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Alchemy Prototype

Combine two elements to discover something new.

v7.0
Mods
0 / 0 Found
0 dead ends found

Want spoilers instead? There's a full recipe database — every element, every path, entirely optional.

Elements

Elements you've uncovered so far 0 / 0
0 dead ends found

Color: green → red shows steps from the base elements. More blue means more connected. A red ring means dead end.

New sets will be added over time. Each one is a goal to work toward — something to look forward to finishing.

I dislike AI usage in creative and coding projects. I want to say that plainly before anything else. But I did use AI to help build this website, and I'd rather tell you directly than have you find out and feel misled. If you don't want to play something built with AI involved, I understand completely — you're free to close this tab. There are no ads here and I make no money from this project. This is honesty, not a pitch.

The way I used it isn't what you might assume. I didn't sit down and tell an AI "build me an alchemy game, add this feature, add that feature" and let it invent the thing. That's not what happened here.

For context: I also run another project, Super-Shiritori, which I built entirely by hand with no AI involvement at all — and that lack of structure eventually caused real disorganization that made updates harder than they needed to be. I put this to a poll in that project's own server, asking permission to start using AI there too, under a specific, narrow set of rules. Here's exactly what I told them:

There is a ton of stuff about Claude and Codex being top AI code sources.

Now I mentioned before my dislikement of using AI for coding, and Shiritori is one hell of a spaghetti mess because it's just me coding.

But I have considered asking if I should start using AI to aid in the development of Super-Shiritori.

NOW RELAX. I'm not going to use AI to start making new features for me or make new gamemodes.

The development process will still be the same, where you guys have the highest influence on what will be changed and added or removed, and I will code that.

Me using AI will only be used for it to read all my code and figure out how to optimize it. I have over 14k lines in one area alone — it is so many minigames like Wordle and Anagram and Wordbomb, we have all of Vexillopedia.

I will use AI to only aid me in making what I have currently in a clean, organized way — for efficiency, where I can have Vexillopedia its own bot and all of the server-exclusive features here, like a dedicated channel, and Vexillopedia.

At the end of this it should make Super-Shiritori more reliable and less likely to crash or lag behind.

NOW I will follow suit if you agree to allow me to use AI in this manner, and ONLY this manner.

If majority votes against this, I'll continue to do this manually without AI, as I always have been.

But if you agree and are willingly able to accept the use of AI in this form, I will do so.

I can assure that you can trust me to not use AI in a way that isn't what I describe, given I hate AI as much as the next guy.

That's the same principle I've carried into this project. Every element, every recipe, every gameplay decision here was designed by me, not generated by AI. AI's role was to help me understand and implement what I'd already decided, to make writing and organizing this codebase more efficient, and — yes — to help clean up my own writing, including this exact explanation. I wrote this myself; I only asked for help with punctuation. If you're wondering about the em dashes, those are mine too.

I've used AI, and will keep using it, as a tool — not as a shortcut to produce slop, and not to vibecode or flowcode my way through a project I didn't actually design. I dislike that stereotype as much as anyone.

Thank you for reading this far. If you're still here — welcome. Every element in this game is human-made, and I hope you enjoy it. If this changes how you feel about playing, that's completely fine too. Close the tab, go play Little Alchemy instead, no hard feelings. Though if you dislike AI but you're playing Infinite Craft — that's a little bit of an interesting contradiction, isn't it?

Creator

Ghost :/ — Discord: no_where.ghost_002

Set assistance

No credits yet.

Element art & icons

Every element with an icon that isn't credited below was created or commissioned by Ghost :/.

Community

Have an idea for a new element? Ghost's Alchemy is a Discord server for suggesting elements, run by chessguyyy.

Don't want to join Discord? You can suggest an element directly instead — no account needed.

Ghost also runs Super-Shiritori, a separate word-game project referenced in the AI note above.

Want a full recipe reference instead of discovering things yourself? The Element Database lists every element, every recipe, and the shortest path to make anything — heads up that this is effectively a complete spoiler/walkthrough tool, entirely optional to use.

Settings

Music

A quiet ambient loop plays in the background. It shares the same mute switch as sound effects — if those are off (from the Elements tab), music stays silent too, even with this toggled on.

100%

Hint Mode

Outlines any element that can combine with something already in your inventory right now, and moves those to the top of the Elements list. Meant to smooth out the grind, not to spoil what the result actually is.

Colorology

A handful of elements happen to share a name with a real, named color — when that happens, that element's tile background becomes the color's actual hex code instead of the usual panel color.

Recipe data

Every page load fetches recipes.js fresh, bypassing the browser cache entirely. If you just updated it and don't see new elements, use this instead of guessing whether it's stale or genuinely stuck — it tells you which.

Not loaded yet.

Back up or transfer progress

Generate a backup code for your current progress, then paste it into this page on another browser or device to bring your elements with you. Importing only adds elements — it never removes anything you've already found.

Danger zone

This clears every element you've discovered and starts you back at air, water, earth, and fire. It can't be undone unless you've saved a backup code above.

Information

How progress is saved

Your discovered elements are saved in this browser using localStorage, a small storage space each website gets in your browser. There's no account and no server; the data lives only on this device, in this browser.

What that means in practice

Progress won't follow you to a different browser or device — Chrome on your laptop and Safari on your phone each keep their own separate save. Clearing your browser's site data or cache will erase it. Private/incognito windows usually don't save it at all.

Why it's built this way

A shared save file that "only the computer can read" isn't actually possible — any code that runs in your browser can be read by anyone using developer tools, so it wouldn't add real protection. Real accounts would need a server and password hashing, which is a bigger project than this prototype currently needs.

The completion counter

The fraction on the Elements and Family Tree tabs counts every element currently defined in recipes.js. When new elements are added in an update, the total goes up — so it's possible to go from 100% back down after an update. That's expected, not a bug.

Dead ends

An element becomes a dead end once every recipe it appears in already leads to something you've discovered — meaning it has nothing left to give, no matter which partner you eventually find. This can change the moment you unlock its last remaining output, even indirectly.

Why SVG icons, not PNG

Element icons are vector files (SVG), not pixel images. A vector shape is just math describing lines and curves, so it renders identically sharp whether it's shown at 18px or 1800px — there's no "blurry when scaled up" problem the way there is with PNGs, and no need to export separate sizes for different screens. SVGs are also tiny (usually under a kilobyte each for icons this simple), which adds up across a large discovered list. The tradeoff: SVG is a poor fit for photographic detail or gradients — it's built for clean shapes, which happens to be exactly this game's icon style already.

Time bracket splits

How many split checkpoints the run records along the way.

Split placement

Automatic spaces them evenly by percentage. Manual lets you place each one at an exact element count.

Hint Mode

Locked for the whole run once it starts — whichever way you set it here is how it stays.

Your runs

Every finished run, both types, newest first — kept on this device regardless of completion at start. The most recent 50 are kept.