This long-running cozy tavern life sim on Steam just added online multiplayer, so now you can design and run a medieval pub with your pals

A busy medieval tavern — (Image credit: Isolated Games)

Every so often I poke my head into the subreddits dedicated to life sims and cozy games and farming sims to see what people are recommending, and one game keeps coming up over and over again: Travellers Rest.

(Yes, Stardew Valley comes up a lot too, but everyone knows that one: these discussions are usually started by people who have already played Stardew and are looking for a recommendation in the same vein.)

In Travellers Rest you've inherited a run-down old tavern and set to work turning it into a cozy inn, where you cook meals, brew drinks, and serve customers, using the gold you earn to expand your tavern, farm crops, and unlock new recipes. As you build your business you can design and decorate new rooms, hire servers to help out, and employ bouncers to keep order, all while experimenting with new drinks and dishes to keep your visitors happy.

Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.