Little Alchemy 2: how 4 elements become 720
Little Alchemy 2 is a discovery game. There is no clock, no score and no way to lose; the only question is what two things make when you put them together. Water and fire give steam, water and earth give mud, earth and earth give land, land and land give a continent, two continents give a planet. Every item you make gets a hand-drawn icon and a short, usually sarcastic description, and joins the library on the right so it can be used again. Recloak released it in 2017 as the sequel to Little Alchemy and rebuilt the whole recipe tree; the sequel has 720 items and most of the old combinations no longer apply.
The copy on littlealchemy2.org is Recloak's own web build, served from this domain with all 720 item icons, so it loads in the page with nothing to install. Progress is saved in your browser. It runs on a school Chromebook with a touchpad as well as on a phone, and it is the kind of game you leave open in a tab: a couple of combinations in a spare minute, then back to it later.
Controls & mechanics
| Action | Control | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| Combine | Drag an item onto another (mouse or finger) | If the pair is a recipe, the new item appears where they met and is added to the library |
| Clone | Double-click an item on the workspace | Makes a second copy so you can try it against several things without going back to the library |
| Search | Magnifier at the top of the library | Type a name to filter the library; useful once you have a few hundred items |
| Clean up | Brush icon, top left | Clears the workspace; nothing you found is lost |
| Encyclopedia and Hints | Book and light-bulb icons, left | The book lists every item found with its recipes; a hint names an item you can already make |
Getting past the first fifty
- Double everything first: The same item with itself is a recipe surprisingly often: air + air is pressure, fire + fire is energy, water + water is a puddle, earth + earth is land. Then keep doubling — puddle to pond to lake to sea to ocean, land to continent to planet.
- Life is the door to most of the tree: Make primordial soup (lava + ocean, or earth + sea) and hit it with electricity, time, a storm or a volcano. Life plus land is animal, life plus clay is human, and human touches 83 other items.
- Some items arrive on their own: Time is not made from anything: it appears in the library once you have found 100 items. Metal unlocks at 50, Big, Science and Philosophy at 150, Container at 300. If a recipe you read online does not work yet, you may just need more discoveries.
- Use the encyclopedia before a hint: Every entry shows what the item can be made from and, once you have combined it, what it made. An item the game calls final mixes with nothing; tap it and it hides itself into the encyclopedia. Stop testing it.
Key features
- 720 items, every icon present: The build served here has the complete icon set, so every discovery from steam to the one ring draws properly instead of a broken image.
- Encyclopedia with recipes: Each item's page lists what makes it and what it makes, so the game keeps its own notes for you.
- Saves in the browser: Your discoveries are kept locally; close the tab and reopen the site tomorrow and the library is as you left it.
- Hidden items: Five items do not count toward the 720 and never show in the encyclopedia until found — a dog and the internet make one of them.
Game info
- Title: Little Alchemy 2
- Developer: Recloak
- Category: Craft, Merge and Idle
- Platform: Web browser (HTML5)
- Items to find: 720 in the base game, plus 5 hidden ones
Pro tip: Chase Philosophy early. It is human + idea (idea is human + light bulb), and it unlocks the scale items: planet + philosophy gives Big, pebble + philosophy gives Small, and wind + philosophy gives Motion. Big and Small turn any body of water or piece of land up and down a size, which fills the library fast.
