The Brewing Barons is a game based on an idea that is at once very strange and so perfectly aligned with my specific interests that I immediately had to know more when I saw the first trailer. It's a mix of old-fashioned Crimson Skies planes and beer, and as strange as that may sound, it actually goes together pretty well.
The game is set among a small group of pretty faux Mediterranean islands whose drinking habits are suppressed by a band of pirates not unlike Dennis Hopper's group in “Waterworld” – except this group doesn't swim in the water, but mostly flies in the sky. However, these pirates don't pillage and plunder, but instead try to establish a monopoly on alcohol production with overpriced, inferior products, and they don't exactly take kindly to potential competitors.
This is what you want to be: With a run-down double-decker and run-down brewpub, your goal is to establish your business and build a customer base, produce quality liquor and deliver it to run-down pubs and high-class hotels scattered across the islands and fight in the air against the predatory forces of cheap alcohol.
The flight model is purely arcade – it pains me to say it, but a mouse is perfectly fine for flying – and the harvesting of the ingredients you use for your alcoholic drinks comes entirely from inside your plane For example, bombard oversized plants with water or use your propeller blade to clear wheat fields. Realism is definitely not on the menu, but hey, if I wanted a realistic experience, I'd buy Microsoft Flight Simulator and spend my time with this glorious, doomed machine. (Which, let's be honest, wouldn't be out of place with The Brew Barons.)
Brewing is also a very simplified process: put a mixture of ingredients in a vat, add some yeast, press a button and bam – you might get something good (especially if you use one of the game's many recipes) and maybe if you try to wing it, you'll end up with a sticky mess that you're better off pouring down the drain. Bottle it and sell it in your own establishment or sell it to one of the many other gin shops on the islands.
You can customize your pub in a variety of ways and serve different types of alcohol that will attract or deter different types of drinkers and make you more or less money in the process. But if, like me, you're here mostly for fun in the air, a more relaxed approach works, too, especially if you manage to recruit a good bartender. It's a bit like Field of Dreams: As long as you have something on tap, people will come to drink it.
Likewise, your plane can be modified in a variety of ways to make it a better fighter or harvester, and you also have the option to hire different people to take care of different aspects of your business: a brewer, a bartender, an accountant , a better pilot and so on. Most of them seem to be mischievous ne'er-do-wells in one way or another, but let's face it, you build your business by drinking and fighting, and that will naturally attract a certain type of personality.
There's a lot going on, but it unfolds at a slow, manageable pace, and the overall simplicity of The Brew Barons is a big part of what I like about it. It's just fun, an old-time adventure in the spirit of games like Crimson Skies, but with more of an exploration/sightseeing aspect (there are underwater wrecks to recover, exotic recipes floating in bottles, lore to discover, and other small side jobs). who help keep things interesting) and of course brew beer. Or whatever you want: you can brew all kinds of alcoholic drinks, like cider, whiskey, gin, wine, rum, whatever, but as the saying goes: I'm here for the beer. It's the kind of game that's easy to jump into and play around without having to invest a lot of time or mental energy.
The pre-release build I played was a little rough in places. Some aspects of the brewing system aren't immediately intuitive and a few times the mouse controller appeared to become disconnected from the aircraft, resulting in a quick crash into the water. Landing was also tricky: despite the arcade flight model, I had to be very careful and precise when landing to avoid damage to my plane and my valuable cargo. Developer Lifetap Studios stated that it was still fine-tuning the game and was paying attention to damage thresholds for the final release.
I've only put a few hours into The Brew Barons, so I can't say how it will fare in the long run, but the time I spent with it was a lot of fun and I'm looking forward to more. The Brew Barons is available today steam.
