BitMaster_1980: Does anyone who tried it want to write a few lines about it? The graphics speak to me but from the video I'm uncertain what I actually going to be doing. Is it just "click when ripe to harvest" coupled with a few other "click when X"? Or something more interesting?
I just put in about 2 hours, and mostly enjoyed it. I can see the layers unfold and a few different ways to approach winemaking and marketing.
It's real-time, but the seasonal rhythm gives it a soft turn-based feel. There are relationships you need to manage, both the actual relationships with your wholesalers, and trying to figure out how things like pruning affect your grapes' ripeness and yield at harvest time. There are managereal decisions about how long to ferment and how long to age, which give you a few opportunities to perfect a good year or try to salvage a lame one. I like wine, and I like management games, so this was a fun way to while away Tuesday evening, even if I only had beer for company. You could get a kick out of it for a night or a weekend, or maybe longer, and I think it's worth the buy. The pace of my playthrough was pretty slow, and 6 vintages in, I had acquired one add'l parcel of land, and was still planting just cab, but a few different early decisions could have possibly spun that another way. Might try again this weekend.
Some niggles- the music gets repetitive if you play for more than an hour, maybe put on some classical or some chansons and mute the in-game music. There's not alt-text for tooltips that Paradox games spoiled me with, you have to click on everything to see what it does, but most of the icons are clear. There is a ledger, but it wasn't always clear why my monthly costs were ramping up so hard despite my estate not changing much. It only took one ill-advised property purchase to take me from having a comfortable cash cushion to swimming in debt and unable to even bottle without a loan. I'd advise checking it more than once every 3 years!
