The Brew Barons

The visual style is the game's strongest asset. The art direction is genuinely interesting, and the overall presentation creates real atmosphere—even if the underlying graphics feel dated, heavy filters manage to keep things visually coherent. But the style masks deeper problems. The controls are frustrating and unresponsive, making piloting feel imprecise when precision matters. The gameplay loop relies heavily on grinding and delivery runs, which drains the novelty fast. Worse, the quest design feels genuinely buggy and poorly thought-out—you're not enjoying the game so much as fighting it. It's the kind of friction that makes you feel like you're troubleshooting rather than playing. An interesting idea and solid aesthetic can only carry so much. The core experience needs tighter controls and better-designed objectives. As it stands, it's a game with potential that gets in its own way.

I bought this game based on my experience with the demo, which had no AI voices in it. The released game does have AI voices in it, which I only found out once I started working my way through flight games in my backlog.

Disappointed to see AI visuals and AI voices

NOT the Porco Rosso adventure I was looking for..... AI used, and poorly used at that. Repetitive, soulless, slop.

A group of 3 indie devs set out to make a game that punches above its weight and they succeeded! The flying feels good and not too arcadey without going into sim-like. Unfortunately I can't recommend AI usage for the voiceovers instead of hiring real humans. Using AI instead of not having voicelines is certainly a choice for the developers. I'll be wary of every game they publish going forward. Good game, so you deserve every cent I paid for this. You aint getting my recommendation though.

Just finished this game and it was pretty fun. I enjoyed the way you have to collect items and the different recipies were imaginative. The side quests related to the pilots were fun and added a nice variety to the gameplay. The variety of controls were nice and worked well for both mouse and controller. I did find each character interesting, however some of the voicing was a bit flat, likely due to the use of AI voiceovers. I suggest that they try to quality check some of the voices before using them and use humans instead in that case. For a small developer, voiceovers are really rare, so its nice to see a small studio with limited resourcing using AI to add some flavor, but hopefully their next game will try to balance the use of it. The flight mechanics themselves are mostly done well for this style of game. I did notice that the region of reverse command did not actually happen. At slow airspeeds, an aircraft needs more power to maintain altitude or speed because induced drag increases as the angle of attack (AOA) increases. For real aircraft you can add full power and can't climb well because of this drag. I would like to see this take effect because it would make collecting air ingredients more interesting. There also seemed to be a bit of a ground effect mechanic, which felt like ballooning and was good to see this phenomenon relflected in the game. Overall I enjoyed this game and I hope they make a sequel at some point.

For an indie game, it's pretty amazing actually. Lots of airframes with their own quirks, and the gameplay starts small and becomes island to island as you need higher grade materials. Music's great, controls are intuitive. I mean, for what, a 2 dev team? It's great. You really see that the devs are experienced and worked for Relic entertainement. If anything I'm surprised it doesn't get talked more of. There are downsides however, mostly the AI generated voices. Some people may not be used to the controls but the same is true for any arcade sims.