TL;DR - everything about actually working inside the tavern is fantastic, but the game wants you to do everything else, and it fails at all of it.

I think everything with actually "running" the tavern is really good. Like, I like running around the tavern with a friend taking care of orders. The chaos is really good. You have the choice to cook everything beforehand and set up the menu prior, or just send all and cook as you go. I think that core loop is really good. But there are so many other things to the game and they kind of all take away from it and accentuate the bad, rather than the good. And there's a lot. And it's really just numbers that need to be changed.

Part of preparing for the tavern is doing farming or straight up buying ingredients. Like, you can choose to just buy a barrel of whatever drink, or you can grow the crop and brew the drink for vastly less money. Which is pretty common for games like this. But, when it comes to the food, that's not really the case, and the food can be a slog to get. You have to run out into the sparse world and rely on RNG to get ingredients. I spent about ten minutes running around looking for mushrooms and found literally two, but I did find a bunch of loot crates containing paintings I already had, so that was cool.

Being out in the world kind of is the worst part, which would be fine, because this is ultimately a tavern simulator, right? But you spend SO MUCH TIME out in the empty world. Like, vastly more time than you spend cooking or actually working in the tavern. Like, if the world was empty, like it is, but I spent most of my time inside the tavern, away from the world, doing what this game does best, that would be just fine, and I could overlook it. But the game kinda just shoves you out of the tavern to do "quests."

The quests are truly awful. Everything about them is bad. Like, I like the idea that you get introduced to new "items" diegetic rather than with a menu, but I'd really honestly rather have the menu in this case. These "quests" are just fetch quests with a ton of extra dialogue. And the extra dialogue is meant to be laughed at, but neither my friend or I were laughing. We were just trying to skip through it. But even then, there are more "jokes" than useful dialogue. And for every ~15 minutes we would spend running the tavern, it felt like there was an hour of running around doing these insufferable quests. It kind of just ended up being insulting to my friend.

And the things you are fetching just require you to do the same thing you are already doing, but you end up having to do "more" of it. Like, you cook potatoes to sell them, and it may take 10 potatoes to make that recipe, and you make money from it. But not with these quests. Now you need 20 potatoes, along with other ingredients that you have to slowly forage for in the wild. But now you may get money, but you still have to spend that money in a menu to get the item the quest was for. Like what was the point of doing a worse version of the core gameplay to end up back in a menu? Like I level up and "unlock" the musket, but I can't buy the musket until I give this guy in the woods the potatoes (and other items). Then I have to go back to the trader and buy the musket in his menu. Dude, just cut out the mission. It just feels like padding for playtime.

And the game really pushes you to spend time out in the world in a few (other) ways. The first is that the progression is simply too fast. In one 15 minute sitting of running the tavern, we would skyrocket up in levels. And every single level comes with a 15 minute quest. It was like watching ads in a mobile game to speed up the cooldown timer. I think this is the main issue. Just make me work for my levels inside the tavern. Like, just bump up the "requirements" like 3x and the spawning of things in the environment by 5x (side-note: we had a mission to kill three bears and no bears spawned for two IRL play sessions) and we are good. That would make the ratio of time inside to time outside much more bearable. I think even the jokes would actually land because we aren't getting them blown in our faces constantly.

The second one is the foraging. This would be fine as well, but things just don't spawn. Like, I ran around the map twice before I got one mushroom. I spent twenty minutes fishing for pufferfish (also, the fishing minigame is rough, and just because of the quick degradation) and only caught one, but I did catch a ton of trout and other things I couldn't use. All this so we could fight the cultist. It was like READING the Battle for Helms Deep. This is a game, I want that experience to be like WATCHING the Battle for Helms Deep; way less prep. And at that point, I shut the game off and started this review.

The third, and most frustrating, is the "kings?" who enter the tavern. Every single one of them asked for two dishes we didn't have. Like, no matter what. So what was the point of them? We wouldn't sell them anything, we would just shoo them away with no consequence. But it would push us to do the missions because it meant there was something to unlock. So we tried that.

