This indie 'adventure flight' game dares to ask, 'What if Crimson Skies was about making beer?'

pcgamer.com:

The Brew Barons is a game built on an idea that is simultaneously very odd and so perfectly aimed at my specific interests that as soon as I saw the first trailer, I had to know more. It's a mashup of old-timey Crimson Skies-style aeroplanes and beer, and as weird as that sounds, it actually comes together pretty well.

The game is set amidst a small group of lovely, faux-Mediterranean islands whose drinking habits are being squeezed by a gang of pirates not unlike Dennis Hopper's bunch in Waterworld—except that instead of floating in water, this bunch mostly flies in the sky. These pirates aren't pillaging and plundering, though, but are instead trying to establish a monopoly on booze production with overpriced, low-quality product, and they don't take kindly to potential competitors.

Which is what you aim to be: With a beat-up biplane and a run-down brewpub, your goal is to establish your business and build up a clientele, make and deliver quality booze to sketchy dives and high-class hotels scattered throughout the islands, and do battle in the skies against the predatory forces of cheap liquor.

The flight model is all arcade—it pains the old flight-simmer in me to say so, but a mouse is perfectly fine for flying—and harvesting the ingredients you'll use in your alcoholic concoctions is done entirely from inside your plane, by shooting oversized plants with water, for instance, or using your propeller blade to chop down fields of wheat. 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 quite frankly would not be at all out of place in The Brew Barons.)

Brewing is also a very simplified process: Dump a mix of ingredients into a vat, add some yeast, press a button, and bam—maybe you get something good (especially if you use one of the game's many recipes) and maybe, if you try to wing it, you end up with a gooey mess that's better poured