Build and expand your monastery, craft recipes and brew holy ales in this unique brewery tycoon. No pre-made recipes in Ale Abbey, oh no. It's a canvas for true beer alchemists. It's as simple as: brew, sip, repeat. Welcome to Ale Abbey!
Give your brew a unique name, experiment to discover special traits, and ensure your ales reach unprecedented popularity! Dive into a vast array of over 20 European styles, meticulously choosing the equipment that best suits your needs. Adjust the quantity, quality, and mash temperature to blend the perfect brew. Decide whether to store it for aging, or sell it at the market. Put your trust in your monks’ brewing skills, and let them create the holy ale.
Make sure your monastery prospers and ascends to glory! Above ground, build living quarters for your holy crew, production hubs like Libraries and Breweries, and some all-purpose spaces, including the Refectory and the Abbot's Office. Beneath these heavenly floors, it's all about your monastery’s cold cellars (the most sacred of spaces for your brews). Design, build, and turn your monastery into a hub of holy hops!
It's not only about crafting ales, it's about curating a brewing legacy. At Ale Abbey, happy monks will need more than just a good workplace, they will require a steady flow of tasty ales. But that's not all! Appease Lords, befriend neighboring Abbeys, and handle bandit encounters... A tale of challenges unveils in the frothy world of Ale Abbey!
From the creators of:
Hello everyone and welcome to yet another Something's Brewing, your number-one source for all things Ale Abbey, and its development.
With another week behind us, new stuff made its way into production. We - once again - worked a lot on redesigning the main UI, this time exploring the idea of splitting it into two very distinct parts. Adding to that ordeal, we also finished working on a few more under-construction rooms, well actually the Storage room but both versions of it, above and below ground level ;)
Onwards with the news!
-- Underground rooms need some construction too
The trend of the last couple of weeks continues with more and more rooms getting their "under construction" versions prepped up. This week we dealt with one room that has two facets: the Storage room with its two versions.
The one for when the room is built above ground... if you couldn't tell by the presence of windows:
And, the one underground, with colors and overall aesthetics that pair exceptionally well with the monastery's Cellars. The heat wave ravaging Europe right now reminds us all too well, underground rooms need some lovin' too!
And, talking about above and below.
-- Main UI progress
Having tested the main UI only in internal builds so far, it means it has been used for the bear minimum of checking if the backend and frontend agree with each other. Now having to tackle aesthetics and User Experience, a big part of the team is working on it non-stop!
Our more recent approach, is splitting the main UI in two very distinct - in functionality - parts. One located at the top of the screen will be bustling with "information at a glance" while its other half in the bottom of the screen will be more interactive.
In our effort to keep the top part as minimal as possible given its information-intensive nature, we decided to also make it completely devoid of action. This means that no elements in that part of the UI will be clickable or provide access to any other submenus.
The only one small exception will be the Speed and Pause controls located at the top right, and only for those who would choose to interact with the menu buttons instead of the the keyboard shortcuts (1,2,3, for the different speeds and Spacebar for Pause).
As you can clearly see, there are still some elements that are nested on the sides of the screen. We still have to consider their nature and final form, pending of course further testing of the main UI as a whole.
Moving to the bottom part...
-- The "other" main UI
The more player-interactive part of the UI, the one with no immediate information, but with the menus and submenus to take action, will be presented in the bottom of the screen. This is where everything will be clickable and "on the tip of your fingers."
We already have an idea about how to break down the items on the menu, by first centering the Buidling and Furniture/Equipment that will be used more often (especially during the first hours of gameplay). Moving outwards, on the right and left of that conceptual anchor in the middle, there will be two different clusters of menu items.
Although still WIP (everything from the clusters themselves and their position), below is a quick wireframe we prepared for it. We respect your eyes, so do yourself a favor and click on it for a larger version :p
This entire idea seems pretty solid so far and sounds very promising. We will probably spend a good chunk of next week testing it and maybe explore other options. Only time will tell, but don't worry, you'll be the first to know.
-- Overlagering Detected!
Last week we discussed what lagering (maturing certain styles of beers for longer periods before consuming them) does to a beer. But all is well in life until you cross certain thresholds, and lagering is no exception!
By maturing a lager longer you get improved clarity, a more balanced flavor profile, increased overall stability, and shelf life... But if you lager your beer a bit too much you also risk facing:
As in enjoying beer, so in crafting it, you have to remember that moderation is key. It's already time consuming and quite demanding to reach the point of lagering your brew. Don't sleep on protecting your brew during it!
Enjoy your weekend responsibly and remember to join us next week for some more Ale Abbey news!
-- Hammer & Ravens
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I can't wait for this game to become my new addiction. Loving everything I'm seeing so far!
Thank you for all the consistent updates :)
thanks for your kind words!! it's really nice to have some feedback on our blog now and then, cheers!! We can't wait to show even more about the game ;)
I've told you many times on Twitter already, but just saying it here too - this looks great, and the attention to detail is very impressive. :-)
Thanks Captain! Super glad to see you here! Yep, we love it, so we pour all of our love and pints into it :D
Are there any plans to put this game on steam for wishlisting etc? I really can't wait play this!
Hi! Yes they are, but due to past experiences, we would like to hit the steam page as soon as we have at least a first trailer, in order not to waste the few seconds of popularity of a new page! We will announce the steam page on all our pages anyway, FB, X, here, Discord, etc! We can't wait for people to play it too!! <3
Amazing idea!
why, thank you!!! super glad you like it!!!