# Decoction — A 1690s apothecary game

> A 1690s apothecary game (iPhone/iPad app by Robert Corbin.)

- Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/decoction/id6771789894 (this page in markdown: same URL + `.md`)
- Developer: [Robert Corbin](https://appshunter.io/developer/1890247992)
- Category: Games, Card
- Price: $2.99
- Age rating: 12+
- Requires: iOS 17.0 · 39 MB
- Languages: American English
- Released: 2026-05-26
- Data updated: 2026-08-09
- User reviews in markdown: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/decoction/id6771789894/reviews.md

## What is Decoction?

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. Historical plant content is principally grounded in the public-domain Project Gutenberg transcription of Nicholas Culpeper's The Complete Herbal (eBook 49513), with period claims framed as history rather than guidance.

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.


## Version history (last 5 releases)

### 3.0 — 2026-07-12

Decoction 3.0 - Reproducible Tours:

• Every campaign now has a shareable, checksum-validated replay code. Re-enter it to reproduce the village, patient sequence, hands, events, and market offers for the same school and Rigour.

• Resume integrity checks safely repair reconstructible legacy state. Save failures are no longer silent: an in-app recovery notice explains the risk and offers Retry Save.

• The Tour Journal now carries replay codes alongside case history, making campaign decisions easier to revisit and share.

• Historical source and safety framing is clearer throughout ingredient and formulation screens, with a direct link to the public-domain Project Gutenberg Culpeper source (eBook 49513) and explicit non-medical boundaries.

• Improved Dynamic Type and VoiceOver labeling in touched campaign screens. No new permissions, network services, tracking, or analytics.

### 2.0.1 — 2026-06-24

This update sharpens the interface: the iPad layout now uses a centered, comfortable reading width instead of stretching edge to edge. iPhone is unchanged; still fully on-device.

### 2.0 — 2026-06-21

Decoction 2.0 — a big pro upgrade for the apothecary roguelike, still no IAP.

• Card keywords (Corrective, Synergist, Volatile, Virulent, Cordial, Compound) plus 24 new ingredient cards, from fourth-degree poisons to the great cordials.
• Apothecary Tools: 16 relic-style passive run modifiers bought in the new Guild Market.
• Card refinement: Rectify and Calcine your cards into stronger forms.
• "Rigour" ascension ladder: 8 stacking difficulty modifiers unlocked by triumphs.
• Five apothecary archetypes (Galenist, Spagyrist, Wise-Woman, Court, Plague-Doctor) with distinct decks.
• Street Events between patients, plus elite and boss patients with reward premiums.
• A Materia Medica Codex that grows as you play.

Historically grounded in Culpeper and Galen. No account, no network, no IAP — everything stays on your device.

### 1.4 — 2026-06-15

Decoction 1.4 - Daily Challenge and Mortar Sandbox:

- Daily Challenge: every calendar day the same patient arrives for every player, with the same hand of five cards - no network needed, the puzzle is seeded from today's date. One attempt per day. Complete it to earn a streak; share your result (outcome + score, no spoilers) with a tap. Streaks tracked on-device.

- Mortar Sandbox (Pro Almanac): a risk-free practice room. Pick any humoral target, browse all 150 catalog ingredients sorted by corrective distance, select two to four, and score the result. The sheet shows a full signature comparison, the Culpeper note for each card you used, and a Try Again button. No run, no stakes, no limits.

- Apothecary Forecast expanded: the main-menu forecast now cycles through seven distinct planetary-day entries (one for each day of the week) instead of three, so the card shows something genuinely different every day of the week.

- No new permissions, no network calls, no tracking. All data remains on your device.

### 1.3 — 2026-06-14

Decoction 1.3 — Pro Almanac upgrade:

• Formulary Builder: pick any humoral imbalance and instantly see all 150 catalog ingredients ranked by how well they correct it. Filter by category. The best corrective shows distance 0 in green; anything above 6 is dimmed. A practical tool to study before and during a run.

• Tour Journal: browse every campaign tour you have played, oldest to newest. Expand any run to see the day-by-day case log — patient name, outcome tier, and distance score for each formulation. Lifetime cure rate displayed at the top.

• Culpeper's Almanac extended to 40 period terms across five categories: humoral theory, materia medica types, classical diseases, apothecary measures, and shop instruments. New entries include theriac, electuary, tincture, scruple, albarello, cataplasm, phthisis, the king's evil, and more — each with a period citation and a plain-English gloss.

• No new permissions, no network calls, no tracking. All data remains on your device.

## More apps by Robert Corbin

- [Daily Word Journey](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/daily-word-journey/id6761548266)
- [Hush Secret Text](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/hush-secret-text/id6761658175)
- [Renew Guard](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/renew-guard/id6761755447)
- [Receipt to PDF](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/receipt-to-pdf/id6761782025)
- [Route Your Pay](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/route-your-pay/id6761783719)
- [Tip Arbiter](https://appshunter.io/ios/app/tip-arbiter/id6761786879)

All apps by Robert Corbin: https://appshunter.io/developer/1890247992

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*Data collected daily from the US App Store and indexed by [AppsHunter](https://appshunter.io/). User reviews are verbatim App Store reviews. Ratings, prices and chart positions refresh continuously; this snapshot is from 2026-08-09.*