The Apothecary’s Assistant by Allyson Gray
The most curious aspect of The Apothecary’s Assistant is that you’re supposed to play it in small doses, one per real life day. The idea is this. You find yourself in a magical forest apothecary, where you are asked to perform small chores as part of your ‘shift’. Performing these chores gives you a reward in magical acorns. But you can only perform one per day. For your next chore, you need to return tomorrow. Once you have amassed enough acorns, you can assign them to real world charities, and Allyson Gray will use her Colossal Prize money to make this happen.
(This is a great idea, by the way. I don’t know which country Allyson is in, but here in the Netherlands it’s not so easy to do tax deductible donations – you have to give a lot of money to charity before tax deductions start kicking in. And of course the charities have to be registered in The Netherlands, which most international ones are not. Last year I was about to get some money from IF Comp for Xanthippe’s Last Night with Socrates, and I had the Competition organisers send it not to me but to the Nigerian charity Give Girls a Chance, which is also registered as a charity in the US. It’s the only way I’ve ever been able to do a tax deductible charity donation! I don’t know whether something like this is Allyson’s reason for tying donations to her IF Comp entry, but I’m putting it out here because it could be relevant for other authors, current or future. Anyway, although the set-up in the game does not actually increase the donations for any charities, it does draw the players’ attention to the six chosen charities, and perhaps some of us who can afford it are inspired to give more than just magical acorns.)
I played the game as intended for about a week. By that time, I must admit I was getting rather impatient. All the scenes I had experienced were extremely low-stakes and low-difficulty. To give you an example, I would be asked to identify a certain animal. You’re given a description of the animal and two pictures, one of which evidently fits the description while the other evidently does not. Then you must click the right one. After this, you will be profusely praised by the apothecary – totally unearned acclaim. This was typical for all the days I experienced. Everyone is utterly happy with you, delighted in your performance, of good cheer, and honestly the only thing that separates them from the Care Bears is that they don’t have hearts on their bellies.
When, I was wondering, would something happen? There had been some hints about a Hunt, and about the full moon, so I was fully expecting some horrible calamity that was going to break through the cloying sweetness of the game. But it was a long time coming. So I decided to ‘cheat’, and started to increase the date on my computer. This way I played up to early October, hopefully far enough to get a good impression of the game as a whole.
To my surprise, nothing changed. It just remains a series of ultra low-stakes low-difficulty challenges that bring you standing ovations when you successfully complete them. No narrative starts to unfold. Characters do not develop. No note of longing, bitterness, passion, anger, or grief is allowed to penetrate the all-too-sweet harmonies of The Apothecary’s Assistant’s fantasy world.
Is this cottagecore interactive fiction? Are we here to just bask in the cosy? A brief search for ‘cosy literature’ gave me this:
and that sounds about right for The Apothecary’s Assistant. Perhaps there are those to whom this has some appeal. But I can’t help but feel that if something makes no demands on me, it is bound to be boring. And that is, alas, exactly how I experienced this game.