Game Info – Features

Pseudo-medieval sword & sorcery-like fantasy world

• The Tavern is set in a pseudo-medieval sword & sorcery-like fantasy world. This world functions as a backdrop for the events and stories that players experience in the game, without focusing on overarching story-lines, world-endangering threats or epic wars between opposing factions. Instead, the focus is on the personal experiences of lone adventurers and heroes as they roam the wilderness, explore the ruins of ancient civilizations or traverse dangerous mountain passes in the search for hidden treasure and long lost secrets.

Central hubs – taverns – for social interactions with other players

• All great fantasy adventures start in social hubs, and very often those social hubs are taverns. Some such taverns set the stage for this game as the central locations where adventurers and would-be heroes gather to socialize before they head off to do what adventurers and would-be heroes do best: exploring, slaying monsters, helping old ladies across the river and looting shiny treasures from ancient ruins!

  Upon their return to the taverns they tell their tales of bravery, play drinking-games and sing drinking-songs and engage in drunken brawls. They dance on the tables, gamble with dice or cards and spend their well-earned fortune on a drink or two for themselves and their friends (or enemies).

Story-oriented solo-adventures with random locations, events and encounters

• Each Adventure is a stand-alone, event-driven short-story with randomized locations, events and encounters – different every time you play. During each Adventure you must choose which path to take through several randomly available locations in order to reach the final destination of your journey, where you try to fulfill the ultimate objective of the Adventure.

  Your journey is handled through a node-based system of branching paths, where you may get choices like… following a river along the bottom of a valley VS braving a dangerous mountain pass, or passing through a potentially hostile village VS sneaking past the village through the forest. Each such choice will open up new possibilities for where you end up next.

  At each location one or more random events will occur which you’ll have to play through in order to leave the location and travel to the next one. After successfully overcoming the challenges presented at several such locations, you finally arrive at the intended final destination of your journey – where a final challenge remains. On your way there you’ll have explored exotic environments, met curious and interesting NPCs, hopefully survived turn-based combat with randomly encountered monsters and fabulous creatures – and possibly even uncovered some hidden treasures.

Simple, turn-based combat

• This is not a hack-and-slash action RPG, and you will not be mowing down hundreds and thousands of monsters in a never-ending grind. Whether you’re fighting a rare, randomly encountered mythical creature or a common forest troll, most fights will serve a purpose – to tell an interesting story, to give you an experience worth remembering, to engage you as a player, to drive the narrative of your Adventure onwards.

  The actual combat mechanics are quite simple: Based on the character class you pick for your character during character creation, you will have access to a (small) number of unique abilities that can be utilized either offensively or defensively in each round of combat. The same goes for your NPC opponent. Each round you choose to either attack or defend against a likely incoming attack – the NPC does the same, and this continues until one of you collapses to the ground or flees from combat.

  In many games – MMORPGs especially – combat is the main feature around which everything else revolves. Not so for The Tavern; combat in this game is one of many tools you make use of in order to overcome the challenges you encounter, but it is not the be-all and end-all of the game.

Limited demand on your time

• The Tavern is not a high-maintenance kind of game; it does not require your ultimate devotion, does not devour all of your spare time and does not require the sacrifice of your first-born child.

  Instead, every real-time day it sets a soft cap on the amount of Adventures you may safely go on, “safely” in the sense that there is no permanent risk for your character while doing these Adventures – as long as you don’t go beyond the soft cap. This means you can log on, play until you’ve reached the cap, and then stop – without having to worry about keeping up with other people. You may of course stick around in the taverns for as long as you wish and partake in everything that takes place there, even after you’ve maxed out your safe Adventures, but no pressure.

  However, if you just can’t get enough and you’re keen on pushing your luck, you can actually go beyond the soft cap and keep on doing Adventures – albeit with one (potentially serious) drawback… the risk of permanent death for your character!

Permanent death

• Every real-time day you may, as mentioned above, go on a limited amount of safe Adventures without any permanent risks for your character. Falling in combat during one of these Adventures will only result in failing the Adventure itself and your character will return to the tavern you set out from in a state of shameful defeat.
  

  “Here lies Bob, who didn’t care about the daily limit”

  Continuing to do Adventures after reaching the daily limit will however expose your character to the risk of permanent death. Falling in combat during any of these “extended Adventures” WILL result in permanent death for your character, and you will have to start over – either from scratch or through a heir that inherits a certain amount (still to be determined) of your original character’s skills, stats, fame and/or fortune.

  The risk increases for every additional extended Adventure you go on past the daily limit; the overall danger goes up and the overall rewards go down, but there is no fixed cap that is guaranteed to stop you.

Multiplayer interactions through mini-games and duels in taverns

• While staying in a tavern you may interact with other players in many different ways, such as chat (examples: tavern-wide, table-specific, private messages), playing games of chance (examples: dice, cards, knife juggling), compete in various mini-games of skill (examples: axe-throwing, arm-wrestling, beer-swilling) or engage in friendly duels in areas specifically designated for these activities. Possibly, there will also be the occasional tavern-wide drunken brawl.

Random monster encounters and rare events

• At any time while traveling from one location to another, you may encounter random creatures or even rare special events that take place in unique environments not tied to any specific Adventure. These special events can not happen in the other, more generic locations.

Character classes with unique abilities

• The Tavern features a selection of four (subject to change) different playable character classes, each of which will have in their arsenal three unique abilities; an offensive ability, a defensive ability and a self-heal. The classes are not equally proficient with each of these types of abilities, so a player’s approach to combat-situations will depend both on their selected class and on the type of opponent they are facing. Each class also comes with specific traits that can affect non-combat gameplay such as interactions with NPCs, world-exploration, puzzle-solving, etc.

  Read more about the available character classes in the Character Classes-section.

Character customization

• Customize your character through a variety of character creation options and by collecting and wearing all manner of visually appealing gear and apparel. You can also potentially customize the look and theme of your class abilities, should you come across any long lost combat techniques and/or tomes of ancient sorcery during your Adventures!

Barrel-smashing

• While The Tavern uses a turn-based system for combat with both NPCs and other players alike, when it comes to barrels, crates, urns, vases and the like it’s all about the hacking and slashing!

Powered by Unity

• The Tavern is powered by the Unity game-engine, which lets us potentially have both high-quality graphics and great gameplay without necessarily having to sacrifice one for the other.

Developed for PC, Mac and Linux

• Thanks to the power of Unity, we’ll be developing and releasing The Tavern for both PC, Mac and Linux.

Lots of graphics! Several!

• The Tavern will feature many graphics. Prepare to have your eyes bombarded with colorful pixels!