Fiz Captures All The Complexity Of A Microbrewery With None Of The Smell [Review]

By

Fiz

Making your own beer is hard work. It’s a series of intensive scientific processes, and a mistake at any one of them can ruin hours of work and possibly poison someone. But if you get it right, it’s a middle finger right to the face of Big Beer.

Fiz by Bit by Bit
Category: iOS Games
Works With: iPhone, iPad
Price: $1.99

Is “Big Beer” a thing? I’ve lost track of which corporations are evil.

Fiz is an independent management game about independent brewing, and it tasks you with building up your own brand from the garage up. And that’s every bit as complicated as it sounds. More so, actually, because numbers are also involved.

It looks a lot like an 8-bit role-playing game (notice the box that looks suspiciously like an original NES system hooked up to the TV in the corner up there), and that aesthetic adds a lot to the title’s charm. Instead of a party, you have a team of four employees with their own stats like Intelligence and Patience, and as you make more beer, they gain experience points and level up.

You can recruit new employees, fire old ones, and even engage in the occasional random encounter with the mice that infest your garage. It’s nothing too complicated or silly; they run across the screen sometimes, and you tap them to collect what they’re carrying. A lot of mice just run around with money clutched in their teeth, apparently, but I’m not complaining because I desperately need more hops.

You might actually learn something.

From humble beginnings brewing watered-down lager, you build your business, discover new recipes, and participate in competitions. It’s menu-heavy and has a lot to keep track of, which makes sense because it’s a management game, and it’s all a bit overwhelming at first, but I found that I caught on pretty quickly, and luckily, everything’s labelled properly.

Beer fans and people who love throwing a lot of numbers around would do well to check Fiz out. It’s a cool take on management, and you might actually learn something about what goes into the stuff that frat boys so callously pour over their heads.

Ingrates.

FizGame Name: : Fiz
The Good: Complex (in a good way) but easy to pick up, cool art style, and satisfying sense of progress.
The Bad: All the numbers present a bit of a wall to the uninitiated.
The Verdict: It’s easily the most fun you’ll ever have pretending to make beer. And it’s genuinely fun on its own, so it has that going for it, too.
Buy from:App Store

[rating=game5]

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