Review Fix Exclusive: Inside ‘Dude Where Is My Beer’

Review Fix chats with “Dude Where Is My Beer” developer Arik Zurabian, who lets us know what inspired the fun point-and-click adventure and more.

Review Fix: How was this game born?

Arik Zurabian: It started when I one day decided to spend all the time I spend checking Facebook on a hobby which would be fun to work with a few times a week. At first, I wanted to create a small game about people I know in Oslo, who I almost always met in the bars.

Review Fix: What was your role in the game?

Zurabian: I made the first draft version of the game alone, with all the dialog, but with no sounds and with dummy graphics, and thought an illustrator could make all the graphics, so I just could replace them. Then Edo Brenes, the illustrator, showed up and he said basically “I like your concept, but we will need to fix the story…” and I realized that instead of having my friends as the characters in the game, with all that internal humor, we should make it interesting for a bigger audience. After a few rounds with Edo, it became a satiric story about craft beers, beards and all the hipster clichés. 

Review Fix: How did you get involved in the industry?

Zurabian: I have worked in the IT for over ten years, both as an animator and low key developer, and actually had all kinds of roles in different startups, so I could just easily combine these roles. But I wouldn’t say I am involved in the game industry, I am just making a game and would like to see how it will turn out. 

Review Fix: What was development like?

Zurabian: Even though it took a lot of time in the beginning on testing different ways to do things, changing existing things several times, it’s an amazing feeling when I find solutions and can see that the game is being developed further. And testing the completed parts hundreds of times is pure happiness.

Review Fix: How did you marry all these different genres?

Zurabian: Well, I just reused the verbs panel from Monkey Island, added a lot of beer-related puzzles (like beer brewing) and changed the concept of saving the world or defeating an evil guy with finding a “regular beer” in the hipster world of craft beers.

Review Fix: What makes this game special?

Zurabian: Its tiny target/age group, I am afraid. Not everyone understands why the character wants to find a pilsner and denies to drink French-Style Sweet Milk Stout. The focus on beer makes the game not very children friendly. But the positive side is that many of these point and click games’ fans are now grown-up people and hopefully they have more strong opinions on craft beer.

Review Fix: What games influenced this one the most?

Zurabian: I am a huge fan of all the old Sierra adventure games, Sam and Max and the Monkey Island games – in that order. And I never managed to complete any of them, because of my bad English at that time (I was born in Moscow) and lack of…internet.

Review Fix: What were the major lessons learned?

Zurabian: I like to say that after so many years in the IT development I know exactly in which order it is most effective to work. But in this case, the wrong thing was to spend so long time on making a version of the game based on a script that was kinda weak and then redo everything. 

Review Fix: Do you think preserving older gameplay mechanics in new games is important?

Zurabian: I don’t wanna sound like one of those conservative older guys, so I think that we can have those older mechanics for ourselves, retro gamers, and the kids can play that new fancy stuff!

Review Fix: What’s your favorite memory as a gamer?

Zurabian:  I remember I pretended to sleep, and when the whole family went to bed, I woke up to play games, and I covered my PC with a pillow, so my father wouldn’t hear the noise of the dial-up modem.

Review Fix: How do you want this game to be remembered?

Zurabian: A few years from now: “Do you know that game called ‘Dude, Where Is My Beer?’? That’s the first game by the guys behind [Super famous game 1] and [Super famous game 2]”  

Review Fix: What’s next?

Zurabian: We still have a lot to do on DWIMB, and since it’s our first game ever, we shouldn’t …do what we do – think about our next adventure game.

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About Patrick Hickey Jr. 13821 Articles
Patrick Hickey Jr. is a full-time Assistant Professor of Communication & Performing Arts and Director of the Journalism program at Kingsborough Community College and is the chairman of the City University of New York Journalism Council. He is the Founder and Editor-In-Chief of ReviewFix.com. He's also a former News Editor at NBC Local Integrated Media and National Video Games Writer at Examiner.com where his work was mentioned in National Ad campaigns by Disney, Nintendo and EA Sports. Hickey was also the Editor-In-Chief of two College Newspapers before he received his BA in Journalism from Brooklyn College. Hickey's work has been published in The New York Daily News, The New York Times, Complex, The Hockey Writers, Yahoo!, Broadway World, Examiner, NYSportScene Magazine, ProHockeyNews.com, GothamBaseball.com, The Syracuse Post-Standard, Scout.com and the official sites of the Brooklyn Aces and New York Islanders. His first book, The Minds Behind the Games: Interviews With Cult And Classic Video Game Developers was released in April 2018 and is chock full of interviews with legendary developers. His second book in the series, The Minds Behind Adventures Games, was released in December 2019. His third book, The Minds Behind Sports Games, was released in September 2020. His fourth book, The Minds Behind Shooter Games, was released in March 2021. The Minds Behind Sega Genesis Games and The Minds Behind PlayStation Games were released in 2022 and The Minds Behind PlayStation 2 was published in January 2023. Hickey is also a contracted comic book writer, currently penning his original series, "Condrey," as well as "The Job," "Brooklyn Bleeds" "Dem Gulls" and "KROOM" for Legacy Comix, where he serves as founder, owner and Editor-in-Chief. Hickey Jr. is also a voice actor, having starred in the 2018 indie hit and 2019 Switch, PS4 and Xbox One release, The Padre (also serving as English language Story Editor), from Shotgun With Glitters. The sequel, The Padre: One Shell Straight to Hell was released in February 2021- Hickey also served as a Story Editor and Lead Voiceover performer. He has also done narration and trailers for several other titles including The Kaiju Offensive, Relentless Rex and Roniu’s Tale. Hickey is also the lead voiceover performer on Mega Cat Studios’ upcoming title WrestleQuest, responsible for nearly 90 characters in the game, as well as Skybound's Renfield: Bring Your Own Blood, where he voices both Dracula and Renfield, as well as several other characters. He also stars in Ziggurat Interactive’s World Championship Boxing Manager 2, where he performs the VO of nearly every male character in the game. He also worked on the Atari VCS’s BPM Boy.

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