The most requested improvement by far was to increase the area on which the tavern can be built so I increased the area by 25% (from 48 big tiles to 60). This is just the first step, it was fastest to do, but in future updates I will try to increase area even more in a meaningful way.
When I read negative reviews there are 2 things that always appear - the game is too easy and the game doesn't have enough content.
I realize that there are different types of players. Many people like Tavern Master because it's a relaxed game where you don't have to micromanage and stress about losing while others would like a bigger challenge. That's why I'm introducing game difficulties. When game starts, you have a choice between relaxed, normal and hard.
- Relaxed difficulty has exactly the same parameters as game had so far - it's easy to make money, in late game there is much more money earned than you can spend and disasters are not dangerous.
- Normal difficulty is much more balanced in terms of economy. Drink price cannot explode to very high amounts, disasters are moderately dangerous and staff requires a bit higher salary than on relaxed
- Hard mode is even more tough than normal. The economy of the game is very tight so you have to make the right choices in order to grow your tavern
Difficulty can always be changed from the settings, so if you pick a wrong one, you can change later on :)
Second big complaint is that there is not enough content. Addressing that takes a bit more time, and I will try to improve it in every update of course.
First new feature that I managed to add is a new disaster besides thieves - fires
Fires happen occasionally and the chance for fire to happen depends on the quality of wax and oil that you pick and on number of light sources. When fire does happen, you have to order your staff to extinguish it by using medieval fire extinguishers - buckets of water of course :)
Next thing on the menu was adding toilets. Every customer has a chance to require one after you unlock them, and if you don't have enough toilets and queues are long, customers will leave angry
Kitchen also got a big improvement. Grill, counter, crate and cauldron are now upgradable. Upgraded crate can hold more ingredients, upgraded counter can hold more food, better grill can be used by more chefs at once and upgraded cauldron allows for more soup to be stored in it.
I had quite a bit of time to experiment as well and during that time I managed to make customers inside the tavern interact with each other. They can now talk, laugh, nod and express other emotions. This doesn't have any functionality, it just makes the tavern a more natural place.
There are many new decorations available as well including many more plants, 2 new seats and kitchen decorations
Shop and staff popup got a huge rework. They are much easier to use now and I hope much less annoying than before :)
Doors are also a thing now, no more holes in the walls
Cauldron now has much nicer textures for soups
Besides these things with nice screenshots attached, I will just list other new things below:
- Linux support!
- All warnings are now clickable
- Adventures popup now has amounts for every ingredients so it's easier to decide which adventure to start
- Mac M1 problems are fixed now
- New paint tool so you don't have to click on every item to change its color, you can do it faster now
- More detailed summary popup
- Hotel guests are now coming during events
- When you load the game some guests will be using hotel rooms already
- A setting to disable edge scrolling
- Many new warnings to help you understand what is wrong with the tavern
- New outline effect
- Destroying walls costs money as well as buying doors and windows
- All reported bugs from Discord and Steam forums are fixed
- Added the Untitled Studio splash screen
I really hope you like these changes and as always please let me know what you do or don't like and what you would like to see in the game in the future. I plan to post a new roadmap next week with some of my ideas what to work on buy I want to hear your feedback as well!
I would also like to thank everyone who played the game and especially those who left positive reviews because reading those really motivates me to continue improving Tavern Master even after the release. I have some big plans for future updates so stay tuned!
~Luka
