Yesterday, our tiny debut game, Tavern Talk, was awarded „Most Wholesome“ game at the Gamescom 2024 awards. 🏆

We are incredibly humbled and blown away to receive this honor as it is based on a combined vote of the jury and YOU, the players.

Never had we imagined taking home an award from Gamescom. But sometimes even your wildest dreams are being surpassed it seems. 🥹

We'd love to thank you, our amazing community, who all got us here: Thank you for this super special moment! You rock! 🙏🏼💖

Check out all of the Gamescom 2024 Awards winners here![www.gamescom.global]

Cheers,
Michel

Dear Innkeepers,

Before we start, we have one big news and this could be one for the ages! You can make it happen - the Andu Plushie! 💜

Yes, you heard that right, together with Makeship we want to produce an Andu Plushie and the procedure is pretty similar to Kickstarter! 🔥

Our petition for the Plushie Campaign starts right now[www.makeship.com]!

We need 200 people or more to pledge to the project. Pledging means you Pay $2.00 and Makeship charges the remaining $27.99 + shipping and tax when the production launches after November 19, 2024. If the petition fails, you'll get a refund. So, there is no risk on that front. 💝

The pledge of 200 people is one of the most important steps, because after that we are going to manufacture a prototype and once this is done, we'll launch a full-blown campaign, where everybody will be able to pre-order an Andu Plushie during the campaign run of 21 days! 💯

[www.makeship.com]Everybody who supports us now by pledging to the petition or buying the Andu Plushie during the campaign will also receive an E-mail after the campaign ends. In this E-mail, you can fill out a form to tell us your Discord name. Thus receiving the exclusive "Plushie Wizard"-Rank in our Discord server[discord.gg]! 🫶

And now we're getting to something highly anticipated ✨


It is truly an honor to be a part of this year's Wholesome Games Steam Celebration! 💯

Make sure to come by and play our demo or get the full game at a 10% discount and add Tavern Talk and so many other incredible wholesome games to your wishlist!

https://steamproxy.net/steamstore/sale/wholesomegames

Always remember, wishlisting is free and it helps every game and developer to be seen!

We'll also be streaming our broadcast of Tavern Talk with a special guest during this event. Quincy from Quincy's Tavern will play the game for you in a prerecorded session. He is also part of the Tavern Talk Cast so check it out and say hi in the chat!

Check also out his Twitch channel[www.twitch.tv]!

Cheers,
Tommy

Dear Innkeepers,

did you know Tavern Talk has three different endings and one additional secret ending? No? While we have read a few comments reflecting that choices don't seem to matter, they actually do. Especially in the long run over the entirety of the four acts – it may not be as noticeable in the first hours of the game. But trust, us, the drinks you brew and how you treat your patrons leave a mark on the path you take through Tavern Talk.

Tavern Talk takes between 12 and 20 hours to complete a single run, so, now that you know, you may be wondering how you're supposed to see all of these endings without rereading each and every dialog bubble on every run. Well, some of you actually went all the way to do just that and we're mightily impressed by your effort! WOW! 😲 For those who couldn't bring themselves to do so, we have the bestest of news:

Fast-Forward button to the rescue!

This patch brings a new button to your in-game UI you need to activate in the settings: the Fast-Forward button (see screenshot below). This button will have you jump super fast through dialog bubbles and halt at the next decision or drink-mixing for you to make.

Again, please note that you need to activate the button in the settings in order to use this feature. We chose to do this since this feature doesn't make sense for people new to the game and we didn't want to clog the UI.

This feature alone should give you a big hand plowing through the content at the speed of light. But it gets even better:


While the game has no way of skipping bubbles you've read before this patch, because the game didn't track them, yet, it now starts tracking and offers an option to skip tracked dialog in future runs. This means that once you decide to rerun a certain section no matter which savegame you're playing you can activate the "Only skip read dialogs" checkbox in the settings (see screenshot below) to have the game speed run bubbles you know but go slow on the one's you haven't seen yet.

IMPORTANT NOTE: if you're a Tavern Talk veteran and want to see the other endings, skipping known dialog won't work, yet, because tracking starts only now. Please go to the settings to activate the Fast-Forward button and make sure "Only skip read dialogs" is turned OFF! Since there is no tracked dialog to skip, yet, it would seem to you the Fast-Forward feature is broken, while it's not. You need to feed the tracker first by manually using the Fast-Forward feature for sections you already know. Once you have completed your first run, you can turn on the "Only skip read dialog" feature to make your life easier because it will then have data to work with. We understand it's not entirely convenient, but it was the only approach we could have implemented this feature post-release.

