Tavern Keeper 🍻 News

First of all, thanks for everyone for turning up on launch day! And thanks for using F3 to report issues. Our small team is going over the many reports we have received, and we have prepped our first small patch:

Changelog 0.68.1
Fixed: some key bindings were not restoring after restarting the game
Fixed: rebinding some keys would freeze the camera controls
Fixed: halflings getting stuck when setting down side dishes at the shelf
Fixed: exception when bulletin board is broken
Fixed: Witching Hour story effects were not targeting correct staff members
Fixed: Holiday-like Savings story had some invalid targets
Fixed: decorations were sometimes breaking when being deleted
Fixed: loading screen edge fade could be applied incorrectly the first time you see it

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We are still frantically scanning through issues and will be our best to address them.
Thanks so much for being patient in case you are experiencing issues.

[p]Finally, our love letter to management sim games is here 💚[/p][p][/p][p]Tavern Keeper 🍻 is now available on Steam Early Access![/p][p][/p][previewyoutube][/previewyoutube][p]
[/p][p]We’re offering a 20% launch discount for everyone jumping in to help shape the game. There’s also a complete-the-set bundle with Game Dev Tycoon, making it extra worthwhile for our long-time fans![/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][dynamiclink][/dynamiclink][/p][p][/p][p]Now that Tavern Keeper has entered Early Access, if you want a refresher of our planned roadmap (and you are in the mood for some reading!), you can find it in this article.

[/p][p]Now go ahead, you have a tavern to run![/p][p]
[/p][p]Patty, [/p][p]Social and Community Manager @ Greenheart Games 💚[/p][p]
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[p]Hi, I'm Patrick, the Director of Tavern Keeper and I wanted to write you a little letter, shortly before release (and sprinkle a few screenshots from the development throughout). [/p][p]Soon, you can finally get your hands on Tavern Keeper 🍻[/p][p][/p][p](No, NOT this Tavern Keeper - the modern version - This is the earliest screenshot of Tavern Keeper (June 2014), written as a webpage, using placeholder graphics. It looked very, very different.)[/p][p][/p][p]For more than 11 years* our small team has laboured over every detail of this game. Every polygon, every sound, every animation, every word and every piece of code was handcrafted with purpose by a human. It is our love letter to simulation management games 💚 and our bid to add a genre-busting entry, combining deep sim systems, a witty magical-audiobook-RPG and a decoration sandbox to the world of sim games. [/p][p]We hope it will be a delightful experience for you! [/p][p]*Before I say anything more, I want to clarify that we are not necessarily proud that it has taken us that long (we really wish it hadn’t) but we do feel a sense of fulfilment to have made it this far - I think anyone who has worked on a long project can relate. It’s tempting to say that we could now do this in half the time but this would gloss over the countless prototypes and iterations. For the past 11 years we didn’t just develop the game you get to play, but six different versions of it. [/p][h2]13 years ago[/h2][p]
When my brother (and co-founder) Daniel and I released our first game “Game Dev Tycoon” 13 years ago, we celebrated with our family for about 20 minutes before a game-breaking bug was reported 😅. I still recall huddling over a laptop frantically coding and delivering a hot-fix while our parents and girlfriends (now wives) celebrated in the room nearby. Now, 13 years later, we are releasing our second game. Hopefully it will not require a hot-fix within 20 minutes 🤞. We did our darndest to avoid this, but whatever happens, we’ll be ready.[/p][p][/p][p](Early version of Tavern Keeper (April 2015), running in Unity)[/p][p][/p][p]This time, we share this moment remotely with our small international team across the globe. And of course, at home with our families and our kids, some of whom are nearly as old as Tavern Keeper! Before the inevitable craze of release day, I want to say a few things. [/p][h2]To the team[/h2][p]First and foremost, thanks to the entire team and their support groups (partners, family and friends) that made this game what it is. For all of us, this is the longest professional project we have ever (and are likely ever to have) been part of. I'm truly grateful that we all somehow, miraculously, stuck with it for so long.

