Alchemy Meets Hack & Slash Action-Adventure in ‘Mixture,’ Coming to Meta Quest 2

Centuries ago, mighty alchemists threatened the Realm of Light protected by the Order of Knights. After a long war, the alchemists were captured and imprisoned—each kept separately in a different hidden area of their realm. Now, alchemy is on the rise once again, aggressive golems attack peaceful wanderers, and acid storms eat away at ancient structures. An outcast knight, you must decide: Will you confront the vile alchemists, who endanger the Light? Or will you join them?

Today, Polish developer Played with Fire announced Mixture, a single-player fantasy action-adventure game coming to Meta Quest 2. Although you play solo, you’ll simultaneously control two unique characters: an exiled knight and an alchemist, each with their own complex skillset.

The game leans heavily into action and combat, with two offensive player characters, a dynamic camera, numerous boss fights, and more. The story follows an exiled knight, Sola the Moth, who traverses dangerous barren worlds of living metals, ores, and crystals to find means of redemption and a way back to her native realm. To achieve that goal, she reluctantly strikes a pact with and is joined by a power-hungry Master Alchemist who can twist the properties of elemental matter. Together, they form a force to be reckoned with. Yet a new threat appears—one that will challenge their alliance.

In the player’s hands, Sola runs, dashes, and glides to travel. Wielding her lethal scythe, she stabs and slashes hostile golems and other monsters, using stylish third-person perspective melee combos and finishers.

Sephairos, the Master Alchemist, has a range of hand-controlled abilities, including resource gathering and intuitive crafting of bottled mixtures that can be thrown at both enemy and environmental targets.

Mixtures and alchemy in the game help exploit weaknesses, but they also provide cool opportunities—you can repel things, glue them together, make them grow, or crack them apart. Throughout the game, the range of mixture formulas at your disposal will grow considerably as new ones are won in battle or reconstructed.

The adventure is set in five regions of the brutal Realm of Alchemy—all made of malleable and transmutable materials. The realm’s creatures and objects react strongly to alchemical mixtures and melee attacks, with physically-simulated changes in behavior.

During Sola and Sephairos’s journeys, the beastly rulers of the regions lurk in the shadows before confronting the heroic duo.

“Played with Fire started in 2019 as a couple of developers and friends from Cracow, Poland, who decided to start their own studio,” says CEO and Lead Programmer Bartłomiej Szydło. “We wanted to experiment with new technologies and design new solutions—to ‘play with fire,’ so to speak. VR and the metaverse are where the future lies, and we’ll be there to be a part of it!”

Fans may recognize Played with Fire from their earlier Rift title, Stargaze, which drew inspiration from The Little Prince. “We work in a variety of action and adventure genres in which our strengths lie,” notes Szydło. “Each game is unique, but there are hand-drawn touches to the visual worlds we craft that make them always recognizable as our work.”

“With Mixture, we’ve combined the fast reflexes of hands in VR action and the manual crafting and casting of alchemy with our love of classic metroidvanias and stylish action games, which make use of a fully visible avatar to underline the hero’s amazing and cinematic combat abilities,” adds Szydło. “The amount of fun, real-time interplay between two characters presented from two joined POVs is something unique to VR and something we wanted to explore.”

This is just a taste of what’s in store. Follow Played with Fire on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to stay up to date with development. And if you’re at PAX West, swing by Booth 650 to meet the dev team and get hands-on with the game!