When Potions: A Curious Tale launched on Steam last year, I knew entering the market as a micro-indie was going to be challenging, but I didn’t expect my reflections about that challenge to go viral. What followed was a whirlwind: an outpouring of kind support from players and fellow devs mixed with a wave of harassment that left me more shaken than I’d like to admit.

I took time to regroup, heal, and remind myself why I made Potions in the first place. It’s a game about meeting challenges with wit and creativity. So I pushed onward into something I had never done before: self-publishing across all three major consoles. No publisher. No external porting house. Just two developers, a lot of grit, and a cauldron full of paperwork.

If launching on PC was like taking an exam, porting to Switch, Xbox, and PlayStation was like sitting for three graduate finals simultaneously, each in a different language. TRCs, cert loops, platform quirks, build pipelines, and so, so many forms (if you know, you know). At times it felt like I was debugging my own confidence as much as the game.

But the unexpected gift buried in that effort was this: I started feeling proud again.

Proud of my game. Proud of my team. Proud of the persistence it took to face the same title that had caused me so much stress and decide to keep nurturing it anyway.

Yesterday, months after a launch that nearly broke me, Potions: A Curious Tale is now available on Nintendo Switch, Xbox, and PlayStation 5. Even better, we’re celebrating the console debut with a free endgame update, The Temple of Spirit, which adds new puzzles, quests, and late-game challenges for all players.

And we decided to shadow-drop it.

Not as a dramatic comeback statement, not as revenge against algorithmic chaos, but as a quiet reclaiming of something that had been taken from me: the joy of sharing my work.

I know many of you have faced your own difficult launches—unexpected competition, online hostility, bruised morale, or just the exhaustion that comes with creating something deeply personal in a deeply public industry. 

If attention found you before you were ready…
If you were let go from a role that you gave your heart to…
If you’ve ever felt overshadowed during what should have been your brightest moment…

I hope my experience offers a reminder: your story doesn’t end there. You will find your light again.

Thank you to everyone in this community who lifted me up in my darkest moments. I hope Potions brings a little warmth, wonder, and witchy delight into your holiday season—and that Luna’s journey reminds you of the magic you’re still capable of creating.

With Magic,

Renee Gittins