Distilled, the boozy board game with heaps of culture, adds spirits from Africa and the Middle-east

Distilled, the boozy board game with heaps of culture, adds spirits from Africa and the Middle-east

Time Stamp: March 1, 2024 1:53 PM

Distilled, the new board game about making and selling spirits like whiskey and vodka, was among the most played demos at last year’s Gen Con. The multiplayer strategy game, designed and published by Paverson Games, isn’t a drinking game though. Instead, it’s a simulation of the art, science, and economics of making booze — and it couldn’t have been published at a more opportune moment for American drinking culture.

In February of last year, the Distilled Spirits Council estimated that, for the first time ever, consumers in the U.S. were purchasing more hard liquor than beer. It’s a titanic shift in the beverage industry, which has long been dominated by the likes of Anheuser-Busch and Molson Coors, makers of everything from bog-standard Budweiser beer to the more exotic Miller Light. Game designer Dave Beck told Polygon that this shift also coincides with a change in the tabletop industry, where more people than ever are interested in new board games – especially those that lean into their theme as much as this title does.

“There’s nothing on the market about whiskey, gin, or vodka,” Beck said during an interview at the Paverson Games booth last August. “So I wanted to change that by making Distilled, and really wanted to lean heavy into theme.”

The idea, he said, came to him during a recent trip to Scotland. “I was touring lots of distilleries, drinking lots of whiskey, [and] playing lots of board games,” Beck said. “And it came to me one night. I couldn’t sleep, and this idea for a mechanic to represent the distilling process popped into my head.”

A player board, showing a distiller, her facility, and her incredients. The colors are all blue and yellow. Vodka brands sit along the top of the board.

Photo: Charlie Hall/Polygon

An assortment of historical distillers, including a First Nations distiller from Canada, a woman in a wheelchair, and your traditional Scotsman with golf club in hand.

The Distilled marketplace offers everything from bottles to barley, all arranged in rows and columns on a sideboard.

The core mechanic of Distilled is simple: Each player purchases ingredients to place into their storeroom, and then uses those ingredients to mix up batches of spirits in their distillation tanks. Batches take the form of small decks of cards, which get shuffled. The Angel’s Share — a portion of a given batch of alcohol lost to evaporation — gets factored in as a single card taken from the pile. Next comes the Devil’s Share — another portion of the batch lost during aging. That causes yet another card to be removed from the pile. What’s left in the pile is the liquor that you’ve actually made. You can add in more expensive ingredients for the chance to end up with more valuable spirits, but there’s always the chance that something goes to waste — just like in actual distillation.

Also in play are a limited number of brand names, which players can snag on a first-come-first-served basis as they go to market. No, Jack Daniels isn’t involved — yet — but the fictional brands all make nods to their real-world counterparts. Once brands are secured by a player, they can go on to pay dividends for their owners by causing even lower-quality booze to be worth a bit more based on branding alone. Add in an international collection of expert distillers, each with their own special attributes, and you’ve got all the makings of a compelling little board game.

“We really wanted to make sure people understood this is not a drinking game,” Beck said. “This is a game to understand the science and business behind [the spirits industry]. If people want to have a nice drink while playing it? Well, I definitely do. But they don’t have to.”



Distilled

Prices taken at time of publishing.

• 1-5 players, age14+

• Playtime: 60-150 minutes

There’s also an expansion titled Distilled: Africa and Middle East Expansion, which Beck says adds about “20 to 25 percent more stuff.” But it’s where that “stuff” comes from that may be most interesting.

“Alcohol consumption and production is probably the lowest in this region, but it’s still there,” Beck said in a call with Polygon in late February. “This expansion adds […] more cultures, more characters, more spirits, new ingredients, new bottles, new barrels. But then it also does add some new what I like to call ‘super ingredients’ that add a little bit more to it.”

One of those super ingredients? Well, glucose sugar, of course, which is a wild card that counts for double when doing your distillation. Gameplay is otherwise very close to the original game, just with more options.

Distilled was brought to life via a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign, where Paverson earned nearly $550,000 from some 8,000 backers. It’s currently available at your friendly local game store and online at retailers like Amazon. Distilled: Africa and Middle East is available on Amazon starting today.

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