First Crush

Seven in the morning on the first day. The roof lifts off the wine barn so you can work inside it.

I love wine, so I made a winemaking game to learn how wine is made. It took about a week. I had not played it myself until I pressed record, and half an hour in I was not bored.

I play the first morning of First Crush for the first time.

The question

What I noticed about this model is that it is very good at education, at teaching you things. So I picked something I love and asked for a game about it. Can a game it builds teach me how to make wine, and stay interesting for longer than five minutes?

The goal is not to win. The goal is to learn how to make wine: one small barn, one harvest, and more lots to buy later.

The valley. Your barn is one small plot in it, under the mountains.

What I do in the video

I scrub the vat. It is day one and the grapes are not here yet. Ros tells me what to do: "Clean it before you're tired, not after. Truck's at seven." So I pick up the brush and scrub.

The first job. The list on the left is the morning, and the brush is in my hand.

Benno's truck comes up the lane at seven.

The truck comes. Benno brings 250 kilos of Merlot, picked cold. "One little barrel and a carboy, near enough," he says. "Don't let anyone sell you a second barrel yet."

I crush. The fruit goes through the destemmer into the 300 litre vat. The game explains each step as I do it. The stems come off, 2 to 5 per cent of the weight. What is left is the must: juice, skins and all. A red ferments on its skins. And you never fill the vat to the rim, because the cap rises.

Benno at the scales with the Merlot. The crusher waits on the left.

The sheet for the crush. Every job has one, drawn like this.

I read the must. A hydrometer for the sugar and a thermometer for the temperature, which is 12.5 degrees.

I add sulphite. Fifteen grams for this must. That is about 40 milligrams a litre, which is right for sound red fruit. White takes 60, and you never go over 80. The game tells me what it is, potassium metabisulphite, what the legal limits are, and that the big dose waits until the malolactic is done.

I pick a yeast. There is more than one, and the game does not tell me which is best. It tells me what each one is good at.

Ros's pages on how to read a hydrometer.

Choosing a yeast. No strain is the best at everything.

What is under it

A 3D scene in the browser with an ordinary interface over it, on top of a simulation of the real process.
Notes with sources. It researched how wine is made online, and the numbers in the game come from that.
Music that is generated as you play and adapts to what is happening. It is the same music engine as Ambient Town, and every sound comes from a synthesizer.
It play tested itself. It played the game for hours, through year eight, before I played it once.
It was close to a one shot. It ran for a long while and I mostly let it.

What needs work

The animations and the controls. It is sometimes hard to find the thing you are meant to click. I will keep improving it.

The barn at night, with the long table set outside.

My vibe check

The story is surprisingly nerdy and engaging. I am learning, and I am not bored.

I am amazed by the depth and the taste. Other models are good at showy games, the kind that are already in the training data. This one made a game that is interesting for longer than five minutes, one I want to go back to. It is especially good for education.

So pick a love you have, make a game about it, and go learn something.

Try it

Go to firstcrush.town and sign in with your Every account. I am going to open source it too.

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