Tavern Talk News

We are so happy to be a part of this year's SimFest Steam Event! 💜

Make sure to come by and play our demo or get the full game and add Tavern Talk and so many other incredible simulation games to your wishlist!

https://store.steampowered.com/sale/simfest2024

Always remember, wishlisting is free and it helps every game and developer to be seen!

We'll be also streaming our broadcast of the final version of Tavern Talk during this event, so check it out and say hi in the chat!

Cheers,
Tommy

Dear Innkeepers,

we're back with exciting news: we're putting the puzzle back into the rumor mini-game!

We have heard your calls...

... and with today's patch, rumor snippets that belong together will no longer look alike - except for random accidents, of course. We understand that the rumor mini-game as it shipped on release may have felt overly easy and unchallenging while the original demo suggested a more puzzly approach. So we made haste to find a suitable solution for all of you: to those who love themselves a good challenge and to those who just want to breeze through the story or who find the sheer amount of snippets in the later parts of the game overwhelming.

For those who want it easy, we have now added a new "hint-on-demand"-button that will appear should you fail putting together a quest for the first time. It is then up to you to use that button to ask the game for a hint about which snippets belong together. If you do, it will highlight all of the relevant snippets for the current round of quest-making. If several quests need to be found, the game won't tell you which snippets belong together, but since it will allow you to focus on a clear sub-set of rumors we are sure you will manage.

If you belong to the first group and prefer to rack your brain given no clues at all simply ignore that button and go for it! This is what it now looks like in the game:



We're quite happy with the solution we found here and we hope you feel the same. May it let you all enjoy the game even more! We will update the demo with this big adjustment, as well, so it also shows the updated gameplay.

Now, let's have a look at the other improvements and fixes this patch brings with it:

Improvements & Bug fixes

• Expose monitor-dependent resolutions and add a monitor selection option: You can now select the resolutions fitting to your monitor. Do you have a 4k screen? No Problem. Or maybe a widescreen? We've got you covered! Even if you have a second screen plugged into your machine, you can now choose which screen the game should be displayed on. If you should encounter any issues with this, please get in touch through the support link on our Steam page. 🖥️
  
  
  
  
• Added some SFXs missing for controller inputs ... to give you an even more immersive experience. 🎮
  
• Added new names to the guestbook entries & updated names for the Credits Kickstarter backer: Some names in the credits and in the guestbook entries were still missing. Digging in we found there was quite a hiccup in our export. Sorry for that! We're confident we finally fixed it for good. All backers who wanted to be named should appear in the credits now. ✅
  
• Fixed typos in German: Thanks to your keen eyes we found more typos in the German translation. It's a bit ironic since we're a studio from Germany, we know. We should have done more aufpassen in the Schule back in the day! We cleaned everything up and it should be a way smoother read now. Dangefön! 🫶
  
• Melina now detects HOT CHOCOLATE just when she actually gets one: Hot chocolate is Melina's favorite drink and for some reason, she thought every drink was hot chocolate. Can't really blame her for that wishful thinking, right? 🍫
  
• Fixed some pronoun issues: Some pronoun variables got mixed up, so we fixed them! 😊
  

Glimpse into the (near) future

That's a wrap concerning today's patch! But we have more changes lined up for the near future and on the remote horizon so we decided to give you a tiny roadmap for what's coming up:



As always, thank you for your feedback and suggestions through the reviews and the discussions on the Community Hub and of course in our Discord! We love to look for ways to improve our debut game based on your feedback as we continue to grow as a studio and as a community. Thank you for your engagement and for being a part of this journey! 💜

Keep the suggestions coming!

Until next time,
Tommy

Hey there Innkeepers,

First of all we want to thank you all from the bottom of our collected hearts! As of this moment, we have over 566 reviews, this is simply incredible. Thank you all for taking the time and leaving your thoughts behind, helping us to make Tavern Talk even better. 💜

With this announcement, we want to show you, that we are listening to your suggestions and trying to implement them into the game to the best of our abilities. Thanks to your reviews and discussions in the Community Hub we already got some amazing insight, that we were able to patch in. One infamous bug in the game that scrabbled up the pronouns of the Innkeeper is already fixed for example. 🐞



But that's not all... 👀

[h2]🚨 What is coming next? 🚨[/h2]