Like, everything to do with actually running the tavern is amazing, but the game forces you into doing everything else, and it just makes those things worse. Like the combat, it's serviceable, and it really shouldn't be better than it is, but you spend so much time doing it it becomes another friction point. The open world being sparse would be fine, but the game forces you out into it most of the time. I think this game just feels unbalanced, but I don't know the last time I found a game as unbalanced as this.

my tavern has 5 stars, a loyal customer base, and a thriving menu. meanwhile, i’ve died 12 times to wolves while trying to pick apples. this game is art

This was a fun game, but it just felt so underdeveloped. The tavern management was great and I enjoyed playing this with my friends but it had no depth and got stale quite fast. Combat is quite boring and repetitive and most quests were just fetch quests running back and forth to the base to pad out gameplay. Though I enjoyed playing with my friends we basically smashed through the whole game in one afternoon.
Feels like an Early access game but is already fully released.

Nice little cozy Tavern management sim, with incredibly simple side quests (think fetch quests and "kill X" quests) and a short run time. Started and finished a little under 15.5 hours while playing with a second person. The days and nights are long, and you can choose whenever you want to open or close the tavern. During our playthrough, we were "open" for about 7 days, and "closed" for seven days to gather resources or do side quests. Money comes easily, and you will have an abundance of it by the fourth day. Unlocking new items is done by leveling up your tavern rating AND doing side quests. This is definitely a "sit back and relax, you paid $15 (I paid $10 on sale) for this game and you will get $15 worth of game for 15 hours." You could probably beat it under that time if you really hone in and focus. Nothing Extraordinary, Nothing Terrible. Solid game for the price.

I would love to recommend this game, because honestly, I did have fun. The only reason I am not is because it only took me 13 hours to finish the game - and I solo'd it. DO NOT BUY THIS AT FULL PRICE. I only paid 10 bucks, so I'm not too put out.

It has some good foundations, like I said, I did have fun. But there is a lot they could do to make this a game worthy of its full price tag.

Some time management mechanics would be good. When time is meaningless and stamina is infinite, there is zero need for any sort of management. Run around and do whatever, whenever. It makes for a very VERY short game.

Economy is meaningless as well - I had more money than I knew what to do with - despite their weird attempts to balance by making things consumable (like tools, weapons, plates and mugs).

The voice acting is...well, they put in effort and I appreciate that. But it's unskippable and some of the dialogue and acting physically made me cringe. and I do mean you can't skip, if you walk away the dialogue restarts. I found that I would just start some dialogue and just take a bio break, because it was better than standing there fighting through their attempts to make bad jokes. I will say I did love the songs they made for the jukebox, I thought it was a neat idea to create songs based on the quests.

If they did an overhaul of their time management and economy mechs and made dialogue skippable, then I think they would have something great here. If a dev reads this, some ideas

- Stick in a small room for the tavern owner(s) that you can decorate, and also means you have to sleep. Infinite stamina is silly, I shouldn't be able to slaughter pigs, garden, fish, fight zombies, and then run a full day of tavern cooking and serving. There's a reason games like Story of Seasons and Stardew have time and stamina management.

- There are fun ways to economy manage too - weather based would be a good one, maybe on a rainy day soup would sell better. Or breakfast, lunch, and dinner foods would sell better based on the time they are sold. It would make the player(s) have to actually manage instead of throw up whatever food you had the most of.

- Slow down crop growth and animal reproduction. Force variety - you have so many dishes, but its easy to fall into cooking the same rotations of dishes cause they're easy to come by.

This one is specifically because I HATE being attacked in my own damn tavern if I need to pause for a second. Why the hell are zombies able to just run into your tavern and ♥♥♥♥ your ♥♥♥♥ up? That should be removed entirely, or at the very least, have a defence option.

But this is getting long so TLDR: Buy on sale, game could be much better if they put in more effort, the dialogue and VA is cringe, let us skip it.

I enjoyed this game mostly but I actually went back to the store page after nearing the end to check that this isn't in early access. The amount of bugs, lack of polish, the lack of depth in content, and the poor balance made me seriously question my purchase and the reviews for this game.

My experience with this game was solo and slow as I had an audiobook going while I played. Many times I would unlock things without having the required quest done, or a few of the ones before. There are so many bugs that it is surprising that this game is well past 1.0. For a solo played the balance was completely off and even with friends I would question some of the decisions made. Many things will not render, the map is tiny, there is very little to do, and the combat is unsatisfying.

