Eclectic Ale: Tavern Keeper

Serve the fantasy rabble and deck the halls in this lively management game.

‣ Tavern Keeper
From: Greenheart Games
Platforms: PC
Release: Q4 2024
Steam Page • Demo Video • Developer Site

Design and run a tavern serving overpriced ale to demanding fantasy customers.

Developer Greenheart Games struck gold in 2012 with their first game, Game Dev Tycoon, which has enjoyed ongoing success on Steam and Apple's iOs and among Netflix's games. 

Buoyed by that triumph, they started work on something much more ambitious, spending nine years to develop a captivating combination of genres, tongue-in-cheek humour, and a gentleman narrator—all reminding me of another game with "Keeper" in its name.

I hesitate to mention a 27-year-old title. But the ale-soaked floorboards of Tavern Keeper feel like they sit on top of the underground lairs of 1997's Dungeon Keeper.

Both are management games set in cartoonish fantasy worlds. In Dungeon Keeper, you design and run an underground dungeon serving humiliating defeat to pesky heroes. In Tavern Keeper, you design and run an above-ground tavern serving overpriced ale to demanding fantasy customers such as humans, elves, orcs, and at least one skeleton with a mid-death crisis.

Both games are silly in a wry, dry manner, and feature a fun narrator who adds charm into the funny writing. Then there's the expressive cartoon art style, in-game and throughout Tavern Keeper's nostalgic opening cinematic.

The similarities are so striking that I even checked if some people at Greenheart Games previously worked at Dungeon Keeper’s developer, Bullfrog.

They haven't. But these indie devs are fans and crafted a fitting tribute to that style and era of management games. Yet Tavern Keeper is not a throwback or clone. It's pretty unique even among current management games, incorporating three different genres that manage not to step on each other's toes. 

The primary game has two sides. You run the tavern by buying stock, hiring staff, assigning drinks to the taps, and designing your rooms and decor. Good prices and amenities like a dart board and outhouse help boost your tavern’s appeal. Be sure to have a wood stove ready when it rains—wet visitors tends to be grumpy. You also maintain lodgings and items for your staff, and can manage their schedules. The full game will include food services and rooms for rent.

Then there is a detailed decoration designer, where you can go wild decorating your tavern and design unique furniture. This is the least-exposed part of the demo, offering a handful of items. But you can manipulate them with the basic design tools, and the game demonstrates a very elaborate furniture design system. Ever wanted to make a table entirely out of books?

There is also a small narrative game in the mix. Every so often, a customer will appear with a book icon above their heads. Click on them to activate a brief story session where you listen to them and select responses. These interactions are often innocuous but can sometimes affect the game.

Tavern Keeper can be a simple game, or players can delve deep into the management mechanics. They can stick to basic decoration strategies or spend hours designing the perfect tavern table. And they can ignore the customer stories, though these might add some surprise to the game and feature some of the narrator’s best bits!

📽 Demo Snapshot: Business is good!

This is still fundamentally a management game, and the tavern cannot run on autopilot. When a tap runs dry, you could lose a crowd of customers in a flash. You' also want to add stars to your establishment, and aim to keep your satisfaction score high. But it’s very streamlined and pleasant to run, and the design side really lets you put your mark on your establishment.

I could sit for hours and watch my operation serve the throngs at my bar. Unfortunately, the demo lasts only an hour or so, which is far too short to judge whether Tavern Keeper is a management game with legs. But it’s got the goods, and I had fun hanging around in my little swamp tavern. Nine years of development well spent!

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Explore The Game with Youtube Chapters:

• 📽 00:15 Opening cinematic

• 📽 02:22 Welcome to Halflington

• 📽 04:00 Such a fun narrator

• 📽 08:27 Starting at the bottom

• 📽 08:53 Tooltips all the way down

• 📽 10:05 Hiring staff

• 📽 10:54 Buying stock

• 📽 12:44 Open for business!

• 📽 13:55 Decoration 101

• 📽 15:34 On your own

• 📽 16:20 Adding storage

• 📽 18:56 A skeleton's story

• 📽 23:25 Closing time

• 📽 23:37 The daily newspaper

• 📽 24:39 Adding a stove

• 📽 25:18 Keep them satisfied

• 📽 26:49 Day 2's first customer

• 📽 29:26 Installing a dart board

• 📽 30:21 Our first star!

• 📽 31:27 Let's add a table

• 📽 36:20 An interesting proposal

• 📽 38:16 Can't please them all

• 📽 43:00 Getting busy

• 📽 49:08 Let's add a carpet

• 📽 51:10 Messing with scheduling

• 📽 55:57 Unhappy customers

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