An adventurer wanders into my tavern just as I’m serving up a pint of something almost certainly inedible. Clicking on his valiant armour-plated character model opens up a story book, and with it, one of many unique moments of randomized storytelling in Tavern Keeper.
Greenheart Games’ fantasy management sim neatly pairs tabletop RPG-style storytelling – courtesy of its fully-voiced narrator – with fastidiously detailed design and business systems. From purchasing casks of ale to placing furniture items, decorating tables, and preventing an all-out fist fight from breaking out in my nice respectable establishment, my brief half hour with Tavern Keeper surprised me with just how exciting life as an old-timey barkeep can be.
Roll for initiative
Our list of best sim games has plenty to keep you busy until you can head behind the bar in Tavern Keeper
The tutorial segment of the game is a short one, but charms me almost instantly. Panning around a cheery ready-built tavern reveals a host of rosy-cheeked revellers, swigging tankards of ale and wandering about to interact with the many decorative or leisure features on offer. There's darts, for example, with a description suggesting patrons use the visage of their enemies to inspire a true shot at its bullseye. Elsewhere, an elven visitor looks to be picking her nose in an empty corner. The whole pub feels teeming with life already, and all I've had to do is sit back and enjoy it (and learn about nested tooltips).
There's something so effortlessly enchanting about Tavern Keeper's medieval fantasy framework. By the time the aforementioned adventurer swaggers in, triggering a storybook moment with branching dialogue choices, I've already decided that this might be my favorite game of Gamescom 2024. Everything about it speaks to my niche interests, from the Sims 4-like grid building and nonsense-chattering NPCs to the backdrop of myths, legends, and heroes of yore. Pair it with the fact that taverns are infamously lively centrepieces of any good D&D session, and the result is a fairytale world of discovery that hinges on three things: storytelling, creativity, and formulaic (yet intuitive) management systems.
After opening a pub of my own in a dank swamp, furnished with naught but wooden crates repurposed as tables, barstools, and countertops, one of the first things I have to do is hire a worker. I select a tall, spindly-looking elf, underskilled and undertrained for the job at hand. However, her worker bio mentions that "thinking of ogres makes her laugh," and that, in turn, makes me laugh. Even the wholesale deliveryman, a beady-eyed cyclops who pulls into the swampy waters behind the tavern to peddle his wares, adds a unique vibrance to the proceedings. It's these little moments of humour and silliness that infuse Tavern Keeper with a sense of whimsy – it's clear Tavern Keeper's 10-year development journey has been paved with nothing but love for the fantasy world and management sim genre.
My demo session ends all too abruptly: when the timer runs out, I accidentally-on-purpose blow the whole thing up when prompted by the game to do so. It's a fittingly daft way to wrap things up, and I feel a strange sense of pride in watching my barren little tavern of wooden crates and cheap ale erupt in comical bursts of fire. No fantasy creatures were harmed in the making of this preview, and I'm already excited to try out the full version when it launches to PC platforms on November 5, 2024
12DOVE is in Cologne playing the most anticipated new games of 2024, and speaking to the developers bringing them to life. For more of our hands-on previews and exclusive interviews, visit the Gamescom 2024 coverage hub.
