Ever wanted to get a beer so much in a place full of disgusting, flavored craft beers? This might be the right game for you.
Type: Single-player
Genre: Point and Click
Developer: Arik Zurabian,
Edo Brenes
Publisher: Arik Zurabian
Release date: 5 Nov, 2020
Intro
Have you ever try to go through several pubs just to find out that they are not selling the beer that you want? Dude, Where Is My Beer? lets you experience the suffering as you, the main character, stranded in a rest stop with a lot of varied, disgusting craft beers with no pilsner in sight.
Graphics
The game has a unique look with its simple design and distinct color palette which consists of gray, blue, and red. Although characters look simplistic, this doesn’t mean that the backgrounds are less detailed either. A lot of decorations filled the background, making them abundant. Most obtainable objects also blend well with the environment like other games in the same genre.
If you think that the unique design is the main selling point of the game, you’re wrong. Some actions, such as ordering or drinking a beer, will be followed with an animation. The animations are carefully executed and fantastic, especially when you see the reactions after you drank a beer.
Story
The game puts a lot of emphasis on fourth wall references and jokes. Most conversations are referring to pilsners, as it’s the only thing that keeps the game going. However, the story is too repetitive and bland with the main character asking for pilsners and demanding other people to give him a puzzle to solve because of the game’s genre.
Strangely, despite all of the pilsner chaos, the story isn’t finished. The game keeps on mentioning part 2 although I’m not sure whether it refers to a sequel or a future update to this game. Although the writing is decent, there isn’t much to the story anyway so you won’t lose anything if you don’t see the ending.
The Game
Point and Click
The game has a unique style where you have 9 commands that you can use to interact with other people and objects. Some objects can only be interacted with a specific command although some commands might give the same result. The number of commands might be annoying when you can’t find the right command despite you knowing that there’s something that you can get out of people.
Although it’s not explicitly stated, some items can be opened to get other items. However, some of these items are not obvious at first, making me have to use the “open” command to every single item in my inventory to get the additional items that I need to use.
The rest of the game’s mechanic is the same as other point-and-click games except for the implementation of the beer-o-meter, a meter that will be displayed in the top-left corner and affect your behavior. Some actions can only be done when you’re sober, some objects can only be picked up when you’re tipsy. This makes it important to always have a beer in stock to make sure you can be tipsy whenever you need it.
Although some solutions aren’t that apparent, most quests require you to combine existing items. Luckily, there is a cat that gives vague hints from time to time. Its location might be tricky for first-timers though; I even had to spam everything in my inventory just to figure out how to solve some puzzles because I didn’t know about this cat beforehand.
Exploration
The game is mostly a repetitive cycle between traveling the same maps to find a new quest and solving the given quests. Some events will be unlocked after you finish a quest, leading to a new quest being unlocked. The main character that can only talk to people whenever he’s drunk is also not helping since you must waste more time drinking and ordering beers every time you need it.
The game has a lot of dialogue options that you can choose from. There is no story branching, meaning that those options won’t mean anything. However, it’s nice to see how the main character responds differently based on the options that you choose.
Length and Difficulty
The game has 3 difficulties although the only difference that I could see is the number of hints that you can ask. I finished the game blind in 7.9h with most of my playtime spent roaming the place over and over again to figure out the solutions. I did replay the game for one achievement and it only took me ~1h to finish.
Problems
There aren’t any major bugs in the game apart from two intermittent crashes that I got when I played the game. I’m not sure whether clicking a lot in the game triggered the crash but I experienced an FPS drop after I did that for some time. There is another minor problem when one of the NPC turns gigantic on one of my playthroughs though.
Specs
Intel Core i5-9300H 2.40GHz, 8GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650
Verdict
This is the kind of game where you just play and forget. The game tends to give a lot of jokes that don’t deliver although the presentations, especially the animations, are brilliant. If you like to play challenging point-and-click games and don’t mind the repetitiveness, buy this game whenever it’s heavily discounted. I won’t advise you to buy it if you’re not fond of the genre though since you’ll probably be stuck figuring the solutions.
