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

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.