Hello Tavern Keepers!
We know many of you are keenly awaiting Update 2 and while progress is going well on the new scenario and mechanics, as many of you have guessed, we do need a bit more time before it's ready for you. As it stands, we are moving the roadmap target to Q3 this year and we are also going to add the single most requested feature from you: expandable taverns!
The Early Access roadmap will therefore take a little longer, but we believe Early Access works best when we listen and, more importantly, react to your feedback on our way to v1.0. Thank you all for providing such thoughtful and valid input (as well as bug reports)! Whether through the in-game reports (just one 'F3' keypress away) or through the Steam forums or our Discord, we are reading all messages and often discuss how to incorporate them in our plans. You are all very kind to give us your ideas and enthusiasm and we are thrilled to have you along!
Update 2 extended!
Update 2 will introduce an entirely new level, seeing you open a tavern deep under the mountain in the kingdom of the dwarves. It's an exciting new chapter in the story campaign with unique game mechanics and challenges. It also introduces large new systems (like the tavern shop) and raises the star-level cap for your taverns. It will be a huge step forward.
Adding the ability to expand your tavern in Update 2 makes a lot of sense, as the added systems will require even more tavern space and you are already telling us that it feels a little claustrophobic at times.
We'll talk more about the details on the 'expandable tavern' feature as we finalize the system, but the intention is that we still want to give you interesting layouts while also giving you more freedom on how to build your tavern - and wow, have you built some outstanding taverns!
(one of many beautiful player taverns - imagine what you could do with a little more space!)
Development process
We also wanted to provide some transparency about the development process for major updates. There are three main phases.
First, we work on an update internally until it is feature complete, feels good to play and is tested.
Second, once that’s done, we publish the update as an 'experimental' version. The experimental version is a Steam branch (that anyone willing can join), where we finalize mechanics, game balance and catch remaining bugs together with you, the community.
This phase of maturing an update in the experimental branch is crucial for us to deliver a high-quality update and is not something we can rush through. Update 1, for example, took a little longer to stabilize in the experimental branch as we added so many extra features - we really wanted the first update to be more than solely a colour picker. The good news is that the system and performance improvements in Update 1 are foundational for Update 2! We couldn’t have hoped to add expandable taverns without this.
The third and final phase, once the experimental version matures, is to update any missing translations and voice overs, then release it for everyone.
We hope this explains a little how a major update is made.
Update 2 Status
Work on update 2 has been going on for many years so it's not like we have just started (don't worry!). The majority of features (except the new expandable taverns) are completed, stories are written and most voice-overs are recorded too. However, the scenario flow needs more work and we are making some changes to stories and game-feel that will require some re-recordings and new translations.
It's important to state that everything you see, hear and read in our game is handcrafted by humans! However, this also means that when we change stories or polish the scenario progression, it can take weeks of coordination, production and processing to fully polish an update (with the help of our amazing actors and translators).
We hope the human craft, love and attention we put into the game really shows and I know many of you deeply appreciate it (thank you!), but that also means we need to ask for your patience as we take the time to uphold this level of quality going forward.
A word of thanks
Tavern Keeper is a big game, and we are a small team. We've been loving the Early Access journey with our community and really cannot overstate how much we appreciate every encouraging word, every in-game report, every constructive discussion and the many, many incredible creations and taverns!
Thank you all so much for being part of this journey and thank you for your patience as we get Update 2 ready for you.
Until next time,
Patrick
And the Tavern Keeper Team
PS: While you wait for Update 2, we'll continue to highlight community creations, deliver smaller bug fix patches, and our community manager has some fun new things planned on our Discord to tide you over.