Tavern Manager Simulator Review

What a great tavern management game with short quests to always have you work toward something. It also has fun mini-games and you’ll unlock helpers to do the annoying tasks for you. It has no missable achievements and takes around 13 hours to complete.

Approximate amount of time to 100%: around 13 hours
Estimated achievement difficulty: 2/10
Minimum number of playthroughs needed: 1
Is there a good guide available: Yes, here
Multiplayer achievements: No
Missable achievements: No
Grinding Achievements: No
DLC-Only achievements: No
Speedrun achievements: No
Time-gated achievements: No
RNG-achievements: No
Does difficulty affect achievements: No difficulty setting
Unobtainable/glitched achievements: No

What a lovely Tavern management game! I couldn’t stop playing it once I started it, as there is always something to do, and the next goal is always just around the corner. In this game, you run a tavern and start by serving ale, but you will add a few more items to the menu as you progress through the game.

I was surprised at how hooked this game had me, even though there wasn’t really a story. It showed me that it works best when there are short, easily achievable objectives and the game mechanics are a lot of fun. Don’t get me wrong; I love a good story, but I guess it isn’t always necessary.

The game has a few mini-games while you play it, like one for serving drinks, cooking, or doing the dishes. I really disliked doing the dishes mini-game. However, very soon, you’ll unlock your first helper, and I instantly assigned them dishwashing duty, and they have been doing that for the rest of the game. All the other mini-games were totally fine with me, although it still was nice to unlock more and more helpers to help you out in the tavern that is getting busier and busier.

The tutorials are well done. They are text boxes with pictures, but they explain each mechanic very well. What I also liked is that after the beginning, when you open the tavern, there is a bit more time between the tutorials and introducing new mechanics, and I think that this was passed very well. I’m also very glad that the game didn’t overstay its welcome. It was fun for 13/14 hours, but it shouldn’t have taken much longer before becoming a bit boring.

None of the achievements are missable. However, I recommend serving bad food/drinks right at the beginning and maybe doing the one for not paying your loan back on a different save file. It is nice that most of them are for just going through the questline, but I also enjoyed that a few of them are for exploring the area around your tavern.

I give Tavern Manager Simulator 4,5 out of 5 stars.

This review for Tavern Manager Simulator was written on 8 February 2025, based on the current Steam version of the game which has 41 achievements at the time of writing this review. This information can be outdated, for example, when the developer adds or removes achievements or releases (new) DLC.