This game shines for a few hours and then collapses right as you reach the middle. I would suggest buying it on sale with friends and expecting the fun to come from the people you are with.

There is only one way that I can describe this game: Empty. It is just a hollow shell of a game. There isn't much story and the quests are all geared towards unlocking things around the tavern. Growing crops and making new recipes. The "fun" or core of the game is that it is multiplayer. Solo is just empty. You'll play it for an hour or two but by the third, you'll see just how much of a void this game is. Not in a good way. The only time you see NPCs is when your doing a delivery order or watching them spawn in and walk into the tavern. Actually running the tavern is okay but it can be very overwhelming trying handle everything on your own. Keeping dishes and ale cooking, washing dishes to serve NPCs, and actually serving the NPCs. Keeping crops growing to keep the food and ale coming. It's a lot to manage on your own. The map is small and the graphics are okay. Not anything incredible. If you are still interested, I would recommend grabbing it on sale or planning to buy it with a group of friends. You'll get the most enjoyment out of this game playing with friends. Or wait a little while and see if they come out with any new conten to fill the void. If I hadn't bought the game as a bundle deal, I would absolutely be refunding.

This game was fun! I 100%'ed the game, so you don't have to.

You CAN farm! .... in two crop plots. (There are like 10 different crops though, and in order to grow your tavern efficiently, you have to micromanage it to death.
You CAN perform animal husbandry! ..... with Chickens and Pigs. Only.
You CAN hunt! ... But the resources you get are so minuscule, its hardly worth the effort spent.
You CAN forage! ... But mushrooms and other materials are so few and far between that its almost not worth your time.
You CAN fight enemies and complete quests! .... But fighting feels floaty. All enemies do the same amount of damage, and take about the same amount of time to kill, though; so the fights aren't very engaging. Spin to win.
You CAN be an apothecary! .... but there are 14 different potions, and all of them have no purpose aside from helping you for 60 seconds.
You CAN run a tavern! .... but you're locked to an orientation and you can't change it. Space is very limited, and locked to your arbitrary "tavern level," and speed of customers depend on Money earned. You also can't rename your tavern to fit your own personality. Table, chair, and food placement is extremely limited to the arbitrary limits of the games' programming.
You CAN explore the world! .... but its small, has very little in it worth exploring, and annoys you if you come anywhere near the world border. (I get it, nobody's looking after the tavern.)
You CAN bond and explore with NPC's! .... but every single NPC has crass, dad, fourth-wall breaking dialogue that seems like it shouldn't fit with the setting of the game. On top of that, once the quests have completed, all you can get from them is "Thanks for the help!"
You CAN level up your tavern! But the cash, and "tavern levels" do nothing for you except unlock more recipes and buy more stuff that you can spend in your tavern. Late game, it all serves little meaning because if you just appease the VIP's, you max everything out VERY quickly. (You can get like 5 VIP's at the same time and get 4+ levels all at once.)

tl;dr: The game *IS* worth the 20 hours of game play it took me to 100% it, but has nothing to keep you playing it or coming back. Its a cheap, witty, quick game with very little content, and its systems aren't fleshed out very well - everything feels like its being given to you on a rail, where you complete it the way they want you to, with very little customization of *how* you'd do it yourself. If you're into that, please do play it and keep this in mind.

I'd love to see them expand the world, expand the interact-able characters and give them more *anything*, build on all the concepts that they've vaguely touched on (let us have more crops, more animal pens, more animal types, more food types, more tavern building, more..... basically everything. Don't just put out a cheap cash grab that gives you all the basic systems that serve very little purpose in the long run, never expanding on them, ever. Let us run a tavern the way we want to.

There's a lot that could work here but there is no depth to the systems and progression seemed an afterthought. It is good to see the devs are active and seem to be releasing updates and patches so future updates might flesh out their vision.

For the price, even on sale, there is not enough to justify purchase. 11 hours in and you're done all the quest including a boring time sink forcing you to fish for an hour.

Maybe with further development of systems, character growth, better combat, it would be good, but this feels more like an early access game that was just released rather than a full game.

Short and fun little tavern manager, better with friends :)