Before we get into this, proceed with caution. If you continue reading, I take no responsibility for this game taking over and/or ruining your social life. Now that that's out of the way, let me tell you about my latest obsession...
Cauldron is an upgrade-heavy, minigame-centric, turn-based RPG. Play minigames to strengthen your party, then win battles to uncover more map, more heroes, more minigames, more everything! If your favorite plant is an upgrade tree, then this game is for you!
Cauldron just released on May 21, 2025. It's got a fun, cutesy retro art style that will no doubt be nostalgic for gamers of a certain age. In the game, you play Nyx, a young witch who, along with her ghost friend Blinkie, set off on a journey to free the land from Darkness. Not just as in the forces of evil, but literal Darkness.
This is your view when you start the game. The majority of the map is in Darkness. The only way to unlock more of the map, and advance your adventure, is to battle the monsters in the Darkness.
The three orange (!) you see are mini-games you can play to gather resources which you use the level up your heroes. They can also be used to bribe monsters instead of fighting them but it takes a whole lot of resources to satisfy them. These minigames are where the insane addictiveness of this game comes in.
They are a lot of fun on their own, maybe too much! The resources you gather in each can be used to unlock and upgrade multiple things within each game. Upgrades add new elements to the mini-game that allow you to more easily gather resources...to spend on upgrades. It's this game play loop that will have you shredding hours in one mini-game, forgetting there's a whole world out there to save.
And that's the dangerous part of this game...the upgrades.
Each mini-game has its own upgrade tree and they are HUGE. Luckily, it's not that difficult to unlock things as you play. "Maybe just one more round so I can unlock that next thing and then I'll stop." is something you'll say a lot while playing!
You could even just be content playing the mini-games and amassing upgrades, but there's Darkness out there that needs to be banished.
The combat is turn-based and you can choose to plan every single action your party takes or leave it up to the auto-battler. I have a tendency to use the auto-battler and set the turn speed to max. Some of the fights have waves of enemies and I just don't have it in me to make a choice every turn for each of the party members. There are behavior options for the auto-battler so you can kind of program how it fights for you. Each member of your party has their specialty, and their own upgrade tree.
Oh boy, more upgrades!
I don't want to get into any spoilers but I'll just say the game seems pretty basic at the start and as you unlock more of the map, you'll find it has more to offer (including more mini-games!). As fun as the mini-games are, a lot of the joy for me has been unlocking a new feature that I had no idea was in the game.
Cauldron is a great time! I'm really enjoying how it combines the mini-games with an RPG story and combat. It's even easy to pick up if you just want to chill for a few minutes grinding a mini-game. Putting it back down is another story!
There's more than a few YouTubers that covered this game and that's what lead me to check it out. Olexa did an initial video on it and then followed that up with a couple more just on the mini-games!
But don't say I didn't warn you...
