It's obvious a ton of work has gone into fantasy sim Tavern Keeper, from the intricate and often hilarious animations of the patrons and staff to the flexible and easy-to-learn item design tools to the fully-narrated interludes that make your pub feel like it's part of a storybook adventure.
Tavern Keeper arrived on Steam in November, but it's been in development for over a decade—and as impressive as the game is, that's a heck of a long development cycle, especially since it's expected to be in early access for at least another 12 months.
That was years of writing and experimentation that didn't make it in the game at all.
Patrick Klug, director/co-founder of Greenheart Games
Greenheart Games also spent a lot of time working on systems that were eventually dropped from Tavern Keeper—including one partially inspired by Shadow of Mordor's dynamic Nemesis system.
"For the longest time, initially, the story idea was that you would attract heroes. And then you would kind of be able to send them on quests and give them quests," Klug said. "We did a lot of experimentation about how we could make the world feel like your actions with the heroes made sense.
"But it always felt like a second game. It never felt like it belonged in the tavern," Klug said. "That was years of writing and experimentation that didn't make it in the game at all."
Tavern Keeper is filled with systems: patrons and staff react to the cold or heat of the tavern, food can spoil and the pub can become filthy, candles can catch flammable objects on fire but a lack of lighting can make visitors and staff unhappy… and the list goes on. But it took quite a while for those to come together, too.
...it took ages to feel right.
Patrick Klug
"I feel with this game, it's a systems game, and it wasn't fun for ages," Klug said. "I think it wasn't fun for the first seven years or something, at least," Klug said. "And that is a really difficult time in a project because you have to trust that 'I know once we finish this system, and this system and this system will go together, that it will be fun, right?"
That includes the storybook system that took so much time to build.
"Initially, the [storybook events] always felt like they took you out of the game, they didn't feel like they belonged, and that hurts because I was always very adamant that I wanted this storytelling in the game," Klug said. "And I thought that would be a great innovation to have. But it took ages to feel right."
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