A detailed tavern sim with actual soul.

I’ve played a lot of tycoons and management sims, but Tavern Keeper hits a sweet spot that most miss. Greenheart Games has managed to take the granular, "just one more table" addiction of the genre and wrap it in a genuinely charming, storybook package.

The Good Stuff:

Polish: This game is very well polished and thought-out even at this early access stage. The love from the devs is everywhere even down to every tiny menu detail. Seriously deep.

The "Vibe" is Immaculate: The aesthetic choices are perfect. It’s colorful and inviting, warm cozy, and equally crazy.

Narrative Integration: Usually, management games are dry. Here, the integration of the Narrator and a proper story mode is brilliant. It gives you a reason to build beyond just "number go up." Every story chapter and little handcrafted quirk or detail on a character work to show off the incredible love the developers put into it.

Decorating Actually Matters: This is my favorite part. In most games, placing a rug is just for me to enjoy. Here, the granular control you have over decoration, adding, rotating, scaling and grouping items allows for endless creativity. The fact that the "Beauty" score genuinely impacts customer behavior makes the design phase feel like legitimate gameplay, not just fluff.

My Wishlist for Early Access (Feedback for the Devs):

While the foundation is incredible, I’d love to see the management layer get even crunchier as development continues (and some of this it sounds like is already planned!):

Staff Progression: This is the big one for me, and one I see you have on the stove right now. I want to care more about my individual workers. A deeper perk system or specific training trees would be amazing. Let me develop a novice into a master chef over time rather than them just being static units.

Interactive Decor: Decor is already great for stats, but I'd love for it to affect gameplay in more direct, interactive ways. Imagine if specific items triggered patron behaviors. A bard stage actually drawing a crowd to a specific corner depending on the performer star level and decoration of the stage. Make some more furniture active rather than passive stat boosters.

Deepen the Lodging Systems: The tavern side is strong, but the Inn/Lodging side could use more love to match it. I'd love to see expanded mechanics here. It looks like laundry will be coming soon, perhaps room service, I'd love for the the inn side be as complex as the bar side. But in the end it is TAVERN keeper.

Add a Mixology System: Please let us design our own drinks! A system to research or mix ingredients to create custom brews with specific traits (e.g., "High Alcohol, Low Flavor" or "Spicy Ale") would add a massive layer of strategy and fun.

Verdict: If you like cozy management games but crave a bit more personality and story than the usual fare, buy this. It’s INCREDIBLY polished, amazingly charming, and hard to put down. Can’t wait to see where it goes from here. I check every hotfix!

It's an excellent early access game with a lot of heart put into it. Pitch-perfect send up of Discworld style fantasy gaming parody humor combined with gameplay that shows care and craft to it.

My three biggest gripes right now are:

-the interface needs some work as misclicking on things is annoying, and there needs to be commands for mass assigning cleanup or repair to objects in and area instead of manually clicking and clicking priority.

-the lack of ability to change the overall layout of your tavern building; you can modify the interior, but you can't claim additional land or remove annoying wall dividers that mess up the space you have. I wind up having to squeaze everything in when the game gets bigger.

-the game chugging and bottlenecking when you get lots of patrons - granted this happens in pretty much any sim game like this (the Two Point games are notorious for this) but I hope that we see more optimization for large numbers of guests that resolve this issue

Also I have a suggestion:

-Add a replayable 'roguelite'-ish procerdural mode outside the main campaign where you just run a series of randomized stories and scenarios. Sort of like how freeplay is supposed to be but with an actual arc and goals to accomplish potentially. I just would like more reasons to keep playing and discovering and trying new stuff after I complete all the main quests.