Why Brewpire has no timers
There’s one decision we made right at the start that has shaped everything else since: in Brewpire, there’s no clock running against you.
The two of us have played quite a lot of builder games. And at some point we noticed we weren’t playing them because they were fun – but because a timer had run out. “Your harvest is ready.” “Your guests are waiting.” “Come back or your bonus expires.” That’s not playing anymore, that’s a to-do list with confetti.
The moment it clicked
Annalena once put it perfectly: “I don’t want to be nagged by a phone game in the evening too.” That’s when the direction became clear. We didn’t want to build a game that punishes absence – but one that rewards presence. The difference sounds small, but it really changes everything underneath.
A timer says: “You should have been here.” We wanted to say: “Nice that you’re here.”
What that means in practice
Without wait bars, a whole chain of mechanics you’d otherwise adopt without thinking simply falls away:
- No energy bar that forces you to stop.
- No “skip the wait” for money.
- No perishable goods that punish you for skipping a day.
- No aggressive notifications designed to make you feel guilty.
Instead, your café calmly carries on while you’re away. When you come back, something has happened – but nothing broke. You can drop in for two minutes or stay for half an hour. Both are right.
The hard part
Honestly: it’s easier to build a game with timers. Timers create artificial tension almost on their own. Without them, we had to find a real reason for you to want to come back – and for us, that reason is the people. You come back because you want to know whether Jonas passed his exam. Not because a bar is full.
Whether it works out is exactly what we’re seeing in the test phase right now. So far the feedback makes us optimistic – and not writing a single line of code for a countdown feels good every day.