If you need a bit of help, here is a video tutorial for you:

We hope you appreciate the new Fast-Forward features and they will bring you joy in sunny breezing through the entirety of the Tavern Talk story without missing an outcome or dialog unknown to you. 💯

You can keep track of your previous playthroughs yourself or use the "100% Achievements Guide"-guide Magi752 has kindly provided here on Steam: https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3274505211

That way you know exactly which dialog road you haven't traveled down, yet, which drink you need to make next, or which dialogue option you haven't chosen before.

Happy reruns, everyone! 💝

Farewell Swift Strike mania! 👋

It became a meme in our community, that there were too many Swift Strike orders in the game and it became obvious we had to change that. And now we have! 🍹

While Swift Strike will remain Fable's favorite drink (we couldn't convince them otherwise) this patch introduces more varied drink requests at the Wayfarer's Inn and the game should not feel as repetitive anymore. 🎮 We had to rework some of the dialog for this, mainly because Swift Strike is the only dexterity-based drink in the early game and that remains a bit of a problem and isn't easily fixed.

So now, characters often ask for alternative drinks. Jade, for example, will now order an intelligence-based drink rather than a dexterity one and Fable wants to try out something new from time to time. 💚

Thanks to everyone hinting to this issue and that the game could use a little variety here and there so we could go and investigate. Some things simply get overlooked with development blinders stuck to our heads. 🫶

So let's order it one last time, shall we? A Swift Strike to go, please! 🍸

More secrets in the game 😲

Thanks to the amazing support on Kickstarter, we were able to implement a secret into the game and it has something to do with this Fable sticker on the main title screen. 👀

Can you guess what it is? Let us know in the comments! 💜


We planned those changes a bit later in August, but made haste and finished them earlier than expected, thanks to our amazing team! We still have some improvements for the end of the year, so let us share the current state of the roadmap:

As this journey continues, we want to grow with all of you and make the Wayfarer's Inn cozier and better with each update. So thank you for sharing your improvement suggestions in the Steam Community Hub and our Discord server. ✨ This way we can engage easily, ask questions, offer transparent info on why we made certain decisions, or find solutions for reoccurring requests. We love to make Tavern Talk a better experience for you to enjoy and while we cannot implement each and every request out there we're always sensitive to things that come up frequently and align with our creative vision for the game.


Last but not least: we are running our first discount after launch. The game and all DLC are discounted by 10% for Wholesome Sale and if you are in for a very special deal, make sure to check out the Innkeeper Bundle featuring a nice package of the game, Lorebook, and the wonderful OST for an even better deal. So, if you were waiting for a good chance to grab Tavern Talk, for yourself or to gift it to a friend, now is a good time! So grab the discount while it's up! 🤩

Keep the suggestions comingand please consider leaving a review!

Until next time,
Michel & Tommy

We are so happy to be a part of this year's SimFest Steam Event! 💜

Make sure to come by and play our demo or get the full game and add Tavern Talk and so many other incredible simulation games to your wishlist!

https://steamproxy.net/steamstore/sale/simfest2024

Always remember, wishlisting is free and it helps every game and developer to be seen!

We'll be also streaming our broadcast of the final version of Tavern Talk during this event, so check it out and say hi in the chat!

Cheers,
Tommy

Dear Innkeepers,

we're back with exciting news: we're putting the puzzle back into the rumor mini-game!

We have heard your calls...

... and with today's patch, rumor snippets that belong together will no longer look alike - except for random accidents, of course. We understand that the rumor mini-game as it shipped on release may have felt overly easy and unchallenging while the original demo suggested a more puzzly approach. So we made haste to find a suitable solution for all of you: to those who love themselves a good challenge and to those who just want to breeze through the story or who find the sheer amount of snippets in the later parts of the game overwhelming.

For those who want it easy, we have now added a new "hint-on-demand"-button that will appear should you fail putting together a quest for the first time. It is then up to you to use that button to ask the game for a hint about which snippets belong together. If you do, it will highlight all of the relevant snippets for the current round of quest-making. If several quests need to be found, the game won't tell you which snippets belong together, but since it will allow you to focus on a clear sub-set of rumors we are sure you will manage.

