Wednesday, 23 September 2026

Pozioni Esplosive

Andrea Crespi, Lorenzo Silva and Stefano Castelli · 2015 · Ghenos Games

Players

2–4

On the box

30–45min

At our table

25–45min

Weight Light· 1.78 out of 5

Text in the game None

What it is

Potion Explosion is a light puzzle game with a magic school theme: you’re students sitting your final exam, and whoever brews the best potions graduates top of the class. The ingredients are coloured marbles rolling down a dispenser in the middle of the table, and that’s where everyone’s eyes go.

You take one marble at a time from the dispenser. As the others roll down, if two of the same colour touch, they explode and you take them all. The marbles fill the potions in front of you, and each finished potion is worth points and gives you a power to use, like grabbing more marbles or taking them from other players.

All the interaction is in the shared dispenser: every marble you take changes the column for whoever comes next, and sometimes it’s worth accepting a few negative points just to get exactly the one you need. The harder potions are worth more, and in the end the most points wins.

How it plays

Grown-ups play it differently, and anyone who doesn’t get that never wins. If you just take a couple of marbles each turn and place them, you’ve lost. You need to use the potions’ powers and chain them: you finish a potion, its power lets you take more marbles or steal them, those finish another potion, which triggers yet another one, all in the same turn.

You can also play the dispenser cleverly. I take a penalty, pull the marble I need, finish a potion right away and leave the column set up for my next turn. And finishing a potion at the end of your turn means starting the next one with its power ready to go. With kids, though, you can forget the scoring and just count the potions you’ve made.