Three Swiss students developed the game The Last Eichhof. They called themselves Alpha Helix Productions and made a space shoot-'em-up that tells the story of Switzerland's last remaining local beer brand's struggle for independence, replacing enemy spaceships with beer bottles and glasses. In the narrative surrounding the last ‘Eichhof’, the Swiss beer must shoot its way through various levels to avert hostile takeover by large breweries.

The opponents consist mainly of other beer brands and alcoholic beverages. Of the two of the three students who came together under the developer studio Alpha Helix, only their pseudonyms are known: Daniel Schoch, alias ‘Tritone’, was responsible for programming, level design, and sound effects; ‘Zynax’ assisted with programming and worked on the music for the computer game, while ‘Tweety’ was responsible for the graphics.

Before The Last Eichhof, they had already worked on individual graphics demos, and The Last Eichhof was planned as such. The designers explain: “Originally, we wanted to include just a tiny little shoot 'em up game into a graphics demo (we produced quite a few in the early years). As we've put quite a lot of effort into this, we decided to work a little harder on it and turn it out as a freeware game. Actually, it's more a sort of a party game. Instead of fighting against spaceships (as in other conventional shoot 'em up games), you have to shoot beer bottles, barrels, whisky glasses, aspirin pills, and so on. As we grew up in the middle of Switzerland (ZUG, Innerschweiz), we first started drinking EICHHOF beer (you could also say we grew up with this beer!!). The kind of beer you started with is mostly the beer you like best, as you probably know, and so we decided to dedicate our game to the good old Brewery of Eichhof in Luzern. We also think that you shouldn't support the very big breweries (I guess you know which breweries we mean), and that's why we also built up a little background story for this game.” (Source: Swiss Games Garden)

In an extremely comprehensive analysis, Colin Grunow and Lara Valsamidis demonstrate how The Last Eichhof is permeated by explicit and implicit, interwoven, and mutually reinforcing political statements, myths, and topoi that transform the game into a political system of meaning, not only on the surface but also in its deeper layers. (Source: https://spielkult.hypotheses.org/5209) A major strength lies in the creation of emotional resonance and identification, which is articulated not only through messages that are at times bold and at times subtle, but also through aesthetics, game mechanics, and, to a large extent, through humor and self-irony. Equally significant are the areas of tension and opposed axes that span the gap between the object of criticism and the strategy for overcoming it. In this sense, “Fight Fire with Fire” possesses no explicitly progressive potential to overturn existing relations of domination and power.

Read the analysis here: Colin Grunow und Lara Valsamidis “Ein Spiel kämpft um die letzte unabhängige größere Brauerei in der Schweiz: The Last Eichhof.” in:  Spiel-Kultur-Wissenschaften, http://spielkult.hypotheses.org/5209 12.11.2023.