Alchemickal brings a chemistry-forward approach to the roguelike genre, and our review aims to get to the bottom of this new brew and whether it’s worth players’ time.
It’s easy to see the potential for Alchemickal. Mixing and matching various chemical formulae to tackle different foes, and progressively improving those mixtures along the way, makes a lot of sense as the basis for a roguelike game. Add in multiple forms of attack and some quick dashes to help players zip around, and there’s a lot to like on paper.
Alchemickal does deliver on some of that promise, but it’s also a bit stiff both in its play and in its design.
The Good:
- Gameplay can be frenetic and fun when you hit a groove
- Fundamental roguelike formula of resource-gathering and upgrading works well enough
The Bad:
- Movement can feel stiff, while combat remains largely straightforward
- Mixing chemicals comes to feel perfunctory
Review Details:
- Reviewed on: PC
- Platforms available: PC
- Official release date: July 17, 2026
Alchemickal brings chemistry to roguelikes
Alchemickal tasks players with navigating through basic dungeon floors, tackling a few different enemy types and an occasional boss character along the way. The floor layouts are largely inconsequential; navigating and exploration are not the focus here.
Instead, the focus is squarely on the game’s combat. This revolves around a variety of elemental enemy and chemical types. You’ll encounter, for example, fire and ice enemies that require opposing chemical mixtures in order to quickly dispatch them. The game rapidly mixes up which elemental types of enemies spawn, even during the same room and encounter, and dynamically adjusting one’s chemical weaponry in response to new enemy spawns is core to the game’s experience.
What’s really missing here is meaningful flexibility. Because most enemies have an opposing element, the game quickly sets players on a path of choosing the most correct elemental for each encounter, then switching to the next ideal element for the next enemy, and so on. This switching process can add to the frenetic nature of some battles, but it can also feel rote once it has been fully understood.
Mixing it up, but only to an extent
In theory, the game’s upgrades and discoverable combinations should be able to inject some needed variety into each run, and that variance between runs should add to the game’s running time. But in reality, simply choosing opposing elements is often too strong a strategy to set aside for more esoteric combinations.
That’s not to say that upgrades don’t matter. Some of those purchased from the suspiciously well-endowed shopkeeper between levels can be particularly powerful, and players can further modify their weapons and approach at mid-level workbenches.
These adjustments will be felt once made, but they don’t meaningfully separate different runs in this roguelike. In our review of Alchemickal, we found that most plays of the game felt largely similar.
There are two weapons players can rotate between during play. The first is a meaty scythe that deals heavy melee damage, while the other is a ranged gun that is far less effective, but a bit safer with the distance it puts between players and their foes.
While level layouts themselves don’t hold much interest, environments do provide some added layers of danger. This is mostly due to the elemental crates and barrels that are scattered throughout many of the game’s rooms. While some contain healing mists that benefit the player, the majority are filled with explosive fire or chilling cold that can damage or slow the player, sometimes ending a run outright.
In terms of presentation, Alchemickal doesn’t have too much to say. The game’s visuals are relatively plain, but enemy elemental types do at least stand out from one another, which is important given how core they are to the game’s experience.
The Bottom Line: Alchemickal is worth considering for action-roguelike fans looking for their next fix, but it’s hard not to feel like there’s some wasted potential in its interesting core ideas.
Score: 7.0/10
