Tavern Talk Preview: Making Friends One Drink at a Time
Imagine the things bartenders would hear in a tavern full of traveling adventurers. You’d probably have a wild time hearing about dragons, werewolves, or epic battles with mages. Developer Gentle Troll Entertainment has taken that idea and created a game where players get to experience exactly that.
Tavern Talk is a cozy visual novel where you play as the owner of the Wayfarer’s Inn, one of the more popular stops to be made in the fantasy land of Asteria. Your job, as you might expect, is to welcome travelers and adventures into your tavern and serve them drinks. Sounds easy? Well, there’s a few things you’ll have to learn to be able to serve only the best to your patrons.
In order to make drinks for your customers, you’ll have to take advantage of your special drink-brewing area where you create your drinks using a variety of ingredients. Your starting drinks, or at least those I was able to use in the demo version of the game, contain particular attributes like strength, charisma, and more. There are set recipes for you to follow, but the more you play, the more ingredients you’ll unlock and the more drinks you’ll be able to make. And don’t worry if you mess up a little bit, your trusty dragon Andu will be there to drink up your happy little mistakes.
What’s interesting about Tavern Talk is that you can sometimes choose what to give to adventurers. For example, if someone is going on a quest and can’t decide how to approach the situation you can give them a drink that will help them make a choice. Think they should choose violence? Give them a drink that boosts their strength. Or if you’d wager it would be better for them to just talk it out then maybe a drink that gives them extra charisma is the better path. It’s an intriguing way to give players active involvement in the fate’s of the game’s characters despite not actually going on the quests themselves.
And you’ll certainly be invested in what happens to these wayward travelers. Each of them have their own backstories which will help to build out the lore of the world. Learn about their likes and dislikes, what sparks joy, what their ambitions are, and you’ll be that much more equipped to give them advice when they (inevitably) ask for it. Make friends with the right folks and they might just gift you ingredients, trinkets to decorate your tavern and other lovely presents.
Additionally, you’ll be the one giving out quests to your patrons. It all starts with a rumor about a vicious werewolf terrorizing a village and soon, you’ll have enough clues to send one of your patrons out on the road. Put the clues together on your rumor board and then post it to the quest board and see who's brave enough to take up the quest first.
Tavern Talk is a fun and heart-warming visual novel that is sure to impress when the full version releases. The game boasts multiple endings which usually means you’ll be able to spend a lot of time falling in love with these characters and seeing the variety of different shenanigans they can get up to. Fans of Dungeons and Dragons will love being able to send these intriguing and loveable characters out on quests and watch how they thrive, or fail miserably. That’s the life of an innkeep!
Preview by Becca Smith