Decoction
A 1690s apothecary game
$0.99 · Designed for iPad. Not verified for macOS.
A historical-fiction roguelike. Diagnose 17th-century patients. Build remedies from Culpeper's herbal.
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.
Ratings & Reviews
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The developer, Robert Corbin, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy .
Data Not Collected
The developer does not collect any data from this app.
Accessibility
The developer has not yet indicated which accessibility features this app supports. Learn More
Information
- Seller
- Robert Corbin
- Size
- 2.4 MB
- Category
- Card
- Compatibility
Requires iOS 17.0 or later.
- iPhone
Requires iOS 17.0 or later. - iPad
Requires iPadOS 17.0 or later. - Mac
Requires macOS 14.0 or later and a Mac with Apple M1 chip or later. - Apple Vision
Requires visionOS 1.0 or later.
- iPhone
- Languages
- English
- Age Rating
13+
- 13+
- Infrequent
Medical Treatment information
- Copyright
- © 2026 Robert Corbin
