Recent reviews by Deathstar

Anno meets Lovecraft - Is this a union for the ages or should this one be returned to the abyss immediately?

Worshippers of Cthulhu is a city builder and real-time strategy game that makes no effort in hiding the fact that it plays very similarly to the Anno series. Your building space is limited by the confines of your islands, you build on a grid system, buildings need to be connected via roads, islands have set resource spots, you have different levels of worshippers (citizens) who can work different jobs and have more sophisticated needs as they level up... you get the jist.

However, Worshippers of Cthulhu sets itself apart by introducing a number of mechanics around its setting inspired by the unsettling works of H.P. Lovecraft. You do not build ships, instead you summon various horrors from the deep which you then use to eradicate non-believers and capture more islands for yourself. Various rituals help in generating your main currency, faith, as well as increase your population's fanaticism which itself yields increasingly powerful bonuses. Rituals require material offerings as well as human sacrifices, which adds a layer of depth in managing your overall population. Periodically, you'll get a handful of new worshippers eager to serve the Great Old One. Building houses adds them to the workforce. Production buildings need to be micro-managed a little by actually assigning workers to them, with each household having their own preference of where they'd best be used.

Like in Anno, your higher level worshippers are more difficult to maintain since they will demand more goods and services to be available to them. Generally, the higher tier goods can only be made by higher tier worshippers as well and ascending any worker will lock them out of doing lower tier labour. In return, sacrificing a happy high tier worshipper yields bonus rewards for you. All of this is done to please Cthulhu, of course, who has a patience meter that continuously ticks down. When it runs out, it's game over. Doing quests and high value sacrifices helps keep the Great One happy, but this mechanic can also be entirely toggled off.

The game takes you through a campaign that teaches you the basics in increasingly challenging missions with the overall goal of rousing Cthulhu from the depths of R'lyeh. Overall, the game is less complex than Anno, with more simple production chains and some major quality-of-life features such as a globally shared inventory, meaning there is no need to set up transport routes between your islands. Presently, there are only three levels of worshippers and a handful of different horrors you can use in combat. The graphics look a little dated, but I'd argue that those are secondary in a game of this particular genre. Managing your population is the deepest gameplay loop thus far and it can be a little finicky at times, hopefully this'll get addressed during the Early Access development.

If you like games similar to Anno and especially if you're a fan of Lovecraftian settings, I'd say give this one a try!

Who knows the end? What has risen may sink, and what has sunk may rise. Loathsomeness waits and dreams in the deep, and decay spreads over the tottering cities of men.

After a lengthy period in Early Access, UBOAT has finally released. Will this submarine simulation make you want to rewatch Das Boot or reminisce about playing Silent Hunter in the good old days, or will it sink like the Titanic?

UBOAT puts you in charge of a German submarine during World War 2. At its core, UBOAT is a crew management game that occasionally transitions into proper submarine combat simulation. You can choose to start your campaign right at the onset of WW2 and theoretically play all the way through to the end of the war in a single save game. The gameplay loop consists of picking up a broad mission in port, then heading out to sea to find worthwhile targets to sink. Your officers and crewmen gain experience over time and can pick up perks. Likewise, your ship can be upgraded and even switched out for a more modern one with better sensors, engines and more torpedoes. You decide on which research to pursue as you engage in an arms race against the Allies, who will have periodical breakthroughs that make your life as a submarine captain much more difficult. What's cool is that you will sometimes get special missions to intercept convoys carrying prototypes for better sonar/radar - Destroying these will delay their efforts. Occasionally, you will get tasked with recovering a lost Enigma machine before the Allies do, or smuggle an agent into Britain. Not every mission has you hunting after enemy convoys, which is a welcome bit of variety.

Crew management is your main focus during the voyage parts of each mission. Making sure your radio officer is rested up for your routine hydrophone checks, assigning additional sailors to your skipper when having him look for targets or having your engineer on duty to minimize your fuel consumption (which with the early uboats is a major concern) - All this is up to you to handle, but some automation is available (schedules, task priorities etc.).

