// in development. pc. unreal engine 5. one developer.
dwarven_brewery_
Build the brewery. Keep the dwarfs happy. Try not to die.
Three dwarfs fall through the floor of a mountain and land in a puddle they are told not to drink. The only way out is up, the only safe water is beer, and the only one who knows how to brew it is the one doing the narrating.
- DIG
- FARM
- MALT
- BREW
- SERVE
- UE5
- UTILITY_AI
- discord join_the_server
- dev_log by_email
- press CONTACT_EMAIL
- store not_yet
-
STEP 01
dig
Swing the pick. Stone, clay, ore and were-roots come out of the wall. Harder rock waits for a better pick.
-
STEP 02
farm
Cap the spring with a Well, plant barley and hops, and get the grain into a silo before anyone gets ideas.
-
STEP 03
malt
Grain goes into the Kiln and comes out as malt. The same fire does brick, glass and charcoal when it is not busy.
-
STEP 04
brew
Malt and water go into the Cauldron. Light Lager comes out. It is not a great beer. It is the first one.
-
STEP 05
serve
Kegs stack on the keg wall and thirsty dwarfs drink from it. A full wall is a good day, right up until it is not.
-
[cold_open]
a bad day, then a puddle
The roof comes in, the floor goes out, and three dwarfs land at the bottom of a mountain. Grumbold Ironthatch narrates. He would like it on the record that Nortbert Foggybottom was the one carrying the niter.
-
[first_beer]
the first beer is a ceremony
Brew the first batch and the horn goes, the colony stops, and people say things they will pretend they did not. Then you are handed a digging job, because the mountain did not stop for the horn.
-
[keg_burst]
surplus is a trap
The first keg does not burst on a timer. It waits until the wall is properly full and you finally have beer to lose, and then it picks a dwarf to soak.
-
[pickaxe]
the pick is the progress
Every material in the rock has a tier. Aim at a wall and the game tells you what it is, what tier it is and what it pays. A lesser pick bounces off amethyst. A bronze one does not.
-
[research]
research costs rocks
The Plan wall unlocks stations, recipes and upgrades through a Scriptorium that runs on paper and ink you make yourself. The bill comes in stone, wood, clay, ore and grain as well as beer.
-
[pockets]
the rock is not solid
Dig far enough and the pick breaks into a sealed pocket; you hear the air go before you see what is inside. Some hold glow mushrooms. Some hold a recipe you cannot build yet, and a note on where to dig for the part you are missing.
" Do not drink that. I watched a man drink that. It took a week, and it was not dignified. "
// grumbold ironthatch, on the local water
Every dwarf gets hungry, thirsty, tired and lonely on their own schedule. Keep them topped up and they work faster. Let one run low and they slow down; let one run out and they stop working and start being everyone's problem.
You do not give orders. You build the station, and the dwarfs decide who works it from what needs doing and what each of them is good at. Miners take the best pick in the colony without asking whose it was.
Each dwarf has a name, a beard and a tunic of their own, and somewhere they would rather be. The glow mushrooms are popular. So is the keg wall.
$ cat ~/colony/founders
GRUMBOLD = ironthatch
ROLE = brewmaster, narrator
MANNER = not sorry
AGNA = ironthatch
ROLE = the steady one
SAYS = "I can already see the
gears turning."
DURGIN = twicebitten
ROLE = concussed, carries the seeds
# incident report
CAUSE = niter, near the fissure
CARRIED = nortbert_foggybottom
WATER = do_not_drink
EOFCOMING
// designed and underway, not playable today. Nothing above this line depends on it.
-
[coming] goblin_raids
the beer that saved you is the smell that finds you
The Sourtooth are a burrow clan that cannot brew, and they will dig through a mountain toward yours. A rough sword fired in the Kiln, an infirmary with two cots, and contraptions to keep them off the kegs.
-
[coming] the_table
a round for the table
Dwarfs gather at the table and drink together, as many as it seats, and the colony gets a moment that is not about work.
-
[coming] ties
friends, rivals, and worse
Dwarfs who respect, resent and fall for each other, and act on it where you can see.
$ ./join.sh --discord
The Discord opens first.
There is no store page yet, on purpose. The community starts here, and anyone who joins before the store page opens gets the Founding Brewer role. It closes the day the store page goes live.
- #dev-logwhat got built, what broke, what is next
- #ask-the-devanswered by the person writing the code
- #feedbackread. Harsh is fine. Personal is not.
$ ./join.sh --email
Or get the dev log by email.
Same posts, your inbox, no algorithm in the way. Unsubscribe in one click.
// your address is used for the dev log and nothing else.
Dwarven Brewery Simulator (working title) is a first person colony sim about digging, brewing and keeping a dwarf colony alive under a mountain. It is in development for PC in Unreal Engine 5 by Eric Rane, a solo developer in San Diego. No release date and no store page yet.
Everything on this page is captured from the game: the video is a straight recording of the cold open from a packaged build, and the stills are in engine screenshots. A press kit follows with the store page. Until then, write to CONTACT_EMAIL.
// the developer's other work: ericrane.dev