Last year, Greenheart Games delayed the Early Access release of Tavern Keeper, its upcoming fantasy management simulation game. However, there’s been very little communication since then. Now, six months later, Greenheart Games has updated fans.
At the time of the Early Access delay, fans knew that there were several bugs and issues that made the game unstable. Greenheart Games wanted to give its employees time to fully fix these without getting burned out.
Now, it’s expanded on some of the bugs that have been fixed. Hundreds of high-priority bugs have been found and fixed in the past months. Greenheart Games explained that many of these would’ve caused a lot of confusion and frustration for players, the opposite of what it wants for an Early Access release. Some of the specific bugs were revealed in the Steam post from Greenheart Games.
While bugs were a priority, that’s not all that was touched. Many of the in-game systems have been adjusted to feel better for players, including the following:
- Longer days
- Staff who can walk faster
- Food recipes
- More subtle sound effects
- Better UI highlights
The team also came up with a new idea during these last few months as well: The Tavern Log. The Tavern Log is a history of events that pops up as things happen, similar to a combat log (which the developers said they were inspired by). This should make it easier for players to keep up with things that have happened, especially when the tavern gets busy.
Greenheart Games is also working on keeping up with the road map while also fixing the game. Some of the new content that was originally coming after Early Access will be included in Early Access when it launches. These include things like more sound design, new voice-overs, more graphics, more animations, a level-complete screen, new mechanics, and new environmental effects.
There’s also an entirely new area being included with the Early Access. When the game fully launches, there will be six locations to run your tavern. Originally, only the first two were going to be included in the Early Access. However, now the third will make an appearance as well.
More quality of life changes have also been made, which players can view on the Steam post. Additionally, a Unity update also happened in the past few months that broke several parts of the game. While this was more work for the time, it did end up improving the performance of Tavern Keeper.
While a lot of things went well, there were some things that didn’t go as planned. Controller support was one of the things that Greenheart Games wanted to include from the start. However, it’ll require quite a bit more work than it expected, so it’s going to reassess demand for it later.
The one thing not included in the update was the release date. For now, Tavern Keeper is still supposed to go into Early Access at some point in 2025.