The submarine combat simulation part is as detailed and realistic as you want it to be. The game will ask you if you'd like a cinematic experience or a realistic one. In cinematic mode, you never really have to do any calculations or plotting yourself, you can simply approach targets and assign your officers to come up with a firing solution, they'll identify the target and eventually give you a solid trajectory. Of course, even in this mode, attacking a convoy with escort ships can be quite tricky, as the enemy destroyers and cruisers can be relentless in their pursuit.
If you prefer realism, you can operate the torpedo computer yourself in first person!

UBOAT is probably the closest modern product you'll get to relive the Silent Hunter glory days. Solid recommendation for anyone who's into the genre as a whole.

RimWorld - Anomaly is the newest expansion Tynan surprised us with and it lets your colonists dive into the realms of the Void - A parallel dimension which is leaking all sorts of horrors into the already-dangerous world of the Rim. Does Anomaly breathe new life into the game like the other expansions did or is it dead on arrival?

Unlike all the other DLC, Anomaly is basically entirely opt-in, meaning you won't interact with the new mechanics all that much unless you either choose the Anomaly start or begin exploring the new structure that will generate on your map. Some Anomaly events will still happen to you, but they can usually just flat-out be refused. Previous DLC, especially Biotech (my personal favourite), integrated seamlessly into the rest of the game and enriched it right from the core. Anomaly, on the other hand, should be seen almost as a standalone expansion.

Many players critizised that progression in Anomaly is very combat-focused. This is true and won't appeal to everyone. Some late game events that can happen to you are downright punishing and can easily lead to your colony's demise. This is somewhat by design, after all: If you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back at you.
The upside is that the more Void stuff you endure, the more of its forbidden knowledge you gain and can ultimately use for yourself, like dark rituals where you summon a random pawn from somewhere in the world, ready for imprisonment or even a substance that lets you resurrect the dead as mindless zombies.

Anomaly also has a system where you can capture most of the new Void monsters and keep them alive in your base for study and harvesting - Just make sure your containment cells are strong enough.

The only things that disappointed me slightly were the lack of replayability and integration with older DLC. Since the progression in Anomaly is very story-driven, once you've been down the entire path, you won't really see anything totally different on your next playthrough. I would have also really liked some more Biotech features here, the new entities are "just" monsters that you can not gene-splice, which is unfortunate. Anomaly currently stands mostly on its own.

If you enjoy a challenge and have a pretty good grasp of the Rimworld combat mechanics, this DLC will throw entirely new things at you to overcome. If you're more of a colony builder, then Anomaly may be too "annoying", but luckily the really bad stuff only starts happening after you decide that it's time. Overall I would rate this DLC a little lower than the previous ones, but it's still a solid expansion which also opens the door for plenty new mods that could potentially expand the roster of twisted creatures you can capture, SCP style.

As is often the case, the question of wether I would recommend this game or not cannot be answered by a simple 'yes' or 'no'. Since I am forced to decide, I will simply say yes, BUT...
Let's examine this game and see for ourselves if it's a cheap cash grab or a faithful recreation of the classic film it's based on.

The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (TCM) is an asymmetric horror game that pits four "victims" against three members of the murderous Sawyer family including Bubba aka Leatherface, one of the most iconic killers in cinema history alongside other family members from the first film and the sequels. The victims win by escaping one of currently three maps (obviously including the infamous Sawyer house), the family wins by killing them. Victims can fight back, though are limited in their options to do so - Ultimately, their goal is to evade the family and sneak their way to victory.

Every match in TCM follows a set of rules. All victims begin in the basement of the map and initially have only one psychopath to worry about: Bubba, the worst one of the lot. The two other family members can not enter the basement until the victims make enough noise to wake the ever-present NPC grandpa (who acts as a sonar to detect victims) by rushing actions or by opening one of the doors leading upstairs. If Bubba gets a fast kill or if grandpa is fed enough blood, the rest of the family may also enter the basement early. Every map has four major exits, each secured by some sort of switch/generator/pressure valve that the victims will first need to deal with - all while running from the family.
This formulaic gameplay is the first potential issue that TCM has - It just makes you wish for a little more variety. Don't get me wrong, the first few matches I've played as either side were absolutely thrilling and immersive, but since there are very clearly defined things to do each match, this quickly boils down to the victims immediately discussing one of the now meta strategies, wether this be "rush basement exit" or "rush back exit". This takes the fun out of the game somewhat.

