for you with a "while you were away." The demo runs at an accelerated pace so you can taste the whole arc in days; the full game settles toward its designed three-game-hours-per-real-hour rhythm.
Most operations have an attention window: be present to end the heat, decant, or seal, or the batch fails. In-game reminders flag you when the retort needs attention. Long work claims your weekend mornings; short work fits a weeknight. The Work happens at the pace it happens; you meet it where you can.
A game built to hold up, and to earn your trust.
We're playing the long game: a project people talk about years from now, not a flash. Here's what that means in practice, and what it rules out.
No microtransactions, ever
No loot boxes, no battle pass, no "skip the work" purchases. You buy the game once. The Great Work is earned, never bought.
No power fantasy
You don't become a wizard who dominates others. The power is interior and quiet, and the world's reaction to your success is itself a check on it.
Authentic, and safe
Operation names, ingredients and stages are real; the physics is physically real where simulated. Dangerous procedural detail is stylised: referenced, never instructed.
Shipped in the open
A polished vertical slice now, expanded through Early Access toward 1.0, the proven path that Stardew, RimWorld and Vintage Story all took. The roadmap is public and the changelog is honest.
From a shed lab to the Great Work.
The Demo
The spagyric loop, end to end: grow, distil, ferment, recombine, sell. Playable today — in your browser, on desktop, and on mobile.
Steam Early Access
The vertical slice in players' hands. Real feedback, real revenue, informing the rest.
The full Arc 1
More spaces, the full operation set, the acetate path, and the climax: philosophic mercury.
Arc 2: the Stone
Beyond philosophic mercury: transmutation, and the Stone itself, as a sequel or expansion.
The demo is free. Begin the Work.
Play it instantly in your browser — nothing to install, on desktop or mobile. No launcher, no account, no telemetry.
Runs at app.salmethic.com · installable as an app · plays offline once loaded
The demo lives at app.salmethic.com while the Steam release is prepared; downloadable builds arrive with Steam Early Access.
The wider release.
Steam
Early Access · desktop, walkable-3D focus
Wishlist soonApp Stores
The 2D touch game on iOS & Android
In developmentKickstarter
Back the full Arc 1
Planned"There are no shortcuts. If you take with one hand, eventually you have to give back with the other; ultimately there is a balance that must be maintained." – the Illuminated Master