• The Auto-Skip button: Since we have multiple endings in the game (3 endings and 1 hidden one) we are aware that replayability is important and you showed us how important it is for you as well. Right now we are figuring out how to implement a super-fast autoplay button, letting you (sunny) breeze through the game without any issues. That way you can take a different path and try different dialogue options. 💯
  
  
• Making the rumor-minigame more challenging: During our QA sessions, we saw an issue with how hard the rumor-minigame can be in Act 2 and forward, and decided to make it easier by color-coding the rumor-snippets, so nobody gets soft-locked during their playthrough. But the feedback showed us, that a little bit of challenge was actually welcomed in our cozy visual novel. That is why we are looking into inserting the randomized colors for the rumor-snippets back into the game and making the easier path optional, just in case somebody needs the extra help. 🫶
  
  
• Trinkets: We are so happy that you enjoy the trinkets that the adventurers bring back from their quests and that you want to get a better look at them. And to make a space to honor them the right way, they will not only appear in your tavern but also in a dedicated page in your journal! 📖
  
  
• SFX and screen improvements: Something we will always strive for is to make Tavern Talk as good-looking and sounding as possible! That way, no matter where you play the game, on your TV-screen, windowed, curved monitor etc. you'll always get the best cozy experience. 🫰
  

Thank you all for being so supportive of this journey and being a part of it all. Tavern Talk is a game that is surrounded by a loving community and we can feel that every day.

Those changes will take some time, but we wanted to let you know in advance, to give you an example for the foreseeable future and making sure that you know, that your voices are heard. ✨

Thank you again and safe travels,
Tommy

Thanks to the feedback on our Discord server and in our Community discussions here on Steam, we worked on the following improvements and bug fixes.

• Update Credits with Kickstarter Backer 📝
  
• Added missing and fixed guestbook entries ✍️
  
• Music keeps playing when switching from the main menu to the wanted wall or guestbook 🎵
  
• Allow the game to run in the background (now more pausing while alt-tabbed) - perfect for streaming! 📹
  
• Add custom cursor icon for more Tavern Talk immersion ↖️
  
• Add additional ambiance for storm background - get cozy with the storm 🍵
  
• Transitions from tavern to quest building screen are now smoother 💯
  
• Update Japanese UI ✅
  
• Added writing animation delay for specific Japanese and Chinese characters ✅
  
• Improved German localization ✅
  

• Fixed Can't open ESC menu in drink mixing after opening ESC with autoplay enabled ✅
  
• Fixed black bar issue with curved monitors - enjoy it now on a Curved Monitor!🖥️
  
• Improve ambiance transitions 🎶
  
• Fixed Character Fade issues ✅
  
• Fixed first drink/infusion achievement sometimes not being able to be unlocked after true first use - this only occurred in some instances, but let the achievement hunting continue ✅
  
• Fixed rare game breaker ✅
  

Thank you all for your continued support! We will keep working on Tavern Talk, fixing bugs and implementing QoL fixes. So please keep sharing your suggestions and wishes with us in our Discord or in the Community Discussions here on Steam.

Once we understand what you are missing, we can thoroughly look into potential improvements. With your help, we can make this game even better and make it really smooth around the edges.

Don’t forget to leave us a review, if you enjoyed the game. 💜 We are very close to crossing 500 reviews - a major benchmark for every game!
Also a big THANK YOU, for reacting to Tavern Talk with so much love and enthusiasm!

Cheers,
Tommy

A Quest to 100 Reviews

[h2]We're already at 49!]🚀[/h2]

My dearest Innkeepers and future Tavern owners, thanks to all of you, we've reached almost 50 reviews on Steam. This is amazing and it marks our journey towards the next big milestone: our first 100 reviews. Let's take a moment to celebrate how far we've come. 🎉🥳🎈

Remember, every piece of feedback helps us to improve and grow, so thank you again for taking the time to leave a review! 💜

We also implemented a tool that shows every positive review in our Discord, that way we can celebrate it with our whole community and the team. If you want and haven't yet, you can join us there: https://discord.gg/dcRbYHWHMs

So if you want to support us through those exciting times, always remember that there are three little steps how you can do that:



Thank you Innkeeper, now onwards to serving those magical drinks. 🍹
Tommy