There is some variety in that every killer and every victim comes with unique skills and a few different builds you can specialise in, but they don't change the gameplay all that much. Adding in more killers or alternate powers for the existing ones later down the line could help increase TCM's lifespan.
What's nice is that you have native VOIP support for both teams, which is actually necessary for characters like The Cook, who can hear victims but is himself quite slow, so being able to relay the info you get to your team is important. Unlike other asymmetric games which feature one killer vs a group of survivors, it is refreshing to see a team of killers. This means you can play with your friends even if you prefer playing as the killer(s).

What must be said is that the devs did accomplish one of their goals: TCM is a faithful recreation both in tone and in attention to detail. The family's house is just as unsettling here as it was in the films.

So, should you get this game? If you enjoy a thrilling but casual cat-and-mouse type of game then yes, TCM will hold your attention for a while. If you're looking for a new party game to play with a couple of your friends then yes, grab it.
If, however, you are looking for a perfectly balanced game that'll still have a competitive playerbase for years then no, unless TCM gets major content additions on a regular basis, it will never be what you're looking for.

Project Zomboid is the best zombie survival game there is, it's that simple. Okay, maybe not quite that simple, as this may or may not be true based on your expectations of what a "zombie survival game" should be. Should it be realistic? Should it just let you mow down hordes of zombies in a cathartic killing spree? Should it be difficult? How many RPG elements should be in it? Let's try to narrow down exactly what Project Zomboid offers and if it could indeed fit your idea of the "best" zombie game.

To understand what Project Zomboid is, it could be worthwhile to single out what it isn't. It isn't an "easy" game. It is neither easy to play for the first time nor does it compare well to other zombie survival games. The isometric perspective and the somewhat unintuitive controls cause Project Zomboid to be quite a daunting experience in a first playthrough. A lot of trial and error and, consequently, a lot of dying is absolutely a part of the gameplay experience. Indeed, each run in Project Zomboid starts with the phrase "This is how you died...", hinting at the fact that it is very much expected that your character will eventually get overwhelmed by the many dangers of a post-apocalyptic land filled with the flesh-eating abominations that once lived there peacefully. Project Zomboid is very much a simulation of what surviving such a hostile environment entails. You will need to forage for food, catch rain with pots and pans and learn practical skills such as carpentry, metalworking or fishing. Most importantly, however, is that you need to be very careful and deliberate with your each and every move. Zombies are quite plentiful and new hordes will always form, especially in urban areas rich in supplies. Killing a single zombie is almost laughably easy. Killing two or three can be a little more challenging, especially if you do not have a weapon. Any more than that, and you will seriously need to consider the risk versus reward factor. Is it worth completely exhausting your character, killing 30 or so zombies by hand, just so you can loot a tiny corner store in relative peace? Should you use the shotgun you found in a police station to clear out a particular area, or will the noise just attract more freaks to your location? Should you just push through a horde with your car, or will that damage the engine too much? Is your new safe house really safe, or is it right between where a large horde is and where it's going next? These questions constantly keep you on your toes and if you do get overwhelmed, it is often the end. Each scratch delivered by an infected may infect you as well, which is a certain game over. If you get bit, that's a guaranteed infection. An interesting meta aspect of the game is that you can keep playing in your current world even after your character dies - As a brand new character. This means that you can take advantage of anything you built with your previous character and any supplies they've hoarded can be yours for the taking as well. You can even go to where you died to find your character, now likely part of the shambling hordes themselves, to reclaim any important gear they had on them such as car keys or a military backpack.

