Dragon’s Brew Game Review (Demo)

Title: Dragon’s Brew | Platform: PC; Mac | Genre: Cafe Management Sim / RPG | Developer: Radic Creative | Release Date: Q4 2026; Early Access Nov 18^th, 2026

Rating: 9/10

I’m a former barista who loves board games – opening up a real life board game cafe is on my short-list of life aspirations. So naturally I was drawn to Dragon’s Brew, where the premise is exactly that! You open up a board game cafe in the quaint little town of Pebblebrook, and over time build up your offerings, decorations, and synergy between your games and menu. It’s been a while since a new game has charmed me so quickly as much as Dragon’s Brew has. I came across an ad on Instagram by chance and decided to check out the demo on Steam because it sounded right up my alley. The demo allows you to play through the first six days, and in that time you get to learn the ins and outs of how to manage your cafe. 

Gameplay

The game plays lightly as an RPG and starts with a DM guiding you through the first few steps of getting set up. Controls are straight forward as it’s a 2D pixelated world, so you’ve got your WASD keys for movement and some basic controls like interact, use, retrieve, etc. After helping you get the gist of starting out your cafe, you’re provided with some basic recipes, a single table, one game, and a big dream. 

As you begin to serve customers, everything comes with a price tag. At level 1 you have some limits to how many customers you can have sitting in your cafe but there’s no limit to your to-go population, so money is constantly flowing in. All your menu items sell for a certain price, and customers can pay for play time at your gaming table. I found that money wasn’t ever really a problem, as most recipes resulted in items that cost more than the sum of the ingredients. It’s a slightly slow start, but soon enough I was rolling in cash and able to start expanding my menu and space for gaming customers. 

There’s a market right down the street where you get your main ingredients, and next door is a game shop where you can expand your gaming collection. This is where things start to get interesting. There’s a mechanic called synergy where certain games have an affect on your menu items (positive or negative). In other words, what you have out for your customers will impact the pricing of your food items. As such, there’s a little strategy involved in making the games and your menu sync up. 

Serving customers is the mechanic I enjoyed the least, though it wasn’t too bad. It just felt a little chaotic. In the early part of the game as you’re getting situated, you spend a lot of time running around between your oven and coffee machine to keep items in stock, the to-go customers waiting to be served, and your customers sitting at the gaming tables. Time ticks by quickly so I felt a little rushed, even though I discovered there’s no penalty to having folks wait. In fact, I’ve even run out of the cafe to buy more ingredients mid-shift and was able to finish serving my customers upon return (though it does close your shop). Re-opening the shop, however, is as easy as interacting with your open/close sign. So other than missing out on some sales, there doesn’t seem to be any punishment to having folks wait on you. 

Over time you will gain renown (where your XP goes). As you level up, you get perks such as new recipes, decor, and more capacity for your shop. 

Something of note – about every minute in real life is ten minutes in game, and you have a bed time. If you fail to go to sleep before midnight, you wake up late the next day so you don’t get to open early. I imagine for the full release this isn’t a big deal, but with just six days to play in the demo, this really bit into my game time!

The town of Pebblebrook ended up being larger than I expected, and there are several shops around town you can visit and buy from. In addition to food ingredients and games, you can buy plants, decor, furniture, clothing, and more space (Note, not all of these are available in the demo). Like a lot of cozy sim games, over time you can build up both your apartment which sits on top of the cafe, and the cafe itself with decor. Since the feature isn’t available, I can’t comment on how expanding space works just yet! But based on the previews, your cafe can get pretty big. 

And the layout matters! Later in the game you’ll start to get delivery orders, so you’ll want to get familiar with the map and which roads are where, so you can get your orders delivered on time. 

The game didn’t seem to have much of a story, and the DM you encounter at the start didn’t make an appearance again after the “tutorial” phase for me. 

The Good 

• Super fun premise and gameplay
• Charming premise
• I like the 2D world

• Serving and deliveries feel chaotic, but you’re not punished for missing orders. 

I definitely feel like I didn’t complete everything I could in the six days I had with the demo. I plan on re-playing with a little more knowledge under my belt to see how much I can get done and experience. That said, I really, really enjoyed playing this and I’m excited for its release!

Would I recommend it? Yes, absolutely! This will be an easy buy for me once it’s out in November. 

Check out the free demo on Steam now!