Gather & Explore
Explore a semi-open world, gather ingredients, craft weapons and charms, and build your tavern and villages.
Cook
Cook magical meals, snacks, and ales that grant buffs, healing, and powerful abilities.
Fight
Use meals, charms, and brews to defeat enemies, bosses, and survive dangerous dungeons.
Quest & Story
Follow quests, meet characters, uncover secrets, and experience Gwen’s journey through the world of Tales of the Tavern.
Story Overview
The Tavern Journal
Concept Art
work-in-progress Gameplay clips, concept videos, from Tales of the Tavern.
work-in-progress Gameplay clips, concept videos, from Tales of the Tavern.
work-in-progress Gameplay clips, concept videos, from Tales of the Tavern.
Gameplay Loop
Explore whimsical biomes, battle corrupted creatures, gather rare ingredients, and cook magical meals using Tohm Kyatt’s stolen recipes. A living world with day/night cycles, seasons, weather systems, farming, survival mechanics, and base-building drives player progression.
The Tavern Journal
The Tavern Journal is where we share the ongoing development of Tales of the Tavern, including work-in-progress gameplay, system previews, concept videos, and edited visual tests that show what we want the final game to feel like.
FEATURED VIDEO
Dungeon Wave System Test
A dungeon combat test where Gwen enters and fights through waves of skeleton enemies, including archers and grunts, before ending in a Thairrot mini-boss fight. The goal is to test the pacing, enemy waves, and overall dungeon combat flow.
Screenshots
Mock-Up Videos
Dialogue Concept
A quick look at how NPC conversations could feel in Tales of the Tavern, including dialogue boxes, portraits, text layout, and overall conversation framing.
Cat Cauldron Cooking Task Mockup
Concept video of the Cat Cauldron cooking task, focusing on pacing and magical cooking as players prepare meals using the Cauldron task.
Room Transition Test
Gwen opens a door, revealing the next room with a smooth fade and masked reveal, enhancing the magic of Tales of the Tavern. This test focuses on creating seamless room transitions.
Status Effect Concept
Gwen fights a Prawnhusk that can build up poison with each hit. Once the poison bar fills, the screen distorts and Gwen takes damage over time.
Inventory UI Opening Concept
A concept video demonstrating the inventory, highlighting the UI layout and organization of items, categories, and player information when the menu opens.
Edited concept videos that show possible final-look ideas for Tales of the Tavern. These videos help us test the mood, framing, pacing, visual effects, and overall presentation we want the game to have before everything is fully built in-engine.
Enemy & Combat Tests
WIP videos showing early tests of combat mechanics in Tales of the Tavern, including enemy behavior, player attacks, hit reactions, status effects, weapons, charms, magical meals, and boss encounters.
Fixed Camera Boss Battle Test
A test showing a boss fight with a wide fixed camera locked onto the arena. Instead of following the player, the camera stays still and shows the full battle space, helping the fight feel more cinematic while letting the player clearly see the boss, Gwen, and everything happening in the area.
Dungeon Wave System Test
A dungeon combat test where Gwen enters and fights through waves of skeleton enemies, including archers and grunts, before ending in a Thairrot mini-boss fight. The goal is to test the pacing, enemy waves, and overall dungeon combat flow.
Regular Camera Boss Battle Test
A test showing a boss fight with the regular gameplay camera following Gwen as she moves through the arena. This version keeps the fight feeling closer to normal gameplay, while letting us see how well combat, movement, and boss attacks read when using the standard player-following camera.
Fire Meal Critical Hit Test
A test showing how fire meal effects could work in combat in Tales of the Tavern. In this one, Gwen eats a fire meal and gains the chance to deal critical fire damage while fighting Crayhusk enemies in Whisker Woods. The goal is to test how the effect looks, how it reads during combat, and how satisfying it feels when fire crits trigger on enemies.
System Tests
WIP videos showing early tests of gameplay systems, world features, and technical ideas in Tales of the Tavern — like real-time season changes, interaction systems, UI tests, combat mechanics, and other features as they come together.
Dynamic Seasonal Change Test
A WIP video showing the environment changing in real time. The scene starts off green and full of life, shifts into a fall-like look where everything turns brown, then changes again as rain brings the greenery and life back to the world. It’s a test of how seasons and weather can dynamically affect the environment in Tales of the Tavern.
RVT Biome Painting Test
A quick look at the RVT system we’re using to make biome creation easier. Painting the ground affects rocks, grass, and even particles, helping the whole area feel more connected.
Day & Night Cycle Test
A short WIP test showing the day and night cycle in Tales of the Tavern. We’re building this alongside a year-round calendar, in-game clock, and seasonal system so the world can change over time and feel more alive as players explore, cook, fight, and manage the tavern.
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Physics Based
Foliage Interaction Tests
A first test for our foliage interaction system in Tales of the Tavern. Gwen can run through grass, bushes, and other plants in the world, and they react with physics when she bumps into them or hits them. The goal was to make the environment feel more alive and responsive as the player moves through it.
This version uses physics-based reactions, but we’re now exploring a material-based approach instead so we can keep the same interactive feeling while making it more optimized for larger areas.
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Material Based