The above experience is strictly based on the vanilla settings of Project Zomboid. It is worth noting that you can customise these to your heart's content when starting a new world. Fewer or more zombies? No problem. Zombies that sprint after you instead of slowly shuffling? Also possible. Finite zombie hordes that do not repopulate after you kill them? It's all in the settings so you can make the game as easy or as hard as you'd like. Add to that the phenomenal selection of community-created mods available through the Workshop and you get to decide exactly how your world should look and feel. You can add tons of content to the game, new guns, new cars, entirely new towns that fit seamlessly into the game world, or you can change some core mechanics to more suit your playstyle. You don't like that an RNG infection will just always kill you? There's a mod that gives you a chance to survive an infection with proper care. Or maybe you'd instead like to roleplay as a brave scientist looking for a cure? Also a mod for that. I myself put together a collection of mods intended to enhance the vanilla playstyle with more content without drastically changing the game, you can find the full guide and collection here.

Admittedly, Project Zomboid may not be for everyone. No matter how much you tweak the settings, the game will always reward a slow and methodical playstyle, as well as a drive to learn more about its mechanics, how zombies can be manipulated, how your character's moods work and how you can best improve any particular skill. If you do enjoy all of this, the game is a compelling storytelling engine that will give you a different experience everytime you start a new game. Surviving for over a year of ingame time and building up a somewhat self-sustaining safe hub on an abandoned farm can be quite rewarding, as is hoarding guns and ammo to eventually take out and go on an all-out rampage in town with. You have to set your own goals, the game only gives you one: Survive for as long as you can.

After what feels like an eternity, Project Zomboid is still in Early Access. This is often a bad sign, but in this case, it shows that the game is still under active development. Every major patch promises huge changes to the game and plenty of content. Currently, the developers are working on AI controlled animals to hunt and domesticate, which in the long run may open up the possibilities for AI survivors to interact with and/or fight. Currently, you are the only survivor in singleplayer, with the endless undead being your only company. However, this could change very soon. Similarly, the developers listened to the community who have expressed a desire for being able to play a character for a very long time. This means more ways to live off the land, more primitive crafting skills that help you create tools that may never get manufactured in a factory again. Maybe find ways to generate electricity long after the power plants have shut down and all the gas pumps have run out of fuel. All these features will eventually be added.

Another huge feature is the multiplayer. You could team up with some friends to improve your odds of surviving, or you could find a server with different factions and actually fight others for control of valuable areas. While PvP is currently not the most balanced experience, the possibilities of roleplay servers are endless. This will again depend on your personal preferences, as it turns Project Zomboid into a very different game.

I will stick to what I stated in the introduction: Project Zomboid is the best zombie survival game IF you like the genre, want a customisable but overall difficult and realistic simulation type game and are a fan of a healthy dose of RPG elements. Also, there is a bit of a time commitment that is needed when you first get into the game. It's easy to try it out, die because you didn't know how to vault a window and then never play it again. If you do give it a chance though, it may well be one of the most unique games you'll ever play and the future is looking bright for this title with its huge fanbase, active modding community and the dedicated dev team that's constantly working on new, exciting features for this labour of love.

Big Ambitions is a contender for the most aptly named game out there. This surprise title is brimming with potential and incredibly addictive gameplay right from the start. But can it hold your attention while you work and/or gamble your way to becoming the next big business magnate?

The game starts quite realistically. You have no money, no car and no place to stay, which is a pretty awful thing when you live in New York City. Luckily, your rich uncle steps up to act as your mentor, tells you to grab a small business loan and to rent a place for yourself to live in as well as a property to open a tiny gift shop in. Right from the get-go, you can't help but be impressed by what the game is promising to be. You control your own character at all times, but can manage deliveries, staff and other things via your phone. You outfit your own store yourself, by purchasing individual furniture pieces, loading them into your car, driving down to the shop and then grabbing them one by one to place them. One look at the map shows you that nearly every building in the game is purchaseable and can act as either a home, a warehouse or a place to run a business in. This gets you hooked, makes you want to put in the effort to eventually own most of the city. Maybe you could control the entire liquor market and create artificial shortages to manipulate the demand... The possibilities seem endless, especially once your uncle tells you that demand for certain products fluctuates and is also different for each neighbourhood.

