Free instead of $2.99: Manage your own brewery!
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Have you ever dreamed of crafting your own beer? Have you ever wondered what the processes and challenges in the beer industry are? Do you like smart management games? If any of those questions piqued your interest, then keep on reading because Fiz is not just a well-made management mobile game; it is also free! So today's coffee break is -almost- as good as free beer.
TL;DR
- Fiz is a temporarily free, single-player business management game for Android and iOS.
- The game usually sells for the price of good beer
($2.99). - The app has no ads or in-app purchases.
- The goal of the game is to run a beer brewing company successfully.
- Download Fiz for free from the Google Play Store
- Download Fiz for free from the Apple App Store
Beer is nice. Few can argue against that, and those who do usually haven't found the right beer yet. It is astounding how many types and brands one can taste. The diversity of beer is endless, and for a good reason; Beer is the third most consumed beverage after water (sic) and tea, which makes sense if you consider the fact that brewing beer has been a thing for as long as we have recorded history.
So if you want to pick up the mantle of that ancient tradition and craft the best beer, a taste bud could possibly experience, then Fiz deserves your attention. You start small, from a tiny garage, brewing beer of uncertain quality in tiny batches, and you slowly build up. The simple 16-bit graphics help to give a very homely feeling to your endeavor. A few RPG elements are also thrown into the mix and leave a pleasant aftertaste.
Why you should give Fiz a taste... try!
As we already said, the game is all about managing your small, garage-born beer brewing business to produce the best beer possible. Fiz starts very simply, allowing you to choose the main character with his host of friends and upgrade their skills to make better beer that slowly turns into a complex management puzzle that will need about 60 hours of your life.
To progress, you need to learn new recipes, do market research, learn the proper ingredients for every type of beer, manage the pricing and inventories. Everything needs to be weighed in and counted if you want your beer to become famous. Sometimes investing in new equipment to produce more beer may solve your problems. But others, it may be an expense that will throw you into financial troubles that you will need time and wits to recover from.
In Fiz, there are so many elements the player needs to master that what starts as a nice exploration of beer recipes and events soon turns out to be a challenging, multilayered cost-benefit puzzle.
The only thing that annoys me slightly in the experience is the menu because actions can only be accessed by one single button you have to tap all the time.
But what makes the game so great (4.1 stars on the Play Store from over 8.000 reviews is nothing to sniff at) is that the experience is not that stressful. While the beer is brewed, you get some time to relax and think. Then you are nudged towards unlocking more content, making another batch of good beer, and experimenting with the recipes.
Some story elements also progress through events and achievements that require you to make better quality beers of different types. There are also a dozen characters available to unlock with different stats that bring their personality to your company and... beer.
Does Fiz respect my privacy?
The creators, Bit By Bit Studio, claim in their surprisingly laconic Privacy Policy: "Unless explicitly stated, our products do not collect personally identifiable information from you."
Running a quick check through the exodus platform reveals that there is only a single tracker in the game for Google Analytics and five permissions that align with the game's gameplay. So you may download it and play for as long as you wish worry-free!
Do you enjoy management games? Do you have any to recommend to the rest of the NextPit community? Let me know in the comments!
