In game development, chemistry is one of the most misused words in the medium. Most systems described as “chemical” are, in practice, just structured accounting. Combine two predefined items, receive a predefined result, and move on. The player’s role is not to reason, but to comply. The system checks a list, validates the input, and returns an answer the designer already decided. That approach scales poorly and, more importantly, it teaches the player the wrong mental model. The world is not something to understand - it’s something to memorise...
