By GeraldTM A Game of Social Engineering, And hiding in the shadows
You are a brand new member of an alchemist cult trying to take down a tyrannical monarch and his council. You have also coincidentally been hired as a cook in the kings kitchen. You must experiment to find poisons, find a way to slip them to your targets, and avoid getting caught (also, try not to kill yourself while experimenting, in my experience at least, its not very productive). This game should be a short rpg ish game with some inspiration from Potion Craft.
As you are on your way to join your local alchemist cult you are stopped by some royal gaurds. They hand you an envelope and tell you to be at the castle gates in 2 hours. You continue on, reading as you go. The envelope explains that you, luck citizen that you are have been selected to be a cook in the kings kitchen. it wishes you all the best in your new career and warns you that the king expects high quality dishes, or else. You arive at the meeting place of the council of alchemists and are initiated. you then explain your new predicament, with being part of the kings staff, but they seem exited? They promote you immediately and task you with using your new position to poison the king and his council, and give you a book "Noobies guide to alchemy". You leave for the castle and are admited to staff without much ado.
After one of the other cooks shows you around, you set up in a dark corner of the kitchen, and try to make your first dish to present to the head chef. He tasks you with creating a side for the king. this shouldnt take too long, and you can use downtime to try out different combos for poisons.
from here the gameplay loop involves balencing creating meals sleeping, and creating poisons to use on the council, occasionally broken up by special events/oportunities (such as needing to poison a waiter to take on his role to poison a dish made by another cook to aleviate suspicion)
If you wait too long, the royal gaurd finds out about and breaks up the alchemists cult, aresting you in the proccess) (ending)
Ingredients have flavour properties, and some have special properties that effect a dish either on its own (for example an alergen specific to one or two council members) or when mixed with others (if x and y ingredients are mixed, they make a slow acting poison that effects the aging process) or when altered in a way (heat (technical not: heat could be coded as an ingredient to ease t etc)
certain actions, such as poisoning all the council at once, immediatly starting poisoning, using same poison over and over can cause suspicion. too much suspicion causes you to lose the game (can have multiple endings based on this) (technical note: use two different types of suspicion one for just you and one for the whole group, to make it easier to have sepparate endings).