This is the part of the review where I finally tell you why it is marked as a negative one. The phenomenal early game experience simply does not last. After opening a couple of businesses, you quickly realise that you've already hit the end game. There is very little difference between running a tiny corner shop versus a gigantic jewelry emporium in the heart of the city, with the exception being that larger stores are a pain to furnish. It feels great to outfit your starter shop yourself, grabbing individual shelves from the back of your car and placing them with care, but having to do the same for a large clothes store that needs you to place over 40 clothes racks to satisfy customer capacity gets dull very fast. There are no options to automate the more tedious aspects of the game later on, which puts a dampener on the experience. It would have been great to be able to save a template for your stores that you can later apply to others you open, to save you some manual labour. Isn't being rich all about just throwing money at stuff so you don't have to do anything? Let me pay some muscle to get my store ready for me, thank you.
Even if you enjoy manually furnishing your businesses, you'll likely never even set foot back in them once they're up and running. Hiring and training staff is done through menus, as is assigning them to their work schedules. Once that's done, you automate the supply line using a warehouse and your HQ workers, the purchase and logistics agents. Again, you unfortunately cannot just tell the people you pay to handle your logistics to actually handle your logistics autonomously. You will need to set exact purchase limits and frequencies, as well as how much stock your stores should receive. Optimising this is a matter of watching the balance for a few days, then adjusting, then leaving it forever (or until you open another business that uses the same goods). It would have been nice to have an option to let some skilled managers handle this aspect as well once you're so rich that you really can't be bothered anymore.

The need for manual micro management on your part makes buying out other businesses more of a tedium. They do come pre-furnished, but often need a few extra pieces that you will have to lug on over. Then, you will need to integrate your new acquisition into your supply chain by adjusting the imports and stock levels and assigning HQ agents to it. Tedious!
Now, you would think that with such a heavy focus on micro management, there would be lots of things to actually manage. Tons of different products, maybe from different suppliers and/or countries. Rare artisan products with huge individual profit magins versus mass produced garbage that sells really well. Unfortunately, not really. Again, in the early game you are almost delusional at the prospect of running many different kinds of shops, but ultimately, there is only a handful of business types available. These are split into shops and offices. Offices are totally hands-off once you assign employees and maybe buy some marketing for them, they'll just start generating passive income. Shops are slightly more involved in that they need a supply chain, but you only ever have to worry about a handful of products. Gift shops for instance can only sell three types of goods: Cheap gifts, expensive gifts and soda cans. Meh. I would have liked more variety maybe. Same with the building interiors, these are the same for all properties and only vary by size and type of business. Some unique designs would have been awesome.

I believe the game is struggling with its own identity. It wants to be a business sim, but it has a bunch of life sim aspects in it that slow it down. But neither aspect is 100% fleshed out, so ultimately, they both fall just short of being great. This game is almost amazing. It's so unique and it conjurs up images of old-school business tycoons but it just doesn't reach that level of complexity. Once you have a comfortable enough passive income (which is not hard to achieve), you lack motivation to move on. From that point, it's closer to an AFK clicker game than a business sim, open another few stores to watch that number go up, done. Reaching the zenith of New York high society should feel like a rush, instead it is a sad realization that you've exhausted what fun you had in the game. Maybe that's a hidden message to us, the audience, that money cannot buy happiness?

I will say that the game is still in Early Access, so additional business types and goods can easily be added, as well as features such as auto-furnish or auto-balancing supply chains. However, I'm not sure how the actual end game can be improved with just more content.

Most negative reviews seem to focus solely on either the anti-cheat software that comes with this game or with its supposed Pay-2-Win monetization model. I won't go into the spyware debate at all and as far as Pay-2-Win is concerned, it doesn't seem too bad.
Yes, the game aggressively pushes in-app purchases such as the already existing season pass or the outrageously overpriced cosmetics that you need to buy before they rotate out. It's disappointing, but not totally P2W. There are consumables that allow for the use of a high level hero in one match, but with the way the game works, everyone must initially spawn in with a very basic hero and get points before they can start using their higher tier characters. You are supposed to build a balanced hero selection with options for every stage of a match, but enough about that.

Is the game good?

