Developer One More Time’s up-and-coming ‘Tavern Manager Simulator’ has players take on the role of a greenhorn tavern manager AKA you. Just on the outskirts of a nameless city lies a broken down tavern on a main road, chock full of passersby. Why this place came down under these circumstances is a mystery, but that doesn’t matter now—it’s time to clean up the place and get down to business. From good ale to food, you’re going to run a cozy establishment in this first-person 3D somewhat ‘Diner Dash’ equivalent.
I received a copy of the demo for play via Steam last week and spent a couple of hours unlocking and understanding the game’s main mechanics, all the while having fun and keeping myself busy as a bee. The demo for Tavern Manager Simulator’ does not have all the full game’s mechanics just yet, with the full game slated for a Summer 2024 launch, but there’s just enough here to get an idea of what it’s like to run your very own establishment.
Our little shack is nothing more than a rundown place in the beginning. Broken glass, liquid messes, the works. And over the course of an hour or two, you’ll have the place somewhat cleaned up and running. Your tavern begins at Level 0 and is relative to your establishment’s reputation. Your reputation goes up as you serve customers good food and good ale along with dealing with random events proper. Keeping your tavern clean is also key to customer happiness which in turn means you advance your tavern’s operations faster and get more mechanics to work with.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Right after cleaning the place up, your first order of business is to order ale, name your tavern, and open your place up for business. As customers roll in, your job is to keep orders prepped by completing their respective timing-based minigames. Land on the green and your gold, yellow is okay, and red leaves a bad impression as well as a mess you need to clean up. During my time with the demo, that was simple enough—most customers weren’t needy and asked for the bare minimum of food and drink. Once they finish up, they’ll leave dosh on the table and waltz on out.
Of course, customer service is naturally painful for the soul and one thing you’ll need to care for is those table messes. People love to spill and vomit all over their cups and soup bowls, lovely stuff! You’ll need to pick up the rubbish and take them over to the sink to wash off, though this time all you need to do is waft the wares in water just enough to clean ’em up. And once your tavern has leveled up enough, you get a toilet to manage too.
The outhouse is a small walk in the backyard, understandably considering just how often it clogs. Clearing that out is the same three-click minigame as the foods you prep, which at the moment are only sausage and soup. Both of these have different layers of steps for successful prepping and I imagine the full release will build upon that with more menu options and the like.
Taven Manager Simulator lets you build your tavern as you please and though limited as I was in the demo, I did plop a tiny cactus outside for decoration and a few more tables to hail customers in. During the demo, so long as your shop is open folks will pile in over time, walking the path from the big city to the (potentially) endless void down the main path. They pathfind pretty well to their tables, though when leaving occasionally I had to push them out of the way to get them to start walking properly —I lost too much business from that!
There is the ability to talk to customers though the only option right now is to ask them to leave. No reason to kick out paying customers, but I did have a few beggars camp outside my tavern. An old lady twice asked for 30 coins and I, with my bleeding hearts, gave them duty. At the moment the function only serves to give you more reputation, but I hope more comes out of that in the final game. I do hope there are more things to say to customers too, such as asking for feedback on the tavern’s looks and maybe even being able to hire regulars and the like as helpers.
But I digress. Tavern customization is basic, but you can place your furniture and the like in first-person and rotate the items as needed. A simple yet effective solution, though the tavern has little in the way of room so all I could fit was a table or three. Leveling up your tavern does give you a bit more room and more entrances for you to run about at the very least. Not much I can say about this part of the game until more has been added, but so far the controls for customization are simple and elegant to use. Performance was great too, but this side of the country isn’t as demanding as it is anyway—it’ll definitely run on a potato.
I quite enjoyed this little demo of Tavern Manager Simulator! The concept is solid, it just needs more goals to attain, hopefully with decently paced progression. The developer has stated that there will be more gameplay mechanics and even helpers to assist you in your tavern’s day-to-day operations. The art style is great, reminiscent of the older Warcraft look for humans. I don’t imagine being able to walk to the nearby towns will be a thing in the full game, which I’ll admit is slightly disappointing as the game world gives off this very comfy feeling of jolly good times and heck, potentially a golden age of sorts as a setting.
Now there is a place under construction across your tavern—not much really there, but there is a skull in a bucket just sitting there so, uh, hopefully, it’s not a morbid place. I’m in the business of selling jolly good times, not burials. ∎
You can find Tavern Manager Simulator on Steam right this way.