If you belong to the first group and prefer to rack your brain given no clues at all simply ignore that button and go for it! This is what it now looks like in the game:

We're quite happy with the solution we found here and we hope you feel the same. May it let you all enjoy the game even more! We will update the demo with this big adjustment, as well, so it also shows the updated gameplay.

Now, let's have a look at the other improvements and fixes this patch brings with it:

Improvements & Bug fixes

• Expose monitor-dependent resolutions and add a monitor selection option: You can now select the resolutions fitting to your monitor. Do you have a 4k screen? No Problem. Or maybe a widescreen? We've got you covered! Even if you have a second screen plugged into your machine, you can now choose which screen the game should be displayed on. If you should encounter any issues with this, please get in touch through the support link on our Steam page. 🖥️
  
  
• Added some SFXs missing for controller inputs ... to give you an even more immersive experience. 🎮
  
• Added new names to the guestbook entries & updated names for the Credits Kickstarter backer: Some names in the credits and in the guestbook entries were still missing. Digging in we found there was quite a hiccup in our export. Sorry for that! We're confident we finally fixed it for good. All backers who wanted to be named should appear in the credits now. ✅
  
• Fixed typos in German: Thanks to your keen eyes we found more typos in the German translation. It's a bit ironic since we're a studio from Germany, we know. We should have done more aufpassen in the Schule back in the day! We cleaned everything up and it should be a way smoother read now. Dangefön! 🫶
  
• Melina now detects HOT CHOCOLATE just when she actually gets one: Hot chocolate is Melina's favorite drink and for some reason, she thought every drink was hot chocolate. Can't really blame her for that wishful thinking, right? 🍫
  
• Fixed some pronoun issues: Some pronoun variables got mixed up, so we fixed them! 😊

Glimpse into the (near) future

That's a wrap concerning today's patch! But we have more changes lined up for the near future and on the remote horizon so we decided to give you a tiny roadmap for what's coming up:

As always, thank you for your feedback and suggestions through the reviews and the discussions on the Community Hub and of course in our Discord! We love to look for ways to improve our debut game based on your feedback as we continue to grow as a studio and as a community. Thank you for your engagement and for being a part of this journey! 💜

Keep the suggestions coming!

Until next time,
Tommy

Hey there Innkeepers,

First of all we want to thank you all from the bottom of our collected hearts! As of this moment, we have over 566 reviews, this is simply incredible. Thank you all for taking the time and leaving your thoughts behind, helping us to make Tavern Talk even better. 💜

With this announcement, we want to show you, that we are listening to your suggestions and trying to implement them into the game to the best of our abilities. Thanks to your reviews and discussions in the Community Hub we already got some amazing insight, that we were able to patch in. One infamous bug in the game that scrabbled up the pronouns of the Innkeeper is already fixed for example. 🐞

But that's not all... 👀

• The Auto-Skip button: Since we have multiple endings in the game (3 endings and 1 hidden one) we are aware that replayability is important and you showed us how important it is for you as well. Right now we are figuring out how to implement a super-fast autoplay button, letting you (sunny) breeze through the game without any issues. That way you can take a different path and try different dialogue options. 💯
  
  
• Making the rumor-minigame more challenging: During our QA sessions, we saw an issue with how hard the rumor-minigame can be in Act 2 and forward, and decided to make it easier by color-coding the rumor-snippets, so nobody gets soft-locked during their playthrough. But the feedback showed us, that a little bit of challenge was actually welcomed in our cozy visual novel. That is why we are looking into inserting the randomized colors for the rumor-snippets back into the game and making the easier path optional, just in case somebody needs the extra help. 🫶
  
  
• Trinkets: We are so happy that you enjoy the trinkets that the adventurers bring back from their quests and that you want to get a better look at them. And to make a space to honor them the right way, they will not only appear in your tavern but also in a dedicated page in your journal! 📖
  
  
• SFX and screen improvements: Something we will always strive for is to make Tavern Talk as good-looking and sounding as possible! That way, no matter where you play the game, on your TV-screen, windowed, curved monitor etc. you'll always get the best cozy experience. 🫰

Thank you all for being so supportive of this journey and being a part of it all. Tavern Talk is a game that is surrounded by a loving community and we can feel that every day.

