Game Description
In Aqua Mirabilis, you take the role of a perfumer whose goal is to produce novel and exquisite perfumes to please the King and his Court.
It all starts with flowers: orange, bergamot, jasmine, lavender, narcissus, and the rose. Through a variety of production methods, you transform flowers into the corresponding scents and use them to complete a perfume recipe.
Not only will perfumers have to master the art of processing flowers and mixing fragrant essential oils, fixatives, and solvents, but they also have to continuously develop their knowledge and learn new techniques by studying and traveling. In the game, this is represented by acquiring apprenticeship and city tiles that provide unique benefits to their owners.
Furthermore, players have to nurture their social position among nobles and try to influence the King and his Court thanks to the intercession of powerful Ladies properly courted and seduced. It is easy to be carried away by the froth and folly of the nobility and perfumery at the Court of Versailles. When perfumes are presented to the King and the Court, they score prestige points based on how fashionable and original they are.
In the end, the player who has gained the most prestige points wins.
"The peasant stank as did the priest, the apprentice as did his master's wife, the whole of the aristocracy stank, even the king himself stank, stank like a rank lion, and the queen like an old goat."
So writes Patrick Süskind in his novel Perfume. Set in 18th-century Paris, it speaks of a time when a generalised fear of water, which was believed to carry disease, meant that even the most wellborn were none too fragrant. It was this, and the necessity of covering the smell of powerfully odorous gloves, that led to the widespread use of perfume in France. Glove leather was bathed in urine, and aromatic oils were applied to skins to soften them, while lessening the impact of any noxious residue. A faint whiff often remained. Grasse, the southern-French town associated to this day with the use and production of such oils, was traditionally also home to some of the world's finest glove-makers. The union of gantier/parfumier continued well into the 19th century, at which point scent began to be worn on the body – and perfumers set up business in their own right.
