Vineyard management sim Hundred Days just popped its cork on Steam
Plant grapes, make wine, and sell it on in this complex little number
There are many things other adults do that I have never gotten the hang of. I don’t go to pubs. I don’t bother with coffee or tea (tea is particularly terrible, what is wrong with you all?). And I don’t drink wine. I have tried. I’ve swooshed and slurped and spat. It always ends with me putting the glass down and backing warily out the room on the way to the nearest sink.
With that disclosed, I do like the look of Hundred Days, a genteel vineyard management game that just launched on Steam. There’s a lot of detailed work that goes into making wrong Ribena.
The process of the awful cordial is involved and lovingly recreated. You plot your vineyard out then get graping. Grapes are fickle beasts, but the game tells you all about your soil pH, what sort of exposure they’re getting, the health of the plant... It goes on. You have to inspect them for disease, and choose when to harvest. Then there's the gathering, the fermenting, all that winey stuff.
Bottling seems very far off when you start the process, but even when you do that you have to consider if you want to cork it or not, before working out who to market the stuff to. I have one suggestion: not me.
But it seems fascinating. An abstracted look into a complex process. It doesn’t really matter that the output is a tongue-stripping horror drink that tastes the same no matter what you do to it. This looks like a fun way to grow an appreciation for the art of wine making, and I'll drink to that. Hand me a room-temperature tap water, and don't spare the flouride!
You can read more about what our Nate thought of the excellent demo from last year's Steam Festival, or you can just go ahead and grab it yourself. It’s out now on Steam for £17.54 / 18.89€ / $22.49 .