Booze Masters: Freezing Moonshine Review – Farm, Distill, Drink in This Bizarre Motel

If you took a shot every time a new simulation game dropped that just made you ask “why?”, you’d be slurring your words by now. Goat simulator? Check. PowerWash Simulator? Yup. But making moonshine for a grumpy snowman? That’s a new level of wacky.

Enter Booze Masters: Freezing Moonshine, the latest “wait, they made a whole game about that?” title that somehow works. You play as Quella, an influencer stuck at a creepy-cute motel owned by Zero Karoten. He’s a snowman with an ego the size of a snow fort. Your job? Make him the world’s coldest, hardest liquor. Hey, when a talking snowman gives you an order, you listen.

You’ll farm crops smack in the middle of winter, learn to craft moonshine from some quirky characters, and explore to find secrets that literally change how you see parts of the world. Drink the right cocktail made from your latest batch, and invisible stuff becomes solid. Trippy, right?

It’s a simple game about doing one weird thing over and over, but with an unexpectedly fun story and plenty you’ll unlock as you go. If you’re tired of serious games and need something silly, quirky, and even educational (about moonshine, because why not?), this cocktail of farming, distilling, and supernatural drinks will hit the spot. Just don’t ask too many questions and lean into the strange.

Farm, Distill, Drink, Explore: Finding The Fun In Repeating The Process

Booze Masters shakes up the typical farming game by swapping cute animals and sunny pastures for moonshine-crafting in the dead of winter. But it works, creating a straightforward yet addictive loop. Here’s the gist:

First, you’ll explore the snowy area around your creepy home base motel, planting crops smack in the middle of a snowstorm. Somehow they grow at warp speed, no questions asked. Dig up the harvest, lug it back to base, and it’s time to distill some spirits, Jake and Elwood style.

Making moonshine takes you through a smooth step-by-step process full of grinding, fermenting, distilling, and bottling. It’s oddly satisfying, like assembling a piece of Ikea furniture or putting a ship in a bottle. Quella does a test sip of each batch, which slowly unlocks more areas and secrets around the motel and woods to keep that exploratory excitement going.

You’ll also gather upgrades in the form of whimsically-named “doodads” and “mega doodads” to make farming and distilling tools snazzier, which cuts down on grunt work. One highlight is a farming drone that plants and harvests crops for you. More time for making that sweet, illegal moonshine!

The entire process becomes a zen-like loop where you get into a groove, grinding plants, checking temperatures, hammering out leaks in pipes, and bottling batch after batch of your secret recipe.

It may sound repetitive, but there’s an odd charm in mastering this narrow craft, finding satisfaction in a simple routine done well rather than getting overwhelmed by complex systems. Variety comes in the form of tracking down ingredients for new recipes rather than fundamentally changing activities.

Perhaps it’s the motley crew of characters, eerie setting, and mysterious story that keeps you engaged too, eager to see what happens next and what a sip of your latest concotion unveils in the environment. Or maybe it’s the slight boost of dopamine when your work pays off in a high quality batch of Quella’s Bone Chilling Bourbon.

While Booze Masters keeps gameplay straightforward, it finds ways to motivate you through steady progress, encouragement from friendly faces, and the human desire to continually refine and improve at a skill. Before you know it, you’ll be hooked on feeling the satisfaction of a job done right, over and over. Who knew illegally distilling liquor could be so fulfilling?

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A Cast of Misfits To Root For

Part of what makes Booze Masters an absurd delight is the bizarre cast of characters you meet along the way. This ain’t exactly the Avengers – it’s more like the Island of Misfit Toys from that old Rudolph claymation movie. But somehow, you grow to love their quirks.

There’s Jerry, part mad genius, part drunk philosopher, who cobbled together a makeshift moonshine distillery using things like an old washing machine. He eagerly shows you his DIY setup when you arrive and dispenses folksy distilling advice, if you can stay awake through his endless tutorials.

