EDIT: There has been a significant amount of post-launch support, and the developers are moving the game in a good direction. I'm happy to switch this review to positive.

~~~

I'm at a stage in my life where I can throw away this kind of money, but I still don't know what I was thinking.

This is essentially a very polished flash game from 2007 Newgrounds. Or maybe it's a 2021 early access title on Steam, masquerading as a final product.

The core gameplay loop is very interesting, and the devs have done a very good job with the audiovisuals. However, QoL is non existant, and the UI is a complete slog (in addition to ghost clicks and bugs). Most of this game is opening the workshop menu, watching the transition animation, clicking on "clean tractor", clicking it again since it didn't register the first time, exiting the menu, watching the transition animation again, dragging the "clean tractor" card onto the board. And repeating this process every single turn for cleaning your silos, cleaning your press, cleaning your bottling machine, etc. Every item in the game gets dirty after being used, so you literally have to do this every turn.

Who is this game for? I guess if you are used to pre-2000 strategy games with miserable levels of micromanagement, you're interested in wine in general, and you care about the graphics/soundtrack slightly more than about gameplay - then maybe the game is for you. But the price tag is still outrageous.

EDIT: There has been a significant amount of post-launch support, and the developers are moving the game in a good direction. I'm happy to switch this review to positive. ~~~ I'm at a stage in my life where I can throw away this kind of money, but I still don't know what I was thinking. This is essentially a very polished flash game from 2007 Newgrounds. Or maybe it's a 2021 early access title on Steam, masquerading as a final product. The core gameplay loop is very interesting, and the devs have done a very good job with the audiovisuals. However, QoL is non existant, and the UI is a complete slog (in addition to ghost clicks and bugs). Most of this game is opening the workshop menu, watching the transition animation, clicking on "clean tractor", clicking it again since it didn't register the first time, exiting the menu, watching the transition animation again, dragging the "clean tractor" card onto the board. And repeating this process every single turn for cleaning your silos, cleaning your press, cleaning your bottling machine, etc. Every item in the game gets dirty after being used, so you literally have to do this every turn. Who is this game for? I guess if you are used to pre-2000 strategy games with miserable levels of micromanagement, you're interested in wine in general, and you care about the graphics/soundtrack slightly more than about gameplay - then maybe the game is for you. But the price tag is still outrageous.