Alchemia: The Great Work

About Alchemia: The Great Work

Alchemia: The Great Work is a browser puzzle game by Bitwise Gaming, first made for the Defold Game Jam 2026 on the theme Chain Reaction and since grown into a full campaign. It was published on itch.io in October 2026 and is also on WaveDash, where the leaderboards and cloud saves live.

You drop one reagent at a time onto a candle-lit bench. Three or more of a kind fuse into the next tier: Ash, Salt, Quicksilver, Vitriol, Solar Phial, Aetherium and finally the Philosopher's Stone. Each new tile fires a pulse of its own. Salt pulls in Salt from two cells away, Quicksilver draws nearby reagents in, Vitriol dissolves lead, the Solar Phial transmutes its row and column and the Vortex spins its ring, so a single drop can clear half the bench. Every step of a chain heats the crucible and multiplies your gold, and long chains earn the Catalyst, a wild reagent that becomes whatever makes the biggest fusion.

The Daily Crucible is the shared daily mode: every player gets the same bench and the same pieces that day, with one global leaderboard per day. Next to it sit the Seven Towers campaign of 70 hand-built chambers, each with a goal and up to three stars and new mechanics such as rime, powder kegs, gear rails, sigils, mirrors and aether rifts; an Endless mode with a leaderboard per tower; and a Workshop where banked gold buys upgrades and bench themes.

It plays with mouse, touch or keyboard, in landscape or portrait, and suits players who like Triple Town style merging and planning a combo several drops ahead.

How to play Alchemia: The Great Work

1. Choose Daily Crucible from the main menu.
2. Move over the bench and drop the reagent shown in the Next box.
3. Place three or more of the same reagent together to fuse them into the next tier.
4. Use each tier's pulse to set off chain reactions; longer chains heat the crucible and multiply your gold.
5. Keep brewing until the bench fills, then compare your score on the day's leaderboard.

Screenshots

Tips

• Look at the next piece before you drop: setting up a fusion one drop ahead leads to longer chains.
• Save the Catalyst for a spot where it can complete the largest fusion.
• Fuse five or more at once when you can: a grand fusion gives a bonus tile.
• Keep the bench edges tidy so Quicksilver and Salt pulses have room to pull pieces together.

Questions