- Publisher : Matagot
- Designer : Dave Beck
- Artist(s) : Erik Evensen
- Players : 1–5
- Playing time : 30–150 Min
- Weight BGG : 2.97
What's this?
Distilled is a themed spirit-making strategy game in a distillery for 1-5 players. The aim of the game is to create premium spirits using ingredients, barrels, bottles and recipes to sell them and earn victory points. :
How do you play?
The game takes place over seven rounds, each round being divided into 4 phases:
🔸Market phase: Players buy cards from the market (distillery upgrades, equipment, ingredients, etc.) and recipes.
🔸Distillation phase: Players place cards in their fermentation vat, add sugar, yeast and water and distill their spirit by mixing all the cards in their vat and removing the first and last card from it. this mixed package. The remaining cards revealed will form a spirit recipe.
🔸Selling Phase: Players sell one spirit per turn and score victory points and earn money based on the quality of their spirit. You will place the labels of the spirits sold on your personal board to unlock different bonuses.
🔸Aging phase: Players place their spirits that require aging in their cellar and add an aroma card to each spirit in this cellar.
🔸End of turn: Players check if they have filled prizes for their spirit, move the turn marker and pass the starting player token.
At the end of the game, players can also earn victory points by collecting spirit bottles and completing personal objectives.
Is it good?
Distilled is a game that begins with a fairly strong and original theme. Its main mechanics are based on its fermentation tank or washback, where players take risks by filling it with more or fewer ingredients in order to succeed in their recipe.
For the rest, the game remains quite classic: a card market allows you to improve your distillery (with a maximum of 3 improvements), unlock new recipes and buy more premium equipment (barrels, bottles, ingredients, etc. .) to get more victory points and money with each alcohol sale.
The game is presented as a race for objectives and labels in limited quantities. Players must make 7 recipes in 7 rounds and are constrained by money, ingredients, etc. The game is quite tense in this regard.
As for my criticisms, the game lacks a bit of depth and becomes repetitive after several games. There are no major strategic choices to make and our games could be similar, at least in the first rounds.
However, Distilled nevertheless remains very pleasant to play thanks to the quality of its material and its strong theme which could appeal to a wide audience.
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Review Distilled
Positives
- The quality of the material
- The mechanics of the washback
- A race for objectives
- Works well from 1 to 4 players
Negatives
- Quite repetitive
- Lacking a bit of depth
Breakdown
- Components and illustrations 9.0
- Mechanics 6.0
- Thematic 6.0
- Replayability 8.5
- Handling 6.0
- Interaction 7.5
- Originality 8.0
