• Price: $21.99 USD (currently on sale for $19.79 until July 11th)
• Developer/Publisher: Gentle Troll Entertainment
• Release Date: June 20, 2024

A review code was kindly provided by Future Friends Games on behalf of Gentle Troll Entertainment. We thank them for allowing us to cover something they’ve worked so hard on.

Note: Rated Everyone 10+; fantasy violence and “mentions of death & grief”

Whether you’re a stressed out human in the real world or an adventurer in a fantasy land, everyone needs someone who will listen to them talk about their problems. In Tavern Talk, you play a supporting role in the lives of the patrons who visit your tavern for both moral and magical support in a land populated by a variety of fantasy races.

What’s “Ale”-ing You?

As the Innkeeper, you run a tavern called the Wayfarer’s Inn, where you serve nonalcoholic beverages with magical benefits. While you do talk to your guests about their personal struggles, their primary concerns tend to involve surviving the quests they’ve taken. They’ll discuss the details of their quest with you, and offer one or two solutions they’d be willing to try.

When the adventurer requests just one strategy, you’ll have to mix them a drink based on the stats they want augmented. If they’re open to multiple strategies, you get to make the final decision; your choice of beverage may make the difference between a quest’s success or failure. This can also influence the story’s outcome.

You have 5 different potions that correspond with individual stats, which include Strength, Charisma, Dexterity, Intelligence, and Defense. Glance at your recipe book to see which drink will meet the customer’s requirements for their quest. The game pins the requirements to the menu when you open your recipe book; each stat is represented by an icon, with drops that indicate the number of layers of that flavor in the drink.

Once you decide on the recipe you want to use, you can have it posted on the blackboard to reference as you mix the drink. The drinking glass has 5 possible “layers” for you to fill with a mixture of potions. These layers correspond with the star diagram on the left, which displays the current values of each stat to compare with the recipe. If you mess up at any point, you can feed the unnecessary drink layers to Andu, your adorable familiar.

Drink creation starts out very simple, but soon you will add magical infusions to the mix. Infusions add extra effects (such as invisibility) to drinks on top of their stat-boosting properties. Using infusion ingredients also allows you to use less of an ingredient.

Rumor Has It

Sometimes a customer comes in for their favorite drink, but more often than not they’ll want a drink to help with a quest. Listen to what people have to say about what’s going on in the area, and once you’ve gathered enough information, that’s when you can put a quest description together at the end of the day. Adventurers will then take your quests and make drink requests from there.

Quest-Life Balance

There are 18 main cast members (with an additional 5 side characters who aren’t listed in the character profiles). The cast is an eclectic bunch belonging to different fantasy races and genders. A few of them are insecure about something, while others are closed off or focus too much on work. You’ll get to know these characters across 24 chapters, and provide them with support.

I loved how characters’ facial expressions and poses would change with animated movements. It really helped capture the emotions of the scene as they interact with you and the other adventurers. The cast does interact outside of the tavern setting, which you don’t get to see, but they’ll tell you all about the things you miss anyways.

I thought the writers did a great job of developing the characters and their relationships over the course of the story. Standoffish “lone wolf” characters gradually learn to open up and work with others on quests, while the timid ones find the courage to start their adventures.

Despite the serious nature of the story, they also did a good job of balancing it with some humorous moments as well. They kept me engaged and entertained as I watched the cast grow and move the story along. I found myself with several favorites by the end, including Fable, the name-changing Zephir, Melli, and Kyle, who often misunderstands what people say.

I was also interested in finding out more about Minthie and her “service beast”; I don’t think we get enough representation for those who use wheelchairs – especially in this genre and time period – so she was a nice addition to the game. Her aesthetic is both cool and beautiful, and they started to give us some background on her character. I just wish she got more screen time.

You won’t just learn about the tavern’s patrons, though. Your character has already met a few adventurers, so there’s some shared history between them. It’s interesting to see how even the smallest details become relevant later on in the story.

Lost in the Lore

One of the only issues I had was that I wasn’t familiar with the mythology involved in the story. Characters mentioned concepts like the Primordial Sea and Astral Planes, which didn’t make much sense to me at first. I think I got the gist of it by the end, but could have used some kind of primer at the beginning. They did include character profiles and information about the areas in this fictional world, which I really appreciated.

A Toast to Tavern Talk!

Besides some confusion over the mythology, my only other issue was that we can’t rewind to make different dialogue choices, and I think the game could have used a faster auto-forward function for the text (as well as a skip read option for subsequent playthroughs).

Overall, I responded well to Tavern Talk. I’ve never played a tabletop RPG before, but I’m familiar enough that I could still really enjoy the setting and characters. The art is gorgeous, and the soundtrack suits the game’s theme well. There are multiple endings depending on your drink choices, which adds to the replay value, and I thought the storytelling and character development were excellent.

I adored the characters, and I’d love to see more content with them in it. I could see spin-off games in different genres (like a deckbuilder or tactics game depicting the events outside of the tavern during this game). Maybe even some Fable or Melli plushies. All I know is that I definitely look forward to what’s next from Gentle Troll Entertainment.