a tiny crafting game · every sprite drawn by code
Start with fire, water, earth and air. Smash pairs together at the workbench and follow the chain of transmutations — 39 elements deep — all the way to the Philosopher's Stone.
combine · discover · transmute
the great work: forge the philosopher's stone
Pick two elements from the shelf below. Fire and water have opinions about each other.
Every transmutation you prove at the bench is inked here, in order of creation. Grey pages are still rumors — the grimoire records nothing it hasn't seen. Click a recorded element to send it back to the forge.
Four rules, no tutorial. The bench does exactly what it looks like it does.
Click any two elements on the shelf. Order never matters — fire + water is water + fire, and both of them are steam.
A real recipe erupts in particles sampled from the new sprite's own palette. A dud gets grey smoke, a bench shake, and a politely disappointed cauldron.
Every discovery joins the shelf immediately and becomes an ingredient itself. The tree runs seven tiers deep from the four primordials.
One element sits at the top of the graph. Stuck? The grimoire deals hints — but it never spoils a recipe you can't attempt yet.
Under the hood the entire ruleset is one dictionary lookup — RECIPES[[a,b].sort().join('+')] — and all 39 sprites share a tiny painter kit (flame, mound, cloud, ingot) re-skinned with 5-color palettes. Full breakdown in the making-of guide →
A very small studio. Everyone worked for flavor text.