Mushroom Ale

Dwarves are fond of ale, but wheat sadly doesn't grow two miles underground. So, dwarves farm mushrooms. Their peculiar brand of ale has become prized the world over. When there's any left.

Mushroom Ale is a solitaire, print-and-play, roll-and-write farming simulation that takes place in the fantasy Legends of Dsyx setting.

An 8x8 grid represents an underground mushroom farm. Each turn, the player picks one row or column and rolls seven dice to determine what actions can be taken in that furrow. Some of those dice allow the soil to be tilled, seeds to be planted, and mature mushrooms to be harvested, while others allow dice to be rerolled or even indicate the growth of weeds. The better the crop, the better the ale will be!

But that's where the second part of the game begins: brewing. Even as farming continues, the mushrooms brew and age in casks adjacent to the farm. Many factors affect ale quality, from the original surroundings of the harvested mushroom, to master brewers (gained through dice rolls) improving the process, to the effects gained by eating other mushrooms (or drinking other casks of ale!).

The harvest season is short and different types of mushrooms grow at different times. Once the time track fills up completely, the game is over, so a dwarven farmer needs to be both a seasoned farmer and an expert alemaker to ensure that they will go down in the annals of Mushroom Ale!

Released in the August 2018 Board Game of the Month Club $5+ package.