Then there’s Doctor Professor, a bearded tinkerer who looks like he wandered out of a lost Dostoyevsky novel. He’s always got some new gadget to help streamline your moonshine operation and has tricked out his wheelchair into a high-speed ride. Don’t ask where he got that mini jet engine.

The owner of this den of moonshine making is Zero Karoten, an ill-tempered snowman who would be Ebenezer Scrooge in another life. He’s obsessed with reclaiming the title for the world’s strongest hooch, and he “motivates” you by threatening to kick you out into the cold if you don’t keep making new recipes.

You also meet a smattering of animal characters like a crazy chicken named Klara who provides a key ingredient, a philosophical crow that sounds suspiciously like Zero doing a voice, and a hungry wolf pup who trails you looking for food.

With each drink you distill, you slowly uncover more about this cast and their connection to the motel’s haunted history, including the legend of a spirit-like woman named Kara Still.

By the halfway point though, this compelling character development fades as playing bartender to a salty snowman takes priority. Missed opportunity for sure. Still, you warm up fast to this gang of likable rejects and want to see them defeat villainous Zero to keep their moonshine dream alive.

Booze Masters is aware of its absurdity, relishing the ability to be weird. And it’s that odd charm and not taking itself seriously that reels you in, even when the story fizzles. This island of misfits becomes an unlikely family, bonded by booze and their underdog ambition in the face of cartoonish adversity. Isn’t that what the holiday spirit is all about?

A Rough Draft With Heart

Listen, Booze Masters isn’t winning any awards for technical prowess. It’s an unpolished indie game that feels a bit like a student film project – earnest, full of spirit, but rough around the edges.

On the graphics front, it’s mediocre at best. The motel and surrounding environments are drab and plain, with blurry textures and robotic animations. Characters stare blankly, faces frozen like mannequins as dialogue plays. It’s distracting at first, but easy to overlook as quirky visuals fitting the silly vibe.

What the game lacks in graphical fidelity though, it makes up for in performance. Gameplay stays smooth as silk with no hitches or hiccups during distilling or adventuring. Loading times are snappy too – no waiting to get back to moonshine making.

The simple environments and assets likely contribute to this solid frame rate. There’s no complex lighting or physics calculations bogging things down. Streamlined mechanics also squeeze decent performance from modest hardware. It runs admirably even on the Steam Deck with some quick setting adjustments.

The audio suffers slightly from repetitive voice lines that will haunt your dreams. Jerry’s constant explanations of “lift the barrel, place the barrel” during distilling grows stale quickly. Acting delivers information reasonably well but lacks emotional range. Inflection stays monotone no matter how wacky the on-screen antics get. This flattened dialogue fits the aesthetic oddly enough, but livelier line reads could better sell the humor.

Yet despite these presentational blemishes, Booze Masters exhibits a DIY charm. It may look and sound rough, but it bottles fun, personality-filled gameplay. Over-polishing it might infringe the ramshackle appeal – a moonshine operation whipped together with found parts like the in-game stills. Rather than looking AAA, it feels handcrafted.

For some, the lack of graphical polish and stilted animation may be deal breakers. But if you can see past the visual roughness and hear the heart underneath, Booze Masters delivers an enjoyable experience whose soul shines brighter than any high-poly models or effects could. Substance over style.

A Weirdly Captivating Escape

Booze Masters shines brightest in letting its freak flag fly. While juggling moonshine making, eerie exploration, and shenanigans with outlandish characters, it always keeps one foot firmly planted in silly territory.

Rather than aiming for gritty realism in its distilling simulation or building complex interpersonal character drama, it embraces signature Eastern European absurdism and black humor. The casual weirdness across interactions and events frequently inspires light chuckles or confused head scratches that say “well that happened.”

You never quite know what you’ll get when entering a new area or trying an unfamiliar drink. It marries familiar gameplay foundations we’ve seen before with a coat of vibrant eccentricity that offers a novel experience.

Many modern titles get bogged down trying to present massive open worlds or hyper-realistic visuals that impress from a technical perspective. Booze Masters cares more about crafting an endearing, human game focused on fun over fidelity.

