🍺 Brewverse: Post-Mortem Devlog

How a beer-fueled sequel to a joke platformer became a lesson in overbuilding.

🍻 The Origins

Everything started with Toolio — a small, tongue-in-cheek platformer I hacked together in a month as an April Fools’ joke for work.

It was basically Mario with a beer theme: simple jump’n’run physics, a goofy aesthetic, and a few hidden references only my team would get.

It was supposed to be a one-off gag.
And then, as it always goes, I thought:

“Hey, what if I actually made it big this time?”

And thus, Brewverse was born — a full-blown side-scrolling adventure where our bold hero, Toolio, sets out to restore balance to the universe of beer.

🌍 The Concept

Brewverse was built around four beer elements — the ingredients of creation itself:

• 🌿 Hop (Earth)
• 💧 Water (Flow)
• 🔥 Fire (Brewing)
• 🍞 Fermentation (Yeast)

Each biome had its own enemies, music, tone, and mechanics — the Hop Jungle, the Yeast Fields, the Boiling Pits…
It was supposed to be a mix of Oddworld, Akuji the Heartless, and a hangover.

There was even a second player planned — Grigrio, Toolio’s bald companion.
The idea was to make a full solo + local co-op experience, where you could use teamwork to solve lever puzzles, move physics crates labeled “FRAGILE”, or dodge patrolling samurai robots.

🧩 The Ambition Spiral

Then it started: feature creep.

Instead of locking down a clean core loop — jump, interact, push, avoid, repeat — I spiraled into “just one more idea” territory:

• Physics crates you could throw
• Levers that triggered obstacles
• A working co-op mode before the single-player even ran
• UI scaling for every possible window ratio (why?)
• Multiple background parallax layers for a level that wasn’t even finished

Every day I’d fix one visual bug and introduce three new ones.
It got to the point where I had five nearly-working systems and no game to show for it.

🧨 The Technical Wall

Then Tiled started acting up — layers misaligning, collision masks disappearing, export files corrupting randomly.
Phaser scaling decided to go feral, stretching the UI like warm cheese.

I kept trying to “fix” it, but really, I was just stalling.
At some point I realized I’d spent more time fighting the tools than building a game.

The ambition had turned into inertia.
And that was the moment I quietly shelved the project.

🧠 The Lesson

Brewverse didn’t die because it was a bad idea.
It died because I was building a cathedral before laying the foundation.

If Steel Abyss and Barrelstorm exist today, it’s because Brewverse fell apart first.
It taught me:

• Core loop first, flair later
• UI last. Always last
• Don’t touch co-op until single-player actually works
• Scope isn’t your enemy — pride is

I still think the concept had potential — a beer elemental metroidvania where each biome changes your powers and your appearance.
Maybe I’ll come back to it someday.
But when I do, I’ll pour the base first, not the foam.

🍺 Final Thoughts

Brewverse isn’t a failure — it’s a fermentation.
It just needs time.

And honestly?
Even in its unfinished state, it still makes me smile — because it reminds me where I started, and how far I’ve come.

Wee Games

“Some sunk. Some surfaced. All brewed.”

🕹️ Fun fact: You can still play the original Toolio — the one that started it all — on GithubPages
(just don’t expect miracles, I made it in a month fueled by coffee and sarcasm).