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Epic Tavern – The Fantasy Tavern Management Game in Early Access

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Ever dream of running your own tavern in a fantasy world where adventurers would stop by, buy some boneless rat wings, a pint of mead, and a shoddy room? Me too!

In Epic Tavern, all of these things are possible.

Epic Tavern is a fantasy tavern management game of sorts where you own a tavern and get to manage the day-to-day operations at a fairly basic level. You'll be managing expense decisions to keep the shelves stocked, serving customers, renting out rooms, and listening to all the gossip.

You also manage parties of adventurers. Epic Tavern reminds me a lot of World of Warcraft's champion/follower system. Think of the Class Hall or the Garrison system. You'll build a party of adventurers, gear them up, and send them out on missions to save the world of Beor.

Before I jump into an explanation and my thoughts, check out this quick video I took to highlight the main features of the game.

Tavern Management

Tavern management is handled through an isometric interface where you are looking birds-eye view down on a few tables in your bar -- at least until you expand. As visitors come into your bar (and more will as you gain notoriety), you're responsible to seeing to their needs.

Clicking on a visitor will give you a new interface showing their name, adventuring class, traits, and details about what it is they want. Some will want a drink, others food or a room, and some will want to give you details about a quest.

Every day you have action points to spend on your tavern. Each action, whether serving a drink or providing a room, will drain your action point pool until it reaches zero (or "final call").

Epic Tavern Patrons

To help you manage your tavern you'll get an overview interface that shows your daily incomes and expense reports as well as a means for upgrading and adding on to your tavern with things such as a kitchen, wine cellar, infirmary, temple, and so on.

Hero Management & Quests

The other side of Epic Tavern is managing your roster of Heroes. Heroes are your tavern patrons you've recruited to form a party and go out on quests.

As alluded to earlier, the hero management system reminds me of WoW's Class Hall hero/follower management. You'll recruit them, gear them up, level them up, choose their skills, and then form the parties and send them out.

Based on each hero's unique traits, characteristics, stats, etc., you'll get a success chance for each quest.

Epic Tavern Mission Management

Upon embarking on a quest, you'll follow your party via a map interface to watch their journey. It's all essentially text based at this point. Your party will encounter different things like combat situations, traps, social engagements, and points where they have to make 'rolls' to determine their contribution to success. This is where their individual characteristics matter -- if you bring along dumb heroes with no social skills and have to make a social check, you're probably going to fail.

Each quest tends to have multiple encounters on the way to and from the quest objective. Each quest eventually culminates in a pile of gold as a reward as well as items or the quest's main reward. The gold can then be divvied up between your tavern and your heroes via a slider bar.

Early Access & Under Development

Epic Tavern is still in early access, but can be purchased for $25 on Steam. You need to know that this is definitely a work in progress game. MANY of the features are still "Under Construction" and will literally be labeled as such in-game. I feel like many of the features I want to use most (competing taverns, for example) are under construction. The game is still deep in development.

Once you understand it's a WIP and will have bugs/glitches (like I lost my save file once) then you can go on enjoying the game.

I was provided an early access key to check out the game and give my thoughts on it in this preview, but knowing what I know now after only a few hours of play, I would totally spend $25 on Epic Tavern. 

If you have any questions about the game, or would like to see more videos of The Mean Lurikeen as I progress my Tavern, definitely let me know.

    • I think it’s totally worth $25, but yeah as an early access title that hasn’t been completed I understand. I wouldn’t have purchased it without having tried it myself.

  • I’ve been intrigued by this game since it appeared in my daily queue on Steam. Thanks for doing the video, it has definitely confirmed my interest in playing at some point. I think the price is a little steep for early access, so not sure I will pick it up just yet. If it was a little cheaper I wouldn’t hesitate, but at that price I would rather wait for the full game.

  • I wish more things in the game were out of your control, like how heroes develop and what gear they actually use (you could control what gear you offer for sale). IMO games like this are fun when you can’t control too much, and instead have to make the best of your limited actions and see how things play out. Perhaps the game goes in that direction though, still keeping an eye on it.