Fanboys Anonymous

I love beer. I also love video games. Lucky for me, Bit By Bit Studios has released Fiz: The Brewery Management Game to scratch these itches simultaneously. Best of all, it does so without microtransactions or a frustrating energy system that limits your game time.


If you’ve played any of Kairosoft’s popular sims, Fiz will feel immediately familiar. You play as an up-and-coming brewmaster, intent on bringing joy to the masses through the power of sweet, sweet beer. As brewmaster, you are responsible for managing and maintaining a well-rounded staff, equipping your brewery with top-notch equipment, and most importantly, brewing the most kickass beer known to man.

The menus are intimidating to start

In Fiz, you manage your brewery through several (initially imposing) menus. Fortunately, you learn the intricacies of brewing smartphone beer by means of a thorough—but not excessive—tutorial. To craft beer, you arrange ingredients in sequence and then assign required tasks to each of your employees. Each employee has different strengths and weaknesses, and they level up as they gain brewing experience, just like in real life (I imagine).

Once your beer is complete, Fiz encourages you to think as businessperson as well as brewmaster. You can perform market research on local shops and restaurants to learn the tastes and spending habits of each location’s customers as well as the intensity of the competition. While you can try to sell your product blind, you will quickly find your beer expiring on store shelves and your wallet empty.

As word of your mind-numbingly delicious beer spreads, your brewery will receive occasional visitors from potential rivals, customers, and teachers, each bearing an invitation to an Event (read: quest). Events most often require that you brew a batch of a certain quality, quantity, or style, and typically reward you with a sizable cash bonus and new beer recipes. You also have access to a list of Challenges (think achievements), which reward you with coins and serve as a rough guide for what your brewery should be focusing on to progress.


I found Events to be my favorite part of Fiz. Not only do they provide much-needed structure for a largely open-ended game, the satisfying writing complements the brewery sim with a tongue-in-cheek humor that I enjoyed tremendously. The interactions with a rival brewmaster are particularly entertaining.

Although I wouldn’t exactly call Fiz educational, it is clear that a great deal of knowledge and love for the brewing practice went into this game. Each of the ingredients and recipes contains a description of its real-world uses and characteristics. If you spend a few hours with Fiz, you won’t know how to make a beer from scratch, but you might know the difference between a pale ale and an IPA.


If you love beer or management sims, you can pick up Fiz for $1.99 on:

iOS - App Store
Android - Google Play

**Full disclosure: Fiz was developed by a friend of mine, and I wrote this article to help promote it. As always, my opinions are mine and mine alone and are expressed truthfully here. **

I tend to prefer bitter beers such as IPAs, but my favorite has always been Guinness. Let me know some of your favorites in the comments below.