A study game for people learning herbal medicine. You stand at the counter of an apothecary in a medieval village. Villagers come in and describe what ails them in their own words, and you reach for one of four bottles on your shelf. Whether you choose right or wrong, the case notes tell you what the remedy is and why it fits, and why the other three do not.
Students of herbal medicine at any stage who want to practise telling similar remedies apart, which is the part no textbook can drill into you. Beginners learn the pictures; experienced practitioners sharpen the distinctions. You do not need to know the remedies before you start; the game teaches them as you go, and every one is in the materia medica drawer for reading.
The Village Apothecary is built on the Matthew Wood method, from the Matthew Wood Institute of Herbalism’s Herbs A to Z materia medica and Ailments A to Z lessons. Every case is written from a published lesson on the ailment and the remedies for it. The villager and their words are invented; the teaching in the notes is faithful to the source, and each case names the lesson it came from. Nothing is made up about the herbs.
No. The villagers are fictional, and a remedy that is "right" in a case is right for that fictional picture according to the lesson, nothing more. The game exists to help you learn; it says nothing about what is right for you or anyone you know. If you are unwell, see a qualified practitioner.
Eight clients, one after another, as if you were working for one day at the counter. A shift takes ten minutes or so. You can close the tab in the middle of one and it is waiting for you when you come back.
One is the remedy the lesson teaches for this picture. The other three are its close neighbours: remedies a practitioner really does confuse with it, because they share symptoms or organs or a way of acting. That is what makes the choice worth making. A shelf of one obvious answer and three strangers would teach nothing.
Each client is worth two marks. Treat them unaided and correctly, and you earn both. The marks are how the village comes to trust you, and they build your standing and your shop.
There are three kinds, and they cost different amounts:
Ask and look together leave no marks to earn, but the case still counts as seen.
The right bottle lights up, your choice is marked, and the notes explain the difference. No marks for that client, but nothing is taken from you, and you come away knowing the answer and the reason. Missed cases are listed at the end of the shift as ones to sit with.
Cases you studied come back in a later shift until you treat them unaided. Cases you treated, right or wrong, are marked seen and do not return while there are unseen cases left on that shelf. Once a shelf is complete you can keep working it, and cases begin to repeat.
Because that is how people arrive. A villager tells you they cannot get warm and their cough sounds wet, not that they present with a cold damp constitution. Learning to hear the picture inside ordinary words is the skill, and the game gives you eight hundred chances to practise it.
Four is enough to make you choose and few enough that each choice is a real comparison. The learning happens in the difference between the right bottle and its nearest neighbour, and the notes always spell that difference out.
Because we would rather you learn than guess. Opening the book is never punished. The only cost is that you earn no marks for that client, and they return later to see whether the reading stayed with you.
Your rank in the village, set by the share of possible marks you have earned across everything you have played. It runs from novice, through apprentice and journeyman, to the apothecary herbalist, the one the whole parish depends on.
A drawing of your place in the village that grows as your standing does: an empty plot by the market, then a stall, a rented back room, a shopfront on the lane, and at last your own house with a garden of the herbs you know. Each shelf you work adds bottles to it, one for every remedy you have reached for correctly with the book closed.
Thirteen, one for each area or system of the body, from the lungs to first aid. Together they hold 807 clients. Your casebook and standing carry across all of them.
They open in four modules, one at a time. You can see every shelf on the shelves screen, with the day it arrives.
One subscription covers every module as it opens. Nothing is sold separately.
The materia medica holds every remedy on the current shelf with what it looks for; remedies you have met are shown in full ink and the rest wait. The casebook holds every client you have seen, with the notes, to re-read any time.
A place for signed-in students to talk over their consultations and share ideas. Two rules: keep the people you consult unnamed, and remember that what is said there is study talk between students, not advice.
Once a week, a short email telling you where you stand: cases seen, marks earned, shelves complete, and what is new in the common room. You can pause it from the shelves screen or from a link in any letter.
Yes. Every client you treat correctly with the book closed counts as ten minutes of simulated clinical hours toward your clinical studies. The game keeps the tally for you, and whenever you ask it issues a certificate of completion for the hours you have done by then. Work to the number of hours you need and stop there, or go on to all 134, which you can print or send.
You reach for the right remedy without opening Study this case. Asking the client to say more, or looking closer for a confirming sign, is allowed, because a practitioner at a real counter would do the same. Those cost you marks of trust, but the client still counts toward your hours.
A client you get wrong does not count that time. They come back in a later shift, and when you treat them correctly, they count then. A client you studied with the book open does not count until you meet them again and treat them with the book closed.
No. Each client counts once, however many times they return. That keeps the hours honest: they measure how many different people you have worked through, not how long you sat at the counter.
There are 807 clients across the thirteen shelves, which comes to 134 hours and 30 minutes when all four modules are open. Module One holds 188 clients, a little over 31 hours.
Ask for it whenever you have the hours you need: open your certificate of completion from the shelves screen. Put your name on it as it should read to a school or a registrar, then print it or save it as a PDF. It lists your total, the dates, and your clients shelf by shelf.
Each certificate carries a short code. Anyone you show it to can type that code at villageapothecarytraining.com/verify and see your hours as our own log holds them that day. So a certificate cannot be altered, and it never goes out of date.
That is their decision, not ours, and we would rather say so plainly than promise it. What we give you is an exact, checkable record of simulated case work: how many clients, on which shelves, and when. Show it to whoever sets your requirements and ask how they count case study or simulated clinical work.
These are not hours of practice with living clients, and the record does not license or certify anyone to treat.
It is about what a careful reading of one case takes: hearing the complaint, weighing four remedies, choosing, and reading the notes on why the remedy fits and why its neighbors do not. Some clients take you longer and some less. We count every one the same, so the figure is simple to explain to anyone who asks.
Anyone can try five clients free with only an email. After that, full access is a subscription: $55 a month, or $550 a year, which is two months free.
Launch week. Through 13 October 2026 the price is $35 a month, or $350 a year. Anyone who subscribes that week keeps the launch price for as long as their subscription stays active.
That covers every shelf as its module opens, every client, your record of clinical hours, the drawers, the common room and the Monday letter.
Payment is taken by Stripe, and we never see your card. The subscription renews until you cancel, which you can do at any time from "Manage subscription" on the shelves screen. You keep access to the end of the period you have paid for.
Yes. The counter, the bottles and the drawers are all built for a phone screen as much as a desk, and your progress follows your email between them.
As you go, on every client. Sign in on any device with the same email and it is all there. See support for the details.
Tell us. Send the shelf, the villager's name and trade, and what looks off to hello@villageapothecarytraining.com. We check it against the lesson and fix it if it needs fixing.