Those changes will take some time, but we wanted to let you know in advance, to give you an example for the foreseeable future and making sure that you know, that your voices are heard. ✨

Thank you again and safe travels,
Tommy

Thanks to the feedback on our Discord server[discord.gg] and in our Community discussions here on Steam, we worked on the following improvements and bug fixes.

• Update Credits with Kickstarter Backer 📝
  
• Added missing and fixed guestbook entries ✍️
  
• Music keeps playing when switching from the main menu to the wanted wall or guestbook 🎵
  
• Allow the game to run in the background (now more pausing while alt-tabbed) - perfect for streaming! 📹
  
• Add custom cursor icon for more Tavern Talk immersion ↖️
  
• Add additional ambiance for storm background - get cozy with the storm 🍵
  
• Transitions from tavern to quest building screen are now smoother 💯
  
• Update Japanese UI ✅
  
• Added writing animation delay for specific Japanese and Chinese characters ✅
  
• Improved German localization ✅

• Fixed Can't open ESC menu in drink mixing after opening ESC with autoplay enabled ✅
  
• Fixed black bar issue with curved monitors - enjoy it now on a Curved Monitor!🖥️
  
• Improve ambiance transitions 🎶
  
• Fixed Character Fade issues ✅
  
• Fixed first drink/infusion achievement sometimes not being able to be unlocked after true first use - this only occurred in some instances, but let the achievement hunting continue ✅
  
• Fixed rare game breaker ✅

Thank you all for your continued support! We will keep working on Tavern Talk, fixing bugs and implementing QoL fixes. So please keep sharing your suggestions and wishes with us in our Discord or in the Community Discussions here on Steam.

Once we understand what you are missing, we can thoroughly look into potential improvements. With your help, we can make this game even better and make it really smooth around the edges.

Don’t forget to leave us a review, if you enjoyed the game. 💜 We are very close to crossing 500 reviews - a major benchmark for every game!
Also a big THANK YOU, for reacting to Tavern Talk with so much love and enthusiasm!

Cheers,
Tommy

A Quest to 100 Reviews

My dearest Innkeepers and future Tavern owners, thanks to all of you, we've reached almost 50 reviews on Steam. This is amazing and it marks our journey towards the next big milestone: our first 100 reviews. Let's take a moment to celebrate how far we've come. 🎉🥳🎈

Remember, every piece of feedback helps us to improve and grow, so thank you again for taking the time to leave a review! 💜

We also implemented a tool that shows every positive review in our Discord, that way we can celebrate it with our whole community and the team. If you want and haven't yet, you can join us there: https://discord.gg/dcRbYHWHMs

So if you want to support us through those exciting times, always remember that there are three little steps how you can do that:

Thank you Innkeeper, now onwards to serving those magical drinks. 🍹
Tommy

We have more amazing opportunities in store for you: we've bundled up with legendary games Coffee Talk Ep. 2 and Monster Roadtrip in separate bundles on Steam. So if you've been eying either of these games before, NOW, is your chance to grab them together with Tavern Talk for a very special discount.

If you already own either of these games this is your special chance to save an EXTRA 10% on Tavern Talk – 20% in total while the launch discount is up – by completing either set.

We also have an amazing bundle with our Extended Original Soundtrack containing 34 tracks composed by Filippo Beck Peccoz[linktr.ee], including our Endcredit Song performed by Lilith Max[lilithmax.com]!

Also take a look at our DLCs giving you amazing Digital Goodies like a Tarot Set, Pen & Paper One Shot and Battle Maps for you own P&P campaign!

This is your time to shine – and get yourself an epic game! 🥰

We've been working relentlessly for almost two years to get to this day. We've put thousands of hours into making the best D&D-inspired visual novel we could imagine and into bringing it to you. We've poured all our love, sweat, tears, and pixel-hearts into it. So if you want to help us write an indie Cinderella story and make it as big as it can potentially be, here's our small guide again about what you can do:

• Buy the game 🎮
  
• Write a Steam review ✍️ - remember the first 100 are the crucial ones
  
• Like, share, and comment on anything and everything you see on Social Media to increase reach 💜
  
• Tell your friends about the game 🗨️
  
• Make and share fan art if you feel like it 🖼️ and post in our community hub!

And with that, we only have one thing left to say:

You will always be our favorite patron!


Cheers,
Tommy