Bad Beer

I’ve said before that I like the aesthetics of horror, but can sometimes be put off by the gore, suffering, bad actions, and trauma that true afficionados of the genre enjoy. So while “investigate spooky goings-on at an old British pub” is sufficiently tame of a premise that the hardcore fans would sniff at it, it’s very much up my alley. The vibe is sufficiently cozy that it took me a while to realize that the setting was contemporary, since the sixty-something landlord has old-fashioned patterns of speech, the bar fittings are timeless, and the names of the beers could go either way – Stinky Ferret is either the brand of some terminally-ironic hipsters, or a Victorian concern proudly upholding a local tradition about the time a sick mustelid crawled into one of the fermentation vats and died.

Apparently said beer is supposed to be good, though, so the fact that it’s gone sour is the low-key inciting incident for this decidedly low-key adventure. After confirming that the barman’s taste buds aren’t misfiring, you can poke around through the pub and come across a bit more evidence of strange goings-on – I won’t spoil them since they’re one of the main pleasures of a short game, but it’s all stuff that would be right at home in a self-published book of local legends you pick up at a small town’s visitor’s center. The implementation in this section is very solid: there aren’t a lot of different scenery items described, but those that are there are nicely detailed, and I never wrong-footed the parser by trying to look under the bed or open the windows. Similarly, there’s a fair bit of social interaction with Jack, the landlord, as well as his wife, the barmaid, and eventually (inevitably) the vicar. Conversations are conducted via the sometimes-tricky ASK/TELL system, but between a handy TOPIC command that orients you to potential avenues to pursue without simply spelling out the options, and the characteristically-thoughtful anticipation of questions the player might ask, it all felt quite smooth.

There’s eventually a shift to a shorter, more dramatic section, which involves the game’s one true puzzle; this has at least two solutions, though I hit a small snag that meant I missed one of them when first playing the game (Spoiler - click to show)(I tried to X STAIRS from the bottom, not the top, since I’d missed the subtlety that Will tripped before actually starting to climb down). Still, the alternate solution is logical enough, and Bad Beer is forgiving here too – should you fail to solve the puzzle and get the worse ending, the post-game options let you rewind and try again even if you didn’t think to make a save.

So Bad Beer is an efficient game that sets a pleasantly chilling mood, elaborates on its premise, throws in a small twist, and then wraps up while leaving the audience wanting more. I think there would have been room to lean in to the drama a little more while still maintaining its family-friendly vibe, and possibly provide a bit more of a rationale for some of the game’s events (Spoiler - click to show)(in particular, I’m still confused about why the player character is able to change the past, rather than just witnessing it, and how the paradox of preventing the haunting that instigated the time-travel in the first place is meant to be resolved). But sometimes a short game that doesn’t belabor itself is just the palette-cleanser one is after; this late in the Comp especially, I can’t complain on that score.