// SCORE BREAKDOWN
Exceptionally creative roguelike deck-builder using authentic historical apothecary ingredients from 1652 herbals, novel concept with polished execution, though large portfolio (50 apps).
// ABOUT
Cure the cough. Don't poison the squire. Decoction is a historical-fiction roguelike deck-builder set inside a 1690s European apothecary shop. Patients arrive at your door with ailments described in period language. You diagnose the humoral imbalance, draw a hand of ingredient cards, and combine them in the mortar to formulate a remedy. Each card is a real plant, mineral, or animal product drawn from Nicholas Culpeper's Complete Herbal (1652) and the London pharmacopoeia of the period, with its hot, cold, dry, or moist signature and its classical planetary rulership preserved. Decoction is a historical fiction game inspired by 17th-century pharmacopoeia. Nothing herein is medical advice. Do not treat real illness with herbal remedies. Consult a licensed physician for any health concern. WHAT'S IN THE BOX - 150 ingredient cards, hand-authored from Culpeper sources. Herbs, minerals, animal products, spirits, syrups, powders, and pre-prepared decoctions, each with its own humoral signature, planetary rulership, and attribution quote. - 60 hand-authored patient cases. Villagers, townsmen, gentry, and grandees. Phlegmatic catarrhs. Sanguine fevers. Choleric biles. Saturnine melancholies. - A diagnose-and-formulate puzzle loop. Read the symptoms, choose a humour, draw five cards, play two to four, score the cure. - A seven-day campaign tour through villages with persistent reputation and gold. Three grievous failures and the constable invites you to leave town. Eighty percent cures and you triumph. - A 25-achievement board covering every planetary rulership, every difficulty band, and a Compleat Cabinet for unlocking the materia medica. - Period instruments soundtrack rendered procedurally on device. Lute, recorder, and viola da gamba in Dorian and Mixolydian modes. No samples shipped. - Local SwiftData persistence. Your tours survive a relaunch. - Optimised for iPhone and iPad. Portrait on iPhone, all orientations on iPad. THE PROMISE No subscriptions. No in-app purchases. No expansion packs. No tracking, no analytics, no third-party SDKs. The privacy manifest declares no data collection. THE FRAME Decoction preserves period language because the puzzle is built on the texts of the period. We have kept the original attributions and astrological notes from Culpeper. None of it is medical advice. Several historical remedies were ineffective and some were actively harmful. Saying so is part of why evidence-based medicine exists and part of why this is a game, not a pharmacy. If you are unwell, please consult a licensed clinician.