Game: Tavern Manager Simulator
Genre: Simulation
System: Steam (Windows) (also available on Epic Games Store)
Developers | Publishers: One More Time
Controller Support: None
Price: US $12.99 | UK £10.99 | EU € 12,99
Release Date: August 13th, 2024
A review code was used, and many thanks to Terminals.
Back in June of this year, I got to play and give my impression of the Tavern Manager Simulator demo. I had so much fun that I was really looking forward to the full game. Thankfully, it’s finally out, and I’ve gotten many hours in this simulation title to talk about.
A Brief Overview of Gameplay in Tavern Manager Simulator
Tavern Manager Simulator plays a whole lot like you might expect. It’s a first-person game, and you have to run from customer to customer, cleaning up after them, serving them, taking their money, and keeping them happy. All the while, you also need to cook food, wash dishes, pour drinks, order food and things…
This restaurant simulator reminds me a lot of a less stressful version of Plate Up! You can turn off the tavern at any time if you need to restructure, cook something complicated, sleep for the night, or just take a break for a minute. You can also hire NPC fairy helpers who can do things like serve, clean up dirty tables, wash dishes, and even cook some foods.
Here’s an example of what a typical day in your tavern will look like first: you’ll start with just drinks, and you need to serve everyone who comes in. They will leave dirty dishes, dirty footprints, and spills behind them, and you need to keep cleaning up after every one to keep your tavern’s reputation up.
Soon, the game adds things like snacks and ingredients to make more complex dishes to serve as meals. As the meals get more and more complex, you will get access to larger tables so you can serve up to six people at a table. You also gain a bathroom you have to keep clean and fairy helpers to help you serve customers, clean, and cook, all while ordering enough food, upgrading your tavern, and keeping everything stocked and running smoothly.
New Stuff Added to Tavern Manager Simulation Since the Demo
Added into the full game are things like thieves, NPCs that beg for things, fairies to hire, more upgrades, special characters, and even a separate room you can get for nobles to be served in.
One of the interesting things they added was new clients. There are now stinky clients who bring in a lot of dirt, smearing the floor with goop and trash as they walk through. I was unlucky enough to get a six-top group of these jerks, and I ended up having to shut down my tavern for about an hour of in-game time to get the place clean again.
Sometimes, people get so drunk in your bar that you have to physically pick them up and yeet them out the door. Othertimes people make messes on the floor if they drink too much. There are beggars that come by asking for help and people begging for water.
There are also important NPCs; I got a court wizard who was very unhappy with my food for some reason that I can’t fully explain. I wasn’t given a heads-up that someone special was visiting before my fairies began serving her, so I’m still not sure exactly what her deal was. Then, immediately afterwards, a thief appeared in my stockroom, looking for cheese to steal, and I had to beat him up with a frying pan to get him to leave my stuff alone.
In other words, Tavern Manager Simulator is a game all about taking whatever randomness the game throws at you and rolling with it as best you can. And the full game has taken this to extremes in a very chaotic yet fun way.
This Game is Seriously Fun
Tavern Manager Simulator is really, really fun. You get to decorate and run your own tavern to medieval music with an added, modern beat. It’s a little stressful but not too stressful. You get to chat with patrons (though I’m hoping they add a little more to conversations in the future). You get to do mini-games to cook food and cut wood.
In the long history of cooking simulators, I have seen the good, the bad, and the ugly, and Tavern Manager Simulator does things pretty well. I find myself wanting more design choices, the ability to paint the wattle and daub, more paintings to hang up, and more more more more. I want more because I’m having so much fun that this sim can’t give me enough.
Some Issues with Tavern Manager Simulation
Overall, I really enjoyed my time in my tavern, which I named the Black Cat (again). While there was a lot of added stuff that really worked and changed from the demo, there were some things I didn’t care for.
The biggest one I had was with the upgrade system. Unlike most similar games, you have to wait until you get the quest to upgrade your tavern to upgrade it. Even if you have the money, you have to wait until you complete whatever quests are needed before you can upgrade your stuff. It really limits what you can do when, and it sort of makes all the upgrades feel like you’re still being tutorialized. I feel like this was to keep you from getting ahead of yourself and getting too many customers before you could handle them, but that would have been my hole to dig and bury myself in.
But honestly, with the ability to close the tavern at any time, there really isn’t much of a threat of not being ready for whatever your upgrades throw at you. There’s really no reason to gatekeep the levels as rigidly as the game does, and it makes progress feel so stilted and removes a lot of player freedom for no reason.
I also had many other, much smaller issues. For example, the wood-chopping mini-game is too long and has to be done too often, in my opinion. If the wood burned slower or you could stockpile wood between saving and closing the game, it might be okay, but I would prefer if the mini-game was just a little faster to complete.
I encountered some small bugs and things I didn’t like; I know the game isn’t out yet, so the developers may still solve them before launch.
Thoughts on the Mini Games
Since the mini-games are something you have to do over and over again, I thought I would dive into them a little bit. As mentioned above, I thought the wood-chopping mini-game was too long, but the rest are surprisingly fun. There is a dishwashing one, one for cutting meat, one for tenderizing meat, one for mixing soup up, pouring alcohol, and even cleaning the toilet. The developers seemed to put a lot of thought into each mini-game, considering how often you would have to be doing all of them to be successful in Tavern Manager Simulator.
Conclusion For Tavern Manager Simulator
I really like this game. I think with a couple of tweaks, it could be one of my favorite new restaurant simulation games. And this is coming from a woman who put more than 300 hours into Plate Up! last year! I would like to see some additions made to it, like the addition of a multiplayer mode, more conversations and decorations, and more ways to customize your tavern. Tavern Manager Simulator is a lot of fun, and I’m looking forward to seeing if the developers plan to make any changes in the future.
But for now, I give Tavern Manager Simulator a score of..
Final Verdict: I Like it a Lot.
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