wanted to like this game, but laggy/performance issues, stuttering, game literally has wait timers when crafting things like a mobile game.

Very promising. Only downside is I cannot whip my lazy brother to do chores just like in real life.

It plays like a gacha game. I honestly feel this game was developed as a gacha game; there are restrictions for almost everything and RNG. 1. Stamina, you can recover but there's a limit as to how many food you eat for the day. All activities cost stamina. 2. Fishing Spot limits. Only a limited respawns each day, this become increasingly frustrating if you're trying to get the adventurer location fish (ex. Blossomfish, noctiluca) 3. Daily adventure limit. You can only visit ONE place each day and if you have the weekly skills, it's one extra visit each week. Special materials/monster only spawn on specific days also. 4. RNG for material to craft weapon, armor, accessory. You have a chance to get X item from a pool of item, each time you turn in a non-event quest. There's a chance the NPC will spawn at the adventure island you're visiting that day. There is no other way to obtain materials (at least at the progress I'm at, 5th island unlocked). The pool of items consist from gems/leather/ores/wood/runes and the collection item--after certain progress it unlocks this pool. You need 2-3x of 2-3 materials to craft. 5. The non rare ingredients (crops, some fish) are purchasable with a strict daily limited and fruit is weekly limit. For the deluxe items recipe, you need way more ingredients than you can possibly obtain, and you can't really utilize and would be using the lower tier food. It takes a good amount of ingredients to upgrade the dishes. for the rare fishes, it's not remotely feasible to even upgrade it as the ingredients are very much RNG. Gameplay after the initial is just tedious and grindy. And it's grindy most likely to prolong game time. Farming grid is frustrating, as you have to position yourself properly at a certain angle to get the full 3x3 area of effect for harvesting/farming.

This is it. This is the foundation for the game I've been waiting my whole life for. As an avid lover of RPG's like Final Fantasy and its ilk, and cozy games like Harvest Moon and Stardew Valley, this game stands at the intersection that I've been dreaming to see. I already love the exploration and turn based battle system, and it's incredibly satisfying farming your own ingredients and cooking up your customer's favorite dishes. I can't wait to see where it takes us down the road, but as it stands this game has the makings of standing atop the summit that Stardew Valley has scaled and lived for years. To anyone reading this, whether this influences you or not, I love you and you deserve all the great things you seek.

Edit: Changing my recommend from yes to No after getting further into the story/game: This is 100% Dungeon and Dragon's/Baldur's Gate 3 lite without even trying to hide it and I don't think the devs have permission to be using Wizard of the Coast / Dungeon and Dragons IP in their game. It's also not advertised as such. I was under the impression this was a cozy farm sim / tavern management game. Not what is possibly someone's D&D campaign made into a game without any research of IPs. ----- Was a fun game with a lot of potential, but a lot of frustrating mechanical issues, some questionably 'borrowed' UI and battle mechanics, and heavily leaning in Dungeon and Dragons with copyrighted races. I don't think the dev team looked into anything pertaining to Wizard of the Coast and their IPs. For context; I got this game out of curiosity. A good friend of mine has been excitedly talking about it and how much they enjoy it. I enjoy farm sims and the ability to customize my character. I also love supporting indie dev teams and their endeavors whenever I can. Especially by purchasing, playing, and letting others I know it exists that I know will enjoy it. I would have recommended this game to others because it still is in Early Access and there is always room for improvement. For now, it's going on the shelf until the devs address whether or not they were given permission or have a Open Game License with WoC. The issues I have as of playing it: - The character creation UI is straight up Animal Crossing: New Horizon, but with a color wheel. I think it's cool to be inspired by other games you claim to be like, but it was def a 'hmm' moment for me. - The color 'wheel' doesn't always give the proper hue. You have the ability to change your clothing to 3 dye channels, but if you want white-white, it's more of a off-white with under shading of whatever color the wheel is on. So my white dress became more of a grey-blue. It's neat to have the option to change dye channels of outfits, but the off-color is very apparent. So it's best to just stay with the base colors for a lot of it. - Stamina system sucks. Tilting the field, 1 stamina. Seeding, 1 stamina. Watering, 1 stamina. Harvesting, 1 stamina. Collecting wild ingredients, 1 stamina per each item. Fishing, 5 stamina. If you mess up and the fish gets away, that's 5 stamina you just lost. You also are COMPLETELY gated behind how much food / stamina you can get back in a day. Which makes it difficult in choosing what you are going to do day to day. Either plant, harvest, or fish. You can't have it all. - Cooking is fun, but the fact you can't use pre-created meals for higher grade versions is such a waste. I am also not a fan of time-gating ingredients such a wheat, cheese, mead, etc and then giving purchasable hourglasses to speed up the process. It gives me war flashbacks of Farmville. Having to sink your in game income into speed-ups is really off putting. I would 100% rather have the option to upgrade my complexes to speed up the process, like any other farm sim. - Cooking is fun, gathering the ingredients are not. Fishing is pre-generated fishing holes with horrible RNG and no lure/bait mechanic to get higher quality fish. There is no way to boost your crops growing cycle outside of using the little dragon's weekly powers. (Which is on the map for some reason, weird place to put it). ○ Rare ingredients are a pain in the rear and are locked behind 'adventure areas', rumors, RNG NPC quests, and special days. However, you are locked to one singular adventure area, per day. So if you run out of one thing, and need another, that's going to be another day used up. ○ I would prefer the ability to do all areas once a day. I feel like that is a fair request as the ingredients are already hard to come by and you need multiple to craft higher-end meals. - Playing the sister feels like third-wheeling the entire story. Elio was obviously suppose to be the main protagonist of the game. When cutscenes happen, as the sister, you are behind the bar and Elio is front and center of the cutscenes. He's the tavern owner. He's the one that goes after NPCs to ask them to work with them. Even the sleeping screen when loading the new day and the start of opening the tavern is Elio. It's pitched as a choice of who you get to play, but it's very, heavily Elio centered. - The 'Tavern' part of the game feels like it's tailored to co-op. With no co-op capabilities. There is also difficulty selecting the food you want due to how close and personal they are to each other. If there is a way to move furniture, I have not found that out. There is a 'decoration' option, but it does absolutely nothing. - Skill tree. You have one for battling, but nothing to help improve your farm, cooking, crafting. There is also no tutorial or explanation of why you have it or what it does, but we will get to that. - The glaring issue I have with this game. Is it's battle system. Yes, there is a still image of the turn-based style fighting in the game above, however it does not show the other things that go with the battle system. It's 100% a Baldur's Gate 3 rip off. Yes, I know that D&D exists I play D&D, but unless you played D&D before the critically acclaimed BG3 you would have never seen the stat set up unless you played D&D. The roles are basically a watered down version of BG3 battle stats. Elio literally has a -1 to his strength for what reason? Besides Bard, I guess? ○ There is