Not particularly. It's flashy, it's noisy, it's chaotic. Think old school WoW battlegrounds, or maybe Guild Wars 2's World v World v World. Lots of characters using all sorts of colourful abilities until one side overruns the other. This does, in principle, sound like fun and this style of game is very successful especially in MMOs and some Battle Royales, but crucially, Warlander's action lacks impact, depth and feedback.
Melee fights between two knights often devolve into wild slashing whilst using abilities immediately on cooldown. Ranged attacks plink away at your health without you even realising. Hits don't feel like they have any weight, neither for you as the attacker, nor for the defender. If you don't keep looking at your health bar all the time, it is almost impossible to know just how close to death you are.
Which is somewhat pointless anyhow, as the time-to-kill is incredibly short, especially if using wizards and some knight builds. Sadly, this wasn't changed all that much since beta, despite many opinions having been voiced. The poor balancing turns what could have been a strategic MOBA-esque game into a spam and rush fest that ultimately does not feel satisfying. Siege battles, Warlander's main game mode, do not feel like sieges at all, but rather like a MOBA without minions, on a smaller map, with only three hero classes to choose from who kill each other very quickly, with the first snowball usually spelling the end for the other team as there is no inherent base defense outside of the need to break down gates or build ladders.
The lack of strategic or mechanical depth is made worse by the sometimes clunky controls and random bits of terrain you seem to get stuck on while running, which in a game where you're sprinting at full speed toward the enemy for most of the time, is quite jarring. Melee has a wonky lock-on feature that kicks in when you're close enough to an enemy, which also doesn't always feel smooth.
Overall, it's disappointing, doubly so because the balancing remains as bad as it was during the beta test.

If you're looking for a game you can just hop onto and play a couple of quick matches without stressing out, maybe give Warlander a try - It's Free-to-Play, after all. If you prefer games that reward your time with meaningful progression, engaging game mechanics and strategic depth, I would give it a miss.

V Rising was a bit of a surprise for me, I hadn't really heard much about the game prior to its release into Early Access. On the surface, it might look like a somewhat generic survival game with a vampire theme, but is there more to it? Does it fulfill your darkest desires or does it burn to ash in the sunlight? Let's find out.

In V Rising, you're a vampire lusting for blood and revenge after many years of slumber. The game plays much like Diablo and other isometric looter games, but it's actually a survival game at heart with some RPG elements sprinkled it. Really, if I had to give you a list of games that were combined within this title I'd also mention Valheim and Rust - Yes, Rust. Much like Valheim, you are quickly encouraged to find a place to settle down and build a more permanent base. You got your basic resource gathering, which is fairly quick and your tools have tons of durability. You also need to drink, blood of course. Any living foe with low health can be drained, which refills your ever-decreasing blood meter and also grants you passive abilities based on the type of enemy you took a bite out of - Roguish enemies give you crit chance, warriors strength buffs, animals movement speed and you even have workers for increased resource gain. Everyone has a random blood quality percentage assigned to them and the better it is, the more buffs you get for your "class". You can swap classes as easily as just draining a different host.
Like Rust, however, your permanent base may not be so permanent, depending on other players' whims. If you're playing on a PvP server, not only can you get slapped around by other vampires, they can also raid your base during certain times of the day. Naturally, the game can also be played in PvE mode, either on a server, with friends only or entirely by yourself. I would argue that the game design rewards having at least some other players around to cooperate with, however. The game can support immense player numbers as well, although the decent-sized map feels a lot more cramped if there's 50 vamps roaming it at the same time, farming the bosses you currently need.

Progression in V Rising is largely tied to the bosses you kill, again much like Valheim. There's over 20 of them to go after and every one of them rewards you with some new tech or ability, giving you a natural reason to build a base and then go hunt for them. Many of the required resources early on come from NPC encampments, too, so you'll be roaming frequently, but be careful: There is a day and night cycle and the sun does burn you up quickly. What's really neat is that you can stick to the shadows during the day and be totally fine - Any dynamic shadow works, trees, walls and even the occasional cloud! So this is your loop - You build a beginners base, gather more resources, kill some early bosses for much-needed tech, then come back and improve your own equipment, which is the only way to actually level in V Rising, as that's entirely tied to your gear score.

