Alchimia — a land where the works of a single grand alchemist has caused alchemy to develop more quickly than other technology. The everyday lives of the people rely on the alchemy factories that this first pioneer built.

In Ars Alchimia, you work at one of these factories. As an overseer belonging to the Academy, you take orders from the people, gather resources, and transmute them — but you need to be more efficient than your competition.

The game lasts four rounds, with each round representing a year. Each round, players take turns placing one or more of their workers on one action they want to do: gather resources, take up an order, employ an assistant, or transmute at the alchemy forges. The trick is that the more workers on one spot, the less effective an action becomes; if you want to place workers on a spot where there are already some, you'll have to exceed the number of workers already there.