While initial offbeat moments may catch you off guard, the casual blanket of oddity becomes charming as you settle in. It feels like joining your kooky aunt and uncle on vacation to a kitschy resort tucked away in the mountains. You don’t completely understand it, but it’s weirdly welcoming.

Booze Masters has its share of jankiness in presentation and mechanics, but coasts on firmly established cores that work while layering humor and whimsy on top. It follows the wisdom that limitations foster creativity – embracing a less-is-more approach guided by modest resources to highlight imagination over budget.

In escaping to its snow-covered speakeasy that magically grows crops, you find an experience filled with quirky personality instead of checking templated boxes. It blazes its own boozy trail that values memorable moments over technical prowess or clinical precision. Sometimes getting lost in the strange is the best destination.

Shortcomings That Sour the Sweet Taste

For all the charm Booze Masters bottles up, a few nagging issues leave a bitter aftertaste. Small oversights and missing features diminish what could have been a potent brew.

The story shows early promise, hinting at unknown connections between the motel residents and building motivating mystery through Quella’s distilling. But the plot sadly flatlines in the back half as wacky hijinks with Zero take center stage over developing relationships or revealing truths. We get whisky, but no closure.

The progression softlock also hampers the experience for completionist drinkers. Hitting an invisible wall is bad enough, but uncertainty around where the story goes next risks leaving some players stranded. Some may lack patience to pinpoint the exact right spot for a picture or master obscure puzzle solutions that enable advancing. It’s an unfortunate bug tainting an otherwise smooth experience.

On the quality of life front, the lack of cloud save support remains an annoyance in modern games. Gamers switch between multiple devices routinely and dragging around manual save files on a USB drive feels outdated. Losing progress by not syncing properly is unacceptable. What if Jerry’s wisdom of the distilling process gets lost? The horror!

Similarly, absence of volume sliders for the catchy but repetitive soundtrack grates over long sessions. More options to fine tune aspects that enhance immersion generates happier customers. Support that pouring!

While none significantly disrupt enjoyment on their own, these missing elements accumulate into noticeable frustrations that hamper aspects that work wonderfully otherwise. It leaves the experience feeling not fully finished – ideas strong enough to shine even lacking polish.

Cleaning up these blemishes could elevate Booze Masters to an exemplary title rather than a diamond in the rough. Keep supporting it post-launch by sanding off rough edges, and Asmodev has something incredibly special on their hands rather than settlling as a near miss cult classic. Still, what’s there currently retains an addictive, memorable identity that overcomes shortfalls for a largely delicious adventure highlighting creativity over budget.

Signing Off On This Peculiar Brew

Booze Masters: Freezing Moonshine won’t rewrite any game design rulebooks or get referenced in video game history courses. It likely won’t launch any spin-offs or sweeping transmedia franchises either. Yet despite technical and mechanical imperfections, it delivers a wholly unique elixir providing delicious entertainment.

It forgoes flashy presentation and silky smooth cinematics for an unforgettable flavor profile emphasizing personality over polish. You’ll occasionally grit your teeth through repetitive voice-over reminders or wrestle with slippery controls. But the core experience of crafting and learning the bootlegging trade from this cast of affable outcasts retains an addictive joy and comforting predictability.

Much like its in-game recipes, the ingredients mesh into something greater than the sum of their parts. It’s a journey celebrating quirkiness and finding motivation through incremental progress at well-executed basics rather than chasing complexity. A simple yet hearty meal for the soul.

Approach with an open mind ready to let strangeness wash over you, and this bizarre little game rewards with oddball narratives you won’t find anywhere else. If you need something sunny and straightforward or prize technical prowess, best look elsewhere. But folks hungry for unexpected laughs alongside tried and true game loops will feast well on this.

Booze Masters is comfort food for the adventurous – familiar formats blended with courageous creativity. It playfully builds on traditions rather than trying to expensively redefine genres. A familiar friend introducing you to their eccentric family that somehow works despite everything. It reminds us of gaming’s ability to be personal and human versus cold and clinical. This charming hideaway is well worth booking a return trip.

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