The Mix: when design found its flow

Four years of creation, a clear glass and one simple question: can you build a satisfying engine-builder where the engine is a bar? A look back at how The Mix was born, just days before SPIEL Essen.

Design diary · by Guime, Ruse Games

When I started working on The Mix, I didn’t know I was stepping into four years of smooth, flowing creation. Two worlds I love, cocktails and Euro-style strategy games, came together with surprising clarity.

Some projects resist, push back or force you to start over. The Mix was the opposite: the more I explored it, the more it revealed itself.

A bartender, a notebook and a two-sided idea

The very first idea behind The Mix wasn’t only thematic, and it wasn’t only mechanical. It was both at once.

From the start, I had a very precise image in mind: ingredients layered in a clear glass, a cocktail built step by step, right before your eyes. A tactile, thematic mechanism you can read at a glance.

That image gave birth to the question that guided the whole project: can you create a satisfying engine-builder where the engine is a bar?

I was already exploring worker placement, timing puzzles and elegant resource chains. Mixology, with its blending, its upgrades and its rhythm, gave them a natural home. Talking with bartender friends, it became obvious: mixology is engine-building. It’s also storytelling, timing and optimization.

The game already knew what it wanted to be.

A messy first prototype, a crystal-clear vision

Like many designers, I love ugly prototypes. The first version of The Mix was as chaotic as it gets: coloured paper ingredients, hand-cut shakers, overloaded Cocktail cards… and plastic fixative caps standing in for glasses.

And yet, the game already had a soul.

The idea of building cocktails in clear glasses never changed, from one version to the next, from one playtest to the next. Everything else came together on its own, layer by layer. Just like a cocktail.

One golden rule

Very early on, one principle shaped the entire system: every action should either help you make a cocktail or make your bar better.

Everything flowed from that. Worker placement to fetch ingredients. Upgrading your bar as the engine. Tips as the reward loop. Layering ingredients at the heart of the game. And upgrades that give each bar its own identity.

No dead ends, no subsystems abandoned along the way: the mechanisms reinforced each other as if they had been waiting for this theme.

The right amount of complexity

I made a clear decision from the start: The Mix had to stay accessible, rewarding and smooth. An idea weighed the game down for no reason? I cut it. A mechanism added complexity without adding fun? Gone.

Playtests confirmed that direction. Players wanted meaningful decisions, great timing moments and clever combos, without being overwhelmed. The result: The Mix sits roughly at the level of Wingspan. Easy to learn, simple to teach, yet rich in timing puzzles, synergies and personal strategies.

It was almost like sculpting: every time the game grew bigger than it needed to be, I removed the excess to let its true shape appear.

The breakthrough: bar identity

One of the most satisfying moments came when the idea of bar identity emerged. The more I refined the system, the more I saw players develop completely different rhythms and styles:

• one bar focused on efficiency and speed;
• another went for big, high-value cocktails;
• another used tips as a renewable fuel.

None of it was forced: it came naturally out of the mechanics. Every game becomes the discovery of what your bar wants to be. To me, that’s the soul of the game.

Real bars, real people

A lot of the game’s energy comes from conversations with bartenders and mixology enthusiasts. Not for realism at all costs, but for atmosphere.

One of my best memories is from SPIEL Essen. Two bartenders who had seen the prototype invited me to their club, FACE. We talked cocktails, tasted a few creations, and the next day, watching me teach the game, one of them stopped and said: “Yes… this really is a mixology game.”

That sentence carried me through what came next.

The Mix today

After four years of development, The Mix is a strategy game about creativity. It blends worker placement, engine-building and resource management, rewards planning and timing, and every element serves the experience of the theme. An elegant celebration of mixology.

People often ask me: “Can you drink the cocktails you make in the game?” My answer: absolutely. The game pairs very well with a drink.

What’s next

Some games fight you every step of the way. The Mix grew with clarity and direction. It started as a clear glass filled with layered ingredients and became a warm game about expression, craft and precision.

And the adventure continues: expansions, modules, ingredient packs and new bar identities are in the works, always in the same spirit.

I hope that when you sit down at your bar (sorry, your table), you’ll feel the same creative energy: the joy of mixing something unique, building something that works, and sharing it.

Thanks for reading, and cheers!

Guime, Ruse Games

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