Tavern Keeper Early Access Review – Serving The Adventurers

Shop Simulator games have gained significant popularity over the past few years. While I have not been the biggest fan of the genre, I can see the appeal. As a fantasy nerd, I was thrilled when I learned about Tavern Keeper, as it combined the simulation aspect with one of my favorite genres. Running a tavern in a fantasy Dungeons & Dragons-style world, managing and decorating a cozy tavern, and interacting with various patrons and adventurers sounded like my ideal game.

Tavern Keeper, developed and published by Greenheart Games, is a management sim with RPG elements. It offers an engaging management gameplay, quirky characters and stories, and an extensive decoration system. The game was recently released into Early Access, offering a relatively well-balanced and content-rich experience in its early version.

One of the features of Tavern Keeper that I was eager to explore was the storytelling and the RPG elements of it. The storytelling happens through the “Magical Book” interface. The stories and dialogues are voiced, and the performances are perfectly suited to the game’s atmosphere. There are choices that we can make, as well as skill checks that we can succeed or fail, which will affect the outcome of the story. We allocate abilities to our character in the beginning that can adjust the success rate of skill checks and can push us to roleplay in certain ways. Both success and failure can lead to interesting events, but if we really want to succeed on a roll, we can use an ability that lets us try it again, with the drawback of increasing the chance of chaotic events happening in our tavern, such as fires, tavern brawls, or sickness afflicting our staff.

Tavern Keeper‘s main story is about us getting a tavern keeper’s license, renovating, and running taverns across three different regions. Each region has unique stories and challenges, or larger events that happen during the gameplay. There are also smaller side stories with our customers or staff that bring the characters to life and expand on the world’s events. There was a handful of interesting story events in addition the the main story in the Early Access version, but I hope we see more of them in the future.

The main story of Tavern Keeper also acts as a tutorial on how the gameplay works. The building aspect of the game revolves around setting up the layout of the rooms in the tavern, purchasing and arranging appliances and furniture. In the beginning, we are limited both by budget and by the game’s progress and can only get the minimum necessities. But in later stages of the game, we have a lot more variety in the items we can have in our tavern.

Decorations are also a large part of Tavern Keeper. We can decorate every piece of furniture with a variety of small decorations, lights, and even visual effects. The interface for decorating furniture resembles 3D modeling applications, and it’s a bit janky to use, so I didn’t get too much into it. However, there is a way for players to upload their creations within the game so others can use them in their taverns. There’s been a lot of effort put into this aspect of the game, and there are tons of decorations available, but the interface and mechanics could use some polish to make them easier to use.

To run a tavern, we need a staff, and hiring and managing a staff is a fun part of Tavern Keeper. Firstly, this is where the game’s visual design truly shines. The cartoonish and silly character designs add a lot of charm to the world. The staff can have different skills, needs, and good or bad traits that we need to consider before hiring them, and we need to provide a suitable work environment for them. In larger taverns, we will have more room to hire more staff, and can set up their schedules in a way to have the tavern open the whole day. Adjusting the shifts and making sure the tavern has enough staff to do various tasks is a bit complicated, but that is, of course, the nature of scheduling and not a fault of the game.

Meeting the needs of staff is important, as they might experience episodes of rage and destruction if they remain unhappy for long periods. Much like real life, we can appease them for a little while by giving them monetary bonuses, but that is not a permanent solution. By default, the staff will do any available job, be it serving drinks, cooking, or cleaning. But we can set limits on which staff can access certain appliances to focus on their specialized tasks. I found the system a bit odd that instead of adjusting their tasks in a personnel menu, we have to set the limit on the tap or oven instead.

The final step in running a successful tavern is having a steady stream of ingredients and supplies. A travelling merchant comes through every once in a while with some questionable drinks and food items, but at least they are pretty cheap. We can order higher quality ingredients from multiple stores in the world map, but they might take a day or more to arrive. Ingredients can also spoil over time, so managing our stock becomes a challenge in itself as we need to balance between running low and having our supplies rot.

There are a few things that were missing that I wish to see in future updates for Tavern Keeper. There is no way to expand the layout of the tavern, and we are limited to the original building in each region. There are no basements or secondary floors. And the interactions with the customers are minimal and only through side stories. Based on the game’s roadmap, these are not features that the developers want to put into the game, due to design or technical reasons. None of these are bad things, but they limit the game’s potential as a true sandbox experience and make it more of a linear and story-driven game.

Tavern Keeper offers a relatively complete experience in Early Access, with some interface issues that I hope will be addressed during development. The art style and character designs are stylish and memorable, the voice performances and sound design suit the vibe of the game, and the management aspect of the gameplay is challenging and deep.

Nima reviewed Tavern Keeper in Early Access on PC with a provided review code. This review is based on the version of the game available at the time of writing and will not be changed.