Hi Brewers Club
Welcome to the June issue, where we'll be giving you a Brewmaster Developer Update! 🍻
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Brewmaster Developer Update
The game has come a long way since we first showed it off in our announcement trailer. The footage you've seen so far was an early concept visualisation and the game is looking better than ever now. We're excited to show you where it's at.
👀New look revealed👀
If you follow us on Twitter you'll have seen our recent reveals of what Brewmaster looks like now. We are delighted to share with you a quick tour of our new brewing space, as well as a preview of our day/night cycle. Check out these clips to see how Brewmaster is looking these days, and enjoy those cosy vibes, the ideal space to spend relaxing hours making your perfect beer 🍺
🧪Chemical Simulation🧪
One of the biggest challenges in making our game is in the simulation of brewing chemistry. Brewmaster isn’t simply a case of hop + malt + yeast + water = beer. Rather it’s a complex system that tracks things like…
- How much of the specific flavours from hops go into a brew, based on when they’re added
- How much of the fermentable sugars are converted by the yeast into alcohol before it’s killed off
- How much of the water is lost to evaporation
… and so on.
We're spending a lot of time on this area of the game, as it’s at the very heart of the gameplay and will offer a huge variety of outcomes for players to experiment with.
There’s still a lot more work to be done, but currently you can use the systems we’ve built to brew something resembling a beer. As we’re yet to balance all the data the simulation is pulling from, we wouldn’t want to drink the beer we’ve managed to make, but give it time. Right now our team is able to look under-the-hood and see what the chemsim is doing using placeholder menus and graphs, which is a huge step forward in getting it feeling right.
⏰Time passing in Brewmaster⏰
People have been asking us about how time works in the game; wondering whether they’ll need to wait two weeks of real time in order to reach the end of a fermentation, or even longer for a barrel-aged stout. As you’ll have seen from our day/night cycle video, the game works in realtime but also allows you to speed up the passing of time, so you don't have to wait.
🥛Liquid Pouring🥛
Next, let’s talk about liquid pouring. We’re really proud of the announcement trailer we made for the game, however, this was using early concept visualisations and those liquids pouring visuals aren’t what we’re having in the full release. We've been working hard on the liquid pouring and it's now looking really great. We will be able to show you these soon so make sure to stick around for more developer updates. We will also be bringing you at look at overflowing liquid in future updates too! We can't wait for you to make a mess of your kitchens.
🎮UX/UI development🎮
UX/UI is one of those things that most people don’t notice (until it isn’t working well), but it’s an incredibly important discipline at our studio. Because of this, we’re building the game to work comfortably with both keyboard and mouse, and controllers, so the UX/UI team is hard at work creating wireframes for the game to get the positioning of each onscreen element just right.
There’s loads more going on, and plenty more to show, but we’ll save that for another update in the near future!
What are your thoughts on beer and gaming!
We are running a survey about Brewmaster to help us plan the next steps we take. We need to hear from YOU, our Brewmaster community.
As a thank you, people who fill in this survey will be entered into a giveaway and one lucky winner will get £25 worth of Steam credit. The survey will take about 5 minutes to complete. Thanks for helping us!
- Fill in the Brewmaster survey here
Brewmaster in The MIX
We hope everyone had an exciting E3 week. Brewmaster was part of the Play For All Showcase, a showcase from the partnership of GameSpot and The MIX. With a focus on Indie games, especially those from diverse backgrounds, so we were delighted to be invited along.
It was so cool to be involved in The MIX alongside so many other awesome games and studios.
Matt brews Auroch Digit-ale 🍾
Our Lead Game Designer for Brewmaster has been brewing his own beer at home. As we’re making a first-person homebrewing simulator we feel it's important that the team have plenty of hands-on experience. He made an IPA and named it Auroch Digit-ale!
Here's what Matt had to say after his beer brewing experience:
"Brewing my own beer was definitely useful when it comes to designing the game. Homebrewing as a hobby can appear intimidatingly complex from the outside - so it’s very important we get players over that barrier, and get them brewing beer as quickly as possible."
"It’s key that we show players that, at its core, the brewing process is quite straightforward. Then when they know the basics, we can show them just how much lies beyond - how much room for creative expression, experimentation, and mastery there is. As a hobby, it’s endlessly rewarding - it’s our job to convey that in the game."
"I crammed all the gear into my kitchen, scared the dog with the world’s largest stainless steel pan, and bought some obscenely bitter hops. At the end of it all, I had around 30 bottles of beer that was darker and a little maltier than I expected, and that could be anywhere between 3% and 6% ABV - but it was still recognisable as an IPA and, most importantly, was actually drinkable!"
Podcasts About Beer! 🎧
Brewmaster Producer, Peter, and Lead Designer, Matt, featured on Life in 16oz the beer podcast! Where they talk all things Brewmaster, from it's conception, to production, and where we expect it to be when it's finished.
Matt and Peter also chat about the beers they're drinking right now and their favourite pints. Take a listen to the episode We Think, Drink And Digitize A Pint, we are at 52 minutes!
Come and chat to us!
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