Ale & Tale Tavern

Much of the game is about the management of the Inn - meaning Cooking, Cleaning and abusing your guests. I know the Dungeon update dropped very recently but we have not circled back to try it out yet so I cannot comment on it. For the management part, I can say it is a lot of fun somehow to run around trying to make the food, keep the place clean and serve drinks to travelers. The game starts off by getting you to open the Inn, clean it and then teach you the very little bit to start you off. After that, you're mostly on your own to figure it out. This was definitely a game designed to play with friends and it really feels like a kitchen where people are yelling at one another as you divide up tasks that need to be done. Later in the game, you can get eggs and such which require you to go outside or you run out of water and need to drop out of the kitchen to get more for dishes or recipes. And, it can get really easy for you and your friends to step all over each other's feet trying to serve food, get supplies, make food, clean the Inn, kick out drunks, etc. One time we were working at night and bunch of Goblins invaded and we had to murder them in our own Inn! This is the first part where a problem can show up: if you're playing alone then this game can get impossible pretty fast. The more items on the menu, the harder it gets to mange anything. But, if you don't vary the menu then you'll start gaining less money for the same items so you kind of either have to suffer the loss or close the inn to probably cycle the menu. The automation in the game is very very thin and we would even the helpers you can get to be more of a nuisance then helpful. When you do have friends, you share an income for everyone and we found the game handed out enough money to let us make solid progress while also limiting enough that we always needed to open the Inn to earn cash. The combat is not the best and I did not find it very engaging; my friends liked it more so I let them do that part. The world around the Inn is fine but it was not the engaging part of the game. However, there are deliveries and supplies which you need to gather from the world so you sort of have to engage with those systems. Maybe with the Dungeon update will help this part of the game out. But, when I played I mostly just tried to ignore it. The farming and fishing are not super complicated but they are at least satisfying. I spent most of my own time cooking, making the drinks and managing the menu so I did what was the most fun part imho.