Another guest post from our artist, Erik Evensen!
Hey everyone, Erik here, with another art update! This week, I wanted to highlight one of the revisions we’re currently working on in the game—thanks to extensive playtesting and feedback (courtesy of you, of course), Dave’s been crunching through some game revisions, and I’ve been following suit. In this particular art update, I’m sharing the results of our “sugars” situation that was a topic a few weeks back. The game used to have all ingredients serve as ‘unique’ ingredients. Barley was independent from Corn, which was independent from Juniper Berries, and so on.
But what’s become clear is that the game needs something we’re calling Basic Ingredients. These basic ingredients represent the base-level components one would use to distill a spirit. Will that spirit be a fancy Scotch whisky? Well… no. But you can make more ubiquitous spirits like Vodka with these. As you can see here, the new basic sugar ingredients include Mixed Plants (plant sugars), Mixed Grains, and Mixed Fruits. Imagine running to your local Co-op and picking up a bag of whatever grains are on sale, and you get the idea—you’ll be able to make Baijiu with those just fine, but if you want to make an authentic, Extra Añejo Tequila, you’ll have to seek out some Agave. This allows for more strategy in gameplay, so people can choose to distill simpler spirits, or strive for a higher point payoff with more difficult-to-acquire ingredients.
I’m including screenshots of the ingredient cards from the game, so you can see what I mean. As the game design process unfolds, expect to see more of these revisions highlighted in the Art Updates.