I have been playing CryptoBrewmaster off and on for quite some time, but never bothered to write about it, because, well, there wasn't really a whole lot to write about!
The game was extremely simple with seemingly little choice and little forward progress.
You could only brew one beer, resources for brewing were either purchased in packs for Hive Dollars, or acquired through an in-game quest system for the cost of some Energy (regained throughout the day), and CBM, the in-game currency. If you didn't have any money, you could run missions for lower quality materials that only required Energy. You could sell the beer you made to the game's bartender and then use that money to run more quests for materials. It was a very simple, circular system with little room for growing a bank account from scratch unless you got lucky and brewed a top quality beer by accident. Which, quite by chance, happened to me right as new options were added to the game.
One day I opened my Brewery to discover that I had crafted a Masterpiece quality of brew. I took it over to the Bartender who was more than happy to shell out 99 CBM for it! At that same time, two new areas appeared on the map, the Water Tower and the Fields (broken into two parts, one for Hops, one for Grains).
Being newly flush with big boy money, I foolishly opted to rent all three options at once! I quickly discovered my mistake as they all required Energy to use and the Fields also needed Water! I did what I could, pumping out Water and growing a few of both crops throughout the day, but I definitely did not get my money's worth from the rentals. I only rented for a day but you can reserve a building for up to 28 days at a time for those long term farmers!
You can see that the building efficiency degrades over time and you have to pay a fee to have it repaired. You can also see a currently grayed out Upgrade button. The team has said that they have plans to allow building upgrades and course taking at a beer making university that will help improve your production. This will definitely shake up how folks play the game and encourage specialization among some players.
Even before the appearance of the new resource production buildings, signs of progress had already come to the game with the introduction of two new kinds of beer to brew (for a total of three),an in-game Market where players can buy and sell with each other, and a leader board which rewards resource packs to the board leaders at regular intervals.
The game is very quickly putting together a complete package. The player interaction is still minimal, but that I expect will change as folks get used to the new buildings and some settle down into a production niche and make the in-game Market into a more useful feature.
And there are certainly some UI improvements that could happen. For example, it would be nice to be able to see inside the production buildings and know what the resource needs and costs are before you rent it. And showing a visible timer over the buildings on the main screen would be great also so that I don't have to keep clicking into the buildings to check on my production.
But overall, I am excited about how far this game has come and where it's going!
The game is free to play, but it is a slow slog to bootstrap yourself up, though the beginning experience may be a little different now that you can focus on resource production. They are currently having a special promotion with rewards for pack purchases. You can read the details in the official blog post
If you're interested in joining up on this adventure of beer making, feel free to use my referral link!
https://www.cryptobrewmaster.io/game/invite?ref=9dadd0bf44ff41729bdc735f738f61e0&code=AlphaBonus