Description
Quick minutes of chaos condensed into a three mission campaign. You get to assist Duff Zymurilogical Research against various raids against their depots and stations. Have fun!

Storyline:
From the very start, you can tell that Zymurgy has been designed with tongue firmly in cheek. It paints a horrifying vision of the future, in which alcohol has been restricted to prescription use only, and while the attacks by the Shivans probably did make a few commanders want a stiff drink, the storyline is quite frankly ludicrous. That doesn't matter, though. What does matter is that fact the storyline, particularly concerning briefings, debriefings and in-flight messages is poorly developed with little information on the missions you'll be flying. There are also numerous errors, and the chance for some humour in the missions isn't really capitalized upon. There's also little rhyme or reason to the Shivan attacks, unless they're secretly drunks.

Balance:
Well, here we have obligatory assault mission, compulsory defence mission, and a nebula mission thrown in too. No surprise there, then. The first mission, in which you have to stop a pirate convoy, is not too difficult to succeed at but is a tad more difficult to survive. Throughout the campaign you'll not have access to all the weaponry you might want, and this is a nice touch. Anyway, the second mission is a none-too-difficult fighter intercept mission. The most danger you're in here is from exploding ships, really, as the fighters go for other targets. The final mission is a defence mission, defending your beer laboratory from the Shivans. It really isn't too hard, thanks to the sheer number of capital ships and the distinct lack of Shivans.

Design:
Zymurgy's design falls firmly into the average category. Most of the mission design comes off pretty well, though I noticed that many of the messages are said at the wrong time, sometimes after the destruction or departure of the vessel meant to be saying them (Command says those when this happens). Some of the messages also overlap, which is annoying. There's no background in one of the missions and some are a little 'loose'. However, for the most part design is functional. There are some reasonable waypoint paths and directives, and there's also some use of the Y-axis. Yay.

Gameplay:
Gameplay was nothing special. The missions aren't particularly immersive or believable, and are at times very hard and at others ridiculously easy. The final mission suffers from major Battle of Endor syndrome, and lasts only 4 minutes. By comparison the first mission took me 14 minutes. Overall the campaign feels like it was thrown together quite quickly for a bit of a laugh. Having some humorous missions is okay, but they should at least be fun to play while being amusing.

Other Thoughts:
If you want to see what this author can really do, go check out his other mission, Too Many Secrets...