As far as gameplay is concerned, controls are snappy and responsive, neither combat, gathering nor building are tedious in any way and the game is in a very polished state despite the Early Access stamp. It's honestly much better than expected, which says a lot about the current state of the games industry as a whole. V Rising is the game for you if you're into looter games, but also dig survival elements and possibly even fancy some PvP. If you're exclusively a solo player, it may get a little repetitive and lonely, although you can dominate some NPCs and make them into thralls to keep you company (and farm resources for you) - Even the undead want to be loved.

Tavern Tycoon style games are booming and a whole bunch of indie studios have supplied their own versions, some more polished than others. Watching an inn bustling with activity, barmaids carrying mugs, cooks chopping veggies and ruffians engaging in fisticuffs from a top-down perspective has something instinctually satisfying, which to some degree also applies to life sim games like The Sims or even strategy games like Anno and Settlers. Deep down, we all long for order - Order, that we're in charge of. Something we designed that just works and ticks away while we admire our own creation like a proud parent attending their child's gratuation. But enough philosophical talk - Does Tavern Master scratch that itch? How does it compare to similar, contemporary titles? Grab a cup of mead, sit down by the fire and let's find out!

Tavern Master released in late 2021 and never intended to reinvent the wheel. You're the intangible deity in charge of a tavern, you build walls and furniture and you're in charge of HR - Hiring eager staff to work for you and kicking them out again when their salary expectations get ridiculous. If playing the campaign mode you start fairly humble, with a small square building and little more to serve than water and weak beer. "Campaign" in this sense really should be considered guided gameplay, as there is no story or wider world to consider. Your establishment exists in a bubble that, for the most part, only you control. Unlocking more features is done via a somewhat linear tech tree. Serving customers is the main method of generating research, so you're always working toward the next unlock. There are also tiny sidequests that cycle every day, ranging from ensuring a happy staff to owning a certain amount of decorations. Early on, you'll get access to the kitchen and a few recipes which will increase your income by quite a bit. Buying better furniture and more decorations increases your prestige, which both allows for hosting special events as well as increases your daily visitors. These special events can be hosted every few days and will attract only special/rarer visitors who will pay a little more for food and drink they really enjoy.

Somewhat disappointingly, this is where special events end. There aren't any econonomic events that affect you and even the different classes of visitors are only really relevant for the research they contribute to, they have no other distinctions. This lack of depth is also present in the supply chain management, or lack thereof. Your reserves of drink and ingredients does empty out, but refilling them is a matter of clicking the refill button and paying some money. If you're looking for a complex economy behind it all, you're looking at the wrong game. Only some ingredients are harder to get, but they still just require you to send out adventurers on off-screen quests, which either suceed or fail a few days later depending on how many of them you sent out. You can make superficial adjustments to the prices of all your drinks and food prices increase as you level up their recipes, which again you're able to do after serving a certain amount of them. It's all a little shallow, but is that a bad thing? Not necessarily.
Tavern Master is what some may call a "zen" type game. Personally, I'd almost classify it as a "clicker" game. Something you have up on your second monitor, to occasionally mess around with and increase your passive income. There are even ways to automate refilling your stocks, which takes even more manual input away from you. But, once it's all set up and running, it's pretty satisfying to watch, as described in the introduction of this article. Perhaps it is simplicity that grants Tavern Master its perhaps biggest selling point: It works. Not being facetious here, there are a great many rival tavern games that really struggle with this part. Take Crossroads Inn for example, a much more ambitious game that ultimately falls short due to its sub-par programming and frequent bugs. Tavern Master has had its full release and its first major patch since then and it performs like a full game should - No game-breaking bugs, no awful pathfinding.

So, to reiterate: Tavern Master is a more casual approach to the genre and it delivers exactly what it promises: Satisfying tavern management including staff micro, menu customisation and buildings to decorate and furbish, including lodgings. If that's what you're looking for, Tavern Master is a safe buy. If you want a storyline, a deep economy and complex supply chains, it is not. Now, care for a refill on that mead?

