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Innkeep satisfies my craving for a fantasy game that’s just a grim drudgery simulatorSomething need doing?
Something need doing?
Image credit:Daniel Burke
Image credit:Daniel Burke
I’m the kind of awful person who looks at the background actors in TV shows and wonders what life is like for e.g. the old woman who sells birdfeed in Trafalgar Square in Mary Poppins when said upper-middle class domestic isn’t singing about her. What fate the Warcraft grunt when he is too old to work work? It’s probably pretty bad, right? Now let me slopInnkeepdown in front of you like a big bowl of rat stew. Developer Daniel Burke furnished me with a little playable slice, and boy, Innkeep is a grim old time. I mean that as a compliment.
In it you run a big pub with room for a lot of grizzled adventurers, in a dog-eat-dog dark fantasy RPG sort of a world - think a roadside pub in one of the early seasons of Game Of Thrones, before everyone hated it. You do a lot of plate-spinning drudgery like cooking, cleaning, and serving, but also eavesdropping, rumourmongering, and knowing when to slip in a ribald joke as a distraction while you size up a mercenary’s sword.
Image credit:Daniel Burke
But your patrons, many of whom are trying to graverob the mystical catacombs in the hills around you, are dangerous, so while you’re serving you hang around listening in on conversations to uncover more about people. You can also eyeball them, but doing either will slowly arouse their suspicion. Better grab your serving tray and slowly clear their table, which helps the suspicion - but you have to make sure you’re looking and doing at the same time. Plus that guy the other side of the room wants soup, godammit, and you can’t take too long about it. Still, if you piss someone off you can tell a story or a joke to get them back onside - as long as you don’t pick the wrong kind of joke.
No release date for Innkeep yet, but this bad boy is on my Wishlist, I tell you what.
