Tavern Master

This game is really fun and hooked me right away. It is super simple to learn. Like the others have said, it's a slow paced, relaxing game but very engrossing. Super for stress-free unwinding at the end of the day. I love building games and it's really cool that you also get a plot across the street from the tavern on which to build a garden. And it comes with a "sandbox" version that gives you unlimited funds that you can use to build to your heart's desire. This is a VERY nice feature for when you just wanna build and don't want to do the busy work of grinding for cash, recipes, items, ingredients, etc. I go back and forth between the two modes depending on how I feel at the time. I hope they keep adding content and making updates.

I’m really into these meditative fantasy games because they fill the gap between my sessions of triple A fantasy titles. Tavern Master is an ideal game for unwinding, but it has a significant flaw: the lack of attention to detail. When the activity is minimal and all you do is gaze at screen, the minor imperfections become quite irritating. For me, it was: The ambiance is severely lacking. Where are the sounds of the encircling forest, the nearby river, or the tavern walls creaking, crowd hum (crowd hum, not distinctive annoying repetitive lines)? The tavern is roadside. So, where are the road sounds: the clatter of hooves, the rumble of passing carts? In the past, games lacked ambiance due to hardware limitations. Now, it seems like sheer laziness and a disregard for detail. You can find all sorts of free sounds on freesound org. The ability to view the entire map from a low angle is a fantastic feature for me. You can angle the camera down to the ground, pan over to a table, and it feels like you’re sitting right there in the tavern. However, this also exposes the poorly designed map. First off, a simple skybox with images of mountains, forests, and castles would greatly enhance the game’s visual appeal. Just five background images would do wonders. Also, the proportions of the road, trees, and distant castle need to match those of the people and taverns; they’re currently too small. The developers’ reasons for this size discrepancy are unclear to me. The road by the tavern is far too narrow—it’s a main road after all, not a forest trail. Adding more decorations to the map would be excellent. As it stands, the map looks more like a student’s project to learn Unity rather than the work of professional artists. For a game that’s all about the meditation, the developers’ indifference to the audio and visual details is baffling. I’m hoping for improvements in the next update.

This game does not come with a deep-thought storyline and rollercoaster plot-twists, or a complicated tutorial, or a 650 km² open world map, or massive multiplayer suppert, or ingame shops and real-money beautifications, or several season pass in which the not existing DLCs can be bought at bulk, or eye-watering graphics with triple RTX blending shaders (what ever that may be). No, this game is for you to wind down after work, to keep you just as challenged to keep you hooked, not too much and not too less, to provide you a feeling of slight accomplishment when you unlock a new feature and you see it works good, to not scare you with multi-dimensional skill- and research-tech-trees. Does it have some bugs or exploits? Yes, some. Is it yet fun to play for 15-20 hours before you reach endgame? Yes, certainly. If you are into managing games and you can spare a few coins, toss it to Tavern Master. Or play the prologue first and see for yourself

The game keeps crashing constantly and is unplayable. This will happen as soon as you add the second floor of your tavern and even more so when you add the third floor.

Sometimes we wish there were more gameplay mechanics, but it's still enough to chill while watching your tavern grow. Maybe it's lacking in decoration, but it's still a very good game that I recommend to all aspiring tavern keepers.