First of all: No, Elden Ring is not the best game ever made, but is doesn't have to be. It had a slightly shaky launch, was subject to review-bombing and some day 1 issues still persist, but now that the dust is settled, more honest and in-depth reviews are flooding in. So, does the dark and twisted world that made the Souls games so intriguing manage to pull you in one more time? Do the brutal boss battles make you come back for more punishment? And what's up with that 'best game ever' stuff? Let's find out.

Elden Ring is very much an organic evolution of the Dark Souls franchise. All the core mechanics are still here, nothing new was introduced that I would call a risky experiment on the developers' side. The obvious departure is the open world aspect, with multiple sprawling overworld maps offering plenty of treasure and stunning vistas for you to find. Now if you wince at the mere mention of "open world", you're probably afflicted with Ubisoft Fatigue, the feeling of emptiness after roaming humongous maps, clearing near-identical camps 50 times and collecting pointless knickknacks. The good news is, this is not an Ubisoft title. Elden Ring's world is chock-full of secrets, interesting enemies and valuable loot. It isn't formulaic.
Torrent, your trusty steed that joins you early on in your adventure, makes traversing the world easy and fun. There is even fully-fledged mounted combat with a bunch of unique animations for all weapons. Like in other Souls titles, animations are a real strong point of Elden Ring. Enemies come in many different flavours, from humanoid to monstrous to outright grotesque, and they all have a vast array of attacks that'll send you straight back to the nearest checkpoint. Luckily, you too have a ton of tools to play around with, a great selection of melee weapons with interchangable weapon arts (special attacks that cost mana) and spells of the wizardy and clericy varieties. Pair this with the near frame-perfect hitboxes and you'll be able to pull of some truly cinematic stunts - at least between the bouts of anger because you rolled too late/early again.

The large world exists to reward you for exploring, but you'll never be required to go on lengthy journeys just for some vain completion stat. Fast travelling between all discovered points of interests is instant and free, but should be used sparingly, as there is much to simply stumble upon while you're roaming around on your horse. It boggles the mind just how many nooks and crannies in some random cliff side actually have a hidden cave with some unique loot in it. Some caves then turn out to be fully-fledged dungeons you might have entirely missed in your playthrough. Now, obviously you could follow a "get OP instantly" guide that takes you around a farming route to snatch a bunch of weapons and materials, but there is a sense of wonder in exploring the world by yourself. Getting lost doesn't feel annoying and you can always just go back to an area you know better.

Of course, the topic that makes the community erupt in furious debates over every Souls title is the difficulty. Characteristically, Elden Ring does not hold your hand, there is no quest log and all you get right off the bat are vague direction markers pointing you to the next big thing. If you're ready for that big thing is another story entirely, as the game is meant to be played at a pace you choose for yourself. You never MUST clear out a camp or beat a roaming world boss. If you're having trouble with a specific enemy, leave and come back when you're stronger. As with Souls, dying is meant to be a learning experience. Now you know that the big windup attack actually tracks you and goes super far. Now you know you need to roll a bit later to actually dodge the delayed thrust. Now you know you should kill the trumpet guy first or he'll alert the whole camp. Luckily, every somewhat difficult fight has a special resurrection shrine nearby that lets you get right back into the action, albeit with all enemies respawning.

If I had to criticise the game it'd be the sometimes confusing controls and the clunky menues that have always been a thing in Souls games. The story is alright, but is really just a means to get you from boss fight to boss fight. Quests are a very minor side thought. And that's fine, because the fights are the main selling points here and they are spectacular.
One last point on the topic of PvP: Invasions by other players are disabled by default while you're playing on your own. It's now a true singleplayer experience unless you opt into PvP or coop. Keep in mind that whilst other players, friendly or not, are present in your world, the horse is disabled.

So to come back to the opener: No, Elden Ring isn't the best game ever. But it is pretty damn good. Souls veterans will enjoy the evolution of their beloved franchise whilst new players will have a more accessible world to peruse without getting too frustrated about being stuck anywhere in particular. If Elden Ring is the first ever Souls game you play, you will still have a good time, as long as you can maintain a growth mindset and thrive in overcoming difficulty through practise and perseverance.