How to Play

Duchess Cupcake's Cauldron Chaos is a potion-sorting puzzle with three distinct modes. This page walks you through every rule, every interaction, and every win condition so you can start brewing with confidence.

The Basics

The game is built around a row of glass tubes (called bottles or vials in different modes). Each tube holds a stack of colored liquid units. Your job is to rearrange the liquid by pouring from one tube into another until each tube is sorted into a single pure color (or, in Alchemy mode, until you've brewed the potions Duchess Cupcake ordered).

Controls

Pour Rules

Mode 1 — Alchemy Lab

The main campaign. Duchess Cupcake hands you an order panel listing the secondary or tertiary potions she wants. You start with primary colors (red, yellow, blue) and a few helpful tools. When you pour one primary onto another inside a tube, they mix into a secondary (orange, green, purple). Stack secondaries against the right partners to brew the requested potion.

The level ends when every order on the panel has been filled and all remaining tubes are tidy (single-color stacks). Cascading mixes can chain: a clever pour can resolve two orders at once.

Mode 2 — Lab Cleanup

A pure classic-style sort. No mixing, no orders — just messy tubes that need to be organized so each tube contains exactly one color. If the puzzle starts with empty tubes, you must end with the same number of empty tubes. That keeps the final arrangement looking deliberately tidy rather than just technically solved.

Cleanup levels have a "par" — the move count for three stars. Easy levels use a tight par; Medium and Hard levels use a more forgiving par that still rewards efficient play.

Mode 3 — The Chromatorium

The advanced mode. A special mixing vial sits beside your tubes. Pour primaries and secondaries into the vial to brew all twelve tertiary colors (red-orange, yellow-green, blue-violet, and so on). Then pour the brewed tertiary back out into the matching slot on the order wheel.

Chromatorium puzzles test your color theory: you'll need to plan which mix to start with, which order to combine ingredients, and when to flush the vial.

Stars and Progression

Stars are spendable currency in the Shop, where you can buy extra undos, hints, insights, and cosmetic skins for your bottles.

Daily Brew and Endless

The Daily Brew is a fresh, deterministic puzzle every 24 hours — everyone gets the same one, so you can compare with friends. Endless mode procedurally generates levels of escalating difficulty until you stumble.