Welcome to your first day owning a tavern! In Tavern Manager Simulator Demo, you’ll need to serve drinks, fix up the building, set up furniture, clean up after your guests, wash dishes, take deliveries, keep the outhouse clean, serve food…
It’s Time for Chaos
Tavern Manager Simulator Demo is one of the more chaotic simulation games I’ve come across. The amount of tables, drinks, and items you can serve in the demo is pretty low, and it is already high-pressure. A lot of things are all always happening at once, and you are the only one around to take care of it. If you enjoy any of the high-pressure cooking games, Tavern Manager Simulator might be a game for you.
I absolutely adored my short time in the medieval tavern life, and I can’t wait for the full release so I can make my ancient beer-serving dreams a reality. Let’s dive into what this game is like to play and why I loved the demo so much.
The Gameplay of the Tavern Manager Simulator Demo
The controls for Tavern Manager Simulator are pretty simple; you mostly just move around and use tools to do whatever needs doing to keep your tavern running smoothly. This means you’ll need to sweep the floors regularly, pour beers to perfection, wash cups, serve sausages, and then somehow make time to order new food and upgrade the tavern, take deliveries, and help the local homeless population, too. Thankfully, you can close down the bar whenever you need a few minutes to get caught up on chores.
Keeping your tavern clean, keeping your reputation up, and keeping your customers happy isn’t an easy task, but Tavern Manager Simulator also gives you plenty of tools for the job. However, I can tell this game is going to get hectic fast; there are things for cooking in the kitchen that you can’t unlock yet and room for serving more items and upgrading the tavern to be bigger. That means even more customers to serve, more bathrooms to clean, and more food to prep. I have a feeling the full release is going to be incredibly frantic to play, and I know I will love every second.
The Pros of Tavern Manager Simulator Demo
What a well-polished demo this was! Considering how many moving parts it has, I had very few issues with playing and only encountered a couple of small bugs. The buttons all take some getting used to, but the actions in the game are very smooth and well-considered. It’s nice to play, and the movement, interactions, and menuing are all great. The sound design is also wonderful; there isn’t music, but there is a lot of ambient noises that really liven up the space.
The washing mini-game is fun, the tavern you are building is customizable, and you can chat with customers. A lot of thought went into cooking up the Tavern Manager Simulator Demo, and you can feel it in every interaction you have with the items in it.
The Cons of Tavern Manager Simulator Demo
I did have a few issues in the demo. The first was that there did not appear to be a way to pour beer out. I only wanted to serve perfectly poured glasses to my customers, and if you overfilled a beer mug, it didn’t make them happy. I’m not really sure why they would force you to serve lacklustre beer, but I tried every button on the mouse and keyboard, and not one would let me pour out a sour beer.
I also had an issue with the homeless lady. She would come by once or twice every time I started a new game in the Tavern Manager Simulator Demo, but I could never interact with her. I’m not sure if I’m supposed to bring her food and beer or if I’m supposed to hire her, but I couldn’t seem to interact with her no matter what I tried. I think some of the issues I was having could have been solved by a more explicit controls menu somewhere that had these items in them, if they existed in the demo at all.
As a matter of fact, I had trouble speaking to anyone, customer or not. If you try to talk to a customer, you get two options: a polite greeting and an order to get the heck out of your bar. The customers always respond to both the same way, like you have insulted them. It would be nice to be able to greet and learn people’s names while you’re playing Tavern Manager Simulator Demo. I really hope that ends up in the full release.
The final issue I had is the same issue I have with many translated games; some of the wording is awkward or doesn’t make sense, and some of the original Russian remains in the game. It wasn’t enough to dull my enjoyment of Tavern Manager Simulator Demo, and I’m sure these things will be hot fixed before long.
Final Thoughts
Tavern Manager Simulator demo is the most fun I’ve had with a demo for a long time, and I would be thrilled to play it when it fully releases. I love the atmosphere, the ability to customize your tavern, to serve food or whatever you like, and to run the place how you want to.
For a demo, it had a surprising amount of decorations you could buy, including mirrors, paintings, plants, and other fun items. I think everyone will have a lot of fun with their very own medieval tavern to run. You can find the Tavern Manager Simulator Steam page here.
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