Thanks to every one of you for your countless contributions, patience, talent and determination to make this game a reality.

Thanks also to all the external partners, the sound wizards at Cedar Studios UK, the amazing voice actors, the translators at Lionbridge Games and everyone else contributing to a game like this. You should check out the Credits in-game: we are a very small team but had a lot of help along the way.

It's been an immense privilege to work with everyone on this game.

A special thanks to the private testers, the translation testers, our small but dedicated (and very patient) Patreon members and everyone who is looking forward to Tavern Keeper. Your enthusiasm, your feedback (in particular those amazing Demo reviews 🥹🤗 and all the incredible in-game reports) have given us strength and motivation in this last stretch to Early Access.

Lastly, thanks to every single person who bought our first game “Game Dev Tycoon”, whether that's all the way back at the initial launch or more recently. I'm convinced that any (sane) publisher would have cancelled this project long ago or forced a release early when it definitely wasn't ready. Without you, Tavern Keeper would simply not exist and we could not have developed and self-published it as truly independent developers. We hope to have your support again this time around - we'll definitely need it!
[/p][p]Art Direction test of Tavern Keeper (a very long time ago) [/p][h2]The mists of time are uncertain[/h2][p]It's a supremely odd feeling to be this close to release. We try to keep our expectations neutral, a lot of things could happen and it's never been a more competitive market for games. When Game Dev Tycoon released in 2013 on Steam, we were one of 507 games released that year. This year, 593 games released on Steam just last week(!) with over 10K so far in 10 months. It is a scary time for devs but I feel it’s also never been a better time for PC gamers.

We did our best to make a game that can hopefully compete and, with your help, find its audience. We hope it's a remarkable one-of-a-kind bespoke experience. Fingers crossed indeed💚
[/p][p](one of the many fun bugs encountered along the way, this patron (incorrectly) used the bar as a bed) [/p][h2]A glimpse of what it took[/h2][p]I thought it might be fun to share a few stats from the development of Tavern Keeper! Here we go: [/p]

• [p] 11.5 years of development[/p]
• [p] 3 engine changes (2D HTML -> 3D HTML -> 3D Unity (and several unity versions)).[/p]
• [p] ~50K commits (individual work packages contributed to the project).[/p]
• [p] 220K lines of handwritten code (~6M characters).[/p]
• [p] ~6K models[/p]
• [p] 2K sprites[/p]
• [p] 11K prefabs[/p]
• [p] ~7K animations[/p]
• [p] 120K words of English text (similar to a large fantasy novel!)[/p]
• [p] ~1.6 million words total given we have translations into 14 more languages.[/p]
• [p] ~900 tooltips[/p]
• [p] ~6K nodes in our campaign / story graphs.[/p]
• [p] ~7K sound files[/p]
• [p] ~4.5K character emotes (sound-bites of the fictional language you hear when you zoom in and observe characters).[/p]
• [p] ~50 music files (over 2 hours of music)[/p]
• [p] ~3K voice-over files (over 10 hours of audio, that's only the Early Access content, lots more to come!)[/p]
• [p] 67 major versions (builds)[/p]
• [p] 6.8 years of combined play-time testing (together with our private testers) saw us serve 1.1M patrons and gain 23K tavern stars and fire 5K staff[/p]
• [p] 100% human made - no generated code, art, sound, voice or anything else.
  [/p]

[p]Some of these stats are more meaningful than others but I'm just listing them to give you a sense as to how big this game is under the hood. It's also worth mentioning that this only counts the things that made it to the end and doesn’t count the many discarded prototypes along the way.[/p][p][/p][p](one of the earliest uses of the Design Mode - we knew immediately this feature was worth investing more time - you can have so much fun with it!)[/p][p][/p][h2]Onwards to V1.0 we go![/h2][p]
This is a pivotal moment for the game. Finally, we open the doors for you to experience what Tavern Keeper has to offer and invite you to be part of the journey towards the full release (for details please check out our roadmap on the main page).

(a more recent screenshot of Tavern Keeper)

We believe Early Access will ultimately lead to an even better experience for everyone and we are so ready to see how you engage with the game. Please let us know on the Steam forums, through the in-game tool (press F3) or on our Discord.

Here's to a great journey together. Welcome Inn!

Patrick Klug
Director
Greenheart Games 💚[/p]

[p]The long wait is soon over with Tavern Keeper 🍻 launching into Early Access on November 3rd, 10AM PST![/p][p][/p][p]The Early Access release will be priced at $29.99 / €27.99 EUR / £23.99 GBP and we'll run a 20% launch discount, as well as a complete-the-set bundle with Game Dev Tycoon, making it even cheaper for owners of our first game 💚[/p][p][/p][p]We really appreciate the patience our fans and audience have shown us and, as an additional thanks, we are giving everyone who purchases the game during Early Access the "Supporter Pack 💚" for free, which includes the full high-quality original soundtrack (nearly 2 hours of music), as well as an in-game developer commentary (which we plan to unlock during Early Access).[/p][p][/p][p]As an international team we love time-zones so here's a handy map with some of the launch timings and regional prices at the bottom.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]We've also updated the Steam Page with information about the Early Access and added possibly the biggest Early Access Roadmap to ever exist(?). It's a ginormous 1560 pixels tall and details what is included in the Early Access release, as well as what we plan to deliver in updates. We didn't want to spoil all the surprises, so a fair bit has been redacted and will be revealed in due time. Here it is in full:[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]My gosh, you made it all the way through. How unusual! How delightful. You definitely seem to have the perseverance of a great tavern keeper![/p][p]As you can see, we have lots of content ready to go and a solid path forward. We can't wait to share this journey with you.[/p][p][/p][p]Finally, we also made a post to detail what to expect (and not to expect) from the game if you are keen on even more detail.[/p][p][/p][p]See you in 4 days. We can't wait![/p][p][/p][p]Patrick[/p][p]And the Tavern Keeper Team[/p]

[p]Hello, hello, my fellow tavern enjoyers!![/p][p][/p][p]We will be sunsetting the Tavern Keeper Demo on November 1st, as our team shifts focus and energy to the Early Access launch on November 3rd - and beyond! 🍻[/p][p][/p][p]What an incredible ride it has been, seeing you all build (or absolutely wreck) your taverns, meeting Cuthbert for the first time, and creating decorations we couldn’t have dreamed of when we built Design Mode.[/p][p]Shoutout to CuriousFellow in our Discord for this incredible, completely customized swamp tavern - even the OrcaLisa is made out of stones![/p][p][/p][p]Over 70,000 players have played the demo, spending over 6.5 million minutes playing it - a whopping 12.3 years! And the cherry on top is seeing the Overwhelmingly Positive rating on Steam, and more importantly, seeing that our vision for the game resonates with you! 💚[/p][p]Every single review, screenshot, and message has meant the world to us. Your kind words and creativity have given us so much energy to keep going and get the game ready for you. We can’t wait for you to experience the campaign and all the features we have prepared.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][h2]🤔 What about my designs?[/h2][p]If you fell in love with Design Mode and the Item Workshop, we have some great news for you.[/p][p]The designs created and saved in the Demo will automatically be imported into the full game. To make sure it works smoothly, keep the Demo installed when you first launch the full game.
[/p][p]Soon, we’ll announce the pricing of the Early Access release and outline what our Early Access Roadmap has in store.[/p][p]Until then![/p][p][/p][p]Patty[/p][p]Social and Community Manager @ Greenheart Games 💚[/p][p][/p][p]
[/p][hr][/hr][p]If you want to get all the latest news on Tavern Keeper, follow us on your favorite channel:[/p][p]📧 Newsletter
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