Distilled, the new board game about making and selling spirits like whiskey and vodka, was one of the most played demos at last year’s Gen Con. The multiplayer strategy game designed and published by Paverson Games, however, is not a drinking game. Instead, it’s a simulation of the art, science, and economics of liquor making—and it couldn’t have been published at a more opportune time for American drinking culture.
In February last year the Spirits Council estimates that US consumers bought more spirits than beer for the first time ever. It’s a massive shift in the beverage industry, which has long been dominated by the likes of Anheuser-Busch and Molson Coors, makers of everything from standard Budweiser beer to the more exotic Miller Light. Game designer Dave Beck told Polygon that this shift also coincides with a change in the tabletop industry, where more people than ever are interested in new board games – especially those that rely on their theme as much as this title.
“There’s nothing on the market about whiskey, gin or vodka,” Beck said during an interview at the Paverson Games booth last August. “So I wanted to change that by making Distilledand really wanted to lean heavily into the theme.
The idea, he said, came to him during a recent trip to Scotland. “I toured a lot of distilleries, drank a lot of whiskey and played a lot of board games,” Beck said. “And one evening it occurred to me. I couldn’t sleep, and the idea for a mechanic to represent the distillation process popped into my head.”
Photo: Charlie Hall/Polygon
The core mechanic of Distilled is simple: each player purchases ingredients to place in their storage room, then uses these ingredients to blend batches of spirits in their distillation tanks. Batches take the form of small stacks of cards that are shuffled. The angel’s share – a portion of a given batch of alcohol lost through evaporation – is counted as a single card drawn from the deck. Next comes the devil’s share: another part of the batch that is lost during ripening. This causes another card to be removed from the deck. What’s left on the pile is the drink you actually made. You can add more expensive ingredients to increase the chances of getting more valuable spirits, but there is always the chance that something will be lost, just like with actual distillation.
There are also a limited number of brand names in the game, which players can get their hands on on a first-come, first-served basis when they hit the market. No, Jack Daniels isn’t involved yet, but the fictional brands all nod to their real-world counterparts. Once brands are secured by a player, they can pay dividends to their owners by making even lower quality drinks worth a little more based on branding alone. Add to that an international collection of expert distillers, each with their own special qualities, and you have the makings of an immersive board game.
“We really wanted to make sure people understood that this is not a drinking game,” Beck said. “This is a game to understand the science and business behind (the spirits industry). If people want to have a nice drink while playing? Well, I certainly do. But they don’t have to.”
There is also an extension with the title Spirits: expansion in Africa and the Middle East, which adds about “20 to 25 percent more stuff,” according to Beck. But where that ‘stuff’ comes from is perhaps the most interesting thing.
“Alcohol consumption and production is probably the lowest in this region, but it is still there,” Beck said in a conversation with Polygon in late February. “This expansion adds (…) more cultures, more characters, more spirits, new ingredients, new bottles, new barrels. But then it also adds some new, what I like to call ‘super ingredients’ that add just a little bit more to it.”
One of those super ingredients? Well, glucose sugar of course, that’s a wild card that counts double in distilling. The gameplay is very close to the original game, only with more options.
Distilled was brought to life through a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter, with Paverson earning nearly $550,000 from some 8,000 backers. It’s currently available from your friendly local game store and online from retailers like Amazon. Spirits: Africa and the Middle East is available today on Amazon.