Game of the Week 29 – Brew: Alchemy exams and tower runs from a Norwegian indie studio

Brew – Game of the Week 29: alchemy exams and tower runs.

Some games look cosy at first glance and then quietly hook you with “just one more run” pacing. Brew is one of those. It’s a third-person action roguelite set in an alchemy academy, where your final exam is a climb up The Tower and your real weapon is whatever potions you manage to brew along the way. The full game is out on Steam for PC, but there’s still a free demo if you want to try it for yourself first—my gameplay video below is taken from that demo build. You can also browse our Game of the Week archive or jump ahead to Shroom and Gloom for another roguelike pick.

Demo gameplay — Brew (PC)

Raw PC demo gameplay from Fix Gaming Channel’s early sessions with Brew, captured from the Steam demo build. Visuals, balance, and content may have changed compared to the current full release.

Brew

Release: November 6, 2025

Genre: Action roguelite, RPG

Developer / Publisher: Snow Leaf Studios

Platforms: PC — Steam

What is Brew?

Brew drops you into the Alchemy Academy, where your “exam” is anything but theoretical. To become a Grand Alchemist, you climb The Tower, duel your professors, and literally brew potions in the middle of combat. It’s a third-person action roguelite with a wholesome school setting, where making friends with classmates can be just as rewarding as having sharp reflexes. The pitch name-drops Ratchet & Clank, Hades, and the relationship side of Stardew Valley—and from the demo, you can feel traces of all of that while Brew still does its own thing.

How the Tower exams feel

The Tower is split into alchemy subjects like Mechanology, Biology, and Herbology. Rooms move quickly, enemy waves don’t overstay their welcome, and between fights, you make small but important decisions: which door to pick, whether to spend corks now or later, and which upgrades are actually worth it for the build you’re shaping. When it clicks, you feel like you’ve “built” your exam character through choices, not just picked a premade loadout and hoped for the best.

Academy grounds, friendships, and small stories

When a run ends, Brew doesn’t just throw you into a barebones menu. You’re back on the academy grounds, talking to classmates, unlocking Tower upgrades, and dropping points into a skill tree to gently steer your future runs. Each character has their own small arc and unlockables, and you can gift ingredients to them—if you can figure out what they actually like. It gives the game a softer, more human layer: you’re not just a build; you’re a student with people to check in on between exams.

If you enjoy following smaller teams finding their audience, you might also like our piece on Band of Crusaders expanding to GOG.

A Norwegian indie I’m happy to back

As a Norwegian, it’s genuinely good to see more home-grown indie projects like Brew stepping forward with their own mix of tone, systems, and pacing. Snow Leaf Studios is a small team, and you can feel that combination of ambition and care—the “we really want this to work” energy that true indie projects often carry. It also fits into the small wave of Norwegian indies I’m covering right now, alongside titles like Basalt: The Cursed Vein, which I’ll be visiting soon in a full interview with the team.