So, every so often something happens that people hope never will: they end up in hospital. Unfortunately, last week I was subjected to a number of days in one and it was not pleasant. When you're ill, you don't mind being there as they are helping; it's the 'recovery' days, where you are just sitting waiting to be told you can go home with nothing to do, that are hard. Fortunately, this time round I had my wonderful Elonex 10" E-touch and decided that I was going to download a random game to entertain me. This is where I discovered Alchemy Classic for Android.

The game Alchemy itself has been around for quite some time and over the years has had many different versions of it revamped and released. The game is very simple; you start off with the four basic elements, earth, air, fire and water, and you have to combine them to create new elements, then combine those to create more. Sounds simple, right? Wrong.

In Alchemy, there are 238 (depending on what version you get) different elements to create, and by the time you get to roughly 50-60, you're already struggling to create new ones. In my version, it showed me a list of the current elements or items I could create with the things I had already discovered. The other 180ish remained a mystery to me and would do so until I had discovered more of the other elements.

The game has such a simple mechanic of drag, drop, create (or not create if you're wrong) and it will consume your life. I spent all day playing Alchemy (not that I had much else to do apart from be a pin cushion for doctors and nurses alike), but it really is something you cannot put down. My brain was in overload thinking, "What I could combine to create Hydrogen and what would happen if I added metals, electric and glass ?" (You get a compass, teehee.)

Even though I am out of the hospital, I am still glued to finding all those elements and items, and it's going to take me quite some time to do so. If you don't cheat by looking combinations up on the internet, then you could easily be putting hundreds of hours into this well developed little game. Another of the great things is that this game is completely free on the Android marketplace, which is unreal for the joy and gameplay you get out of this game. Admittedly there are some frustrating times when you are staring at the screen shouting, "WTF, why the hell does that not create ice you stupid *&%&$") and you promise that you won't play anymore, but an hour later you're back on it determined to discover more.

Overall, this is one of the best games I have ever played for a mobile device and I highly recommed it to all users of an Android that want something challenging to test their nerdy science side. PC or Apple users can find different versions, too, if they look in their app store or just search online; and although they aren't on par with the Android version, they are still pretty addictive. So get it downloaded and get mashing elements together to see if you can get all 238 ^_^

Until next time nerdlings Ax