The god of video games news is vengeful, for this weekend He has sent forth a flood of game announcements to wipe out any remaining game journalists from this earth. Come at me, God! What have you got? Ah. It’s Ale Abbey, a management game about brewing beer in a monastery of medieval monks, and between making craft ales the priests get tipsy on their own supply. You can’t fool me, god of game reveals, this one has been openly in the works on GameJolt for 2 years. But, yes, I suppose now that the developer is teaming up with the Northgard creators as a publisher, the people must know.
Ale Abbey shares some cute factor with Game Dev Story and other lite sims ending in “Story”, but it looks more involved than your average Kairosoft clickathon. “No pre-made recipes in Ale Abbey, oh no. It’s a canvas for true beer alchemists,” say developers Hammer & Ravens. We’re looking at lots of lager, here.
“Dive into a vast array of over 20 European styles, meticulously choosing the equipment that best suits your needs. Adjust the quantity, quality, and mash temperature to blend the perfect brew. Decide whether to store it for aging, or sell it at the market.”
Meanwhile you’ll have to build parts of the monastery as you go. Digging into the ground below to make space for cellars, while housing your holy folk upstairs, with living quarters, refectories, libraries and offices. There are also hints of some trouble beyond your big wooden doors. “Appease Lords, befriend neighboring abbeys, and handle bandit encounters,” say the developers.
The sloshed seminarian sim was shown off during the PC Gaming Show, part of the fragmentary summer game news deluge. Aka, the slow-motion blood spatter resulting from E3’s violent death. It hasn’t got an exact release date yet, but it’s planning to hit Steam some time in late 2024, the creators say.
Like I say, the team behind the frothy friars have already been keeping a thorough development log, exploring the fine details of their pixel art sim. But now it seems to have been picked up by Shiro Unlimited as a publisher. Shiro are the folks behind very solid viking RTS Northgard and the equally solid sci-fi strategy of Dune: Spice Wars. I guess they publish other people’s games now too? Cool. Yeah, no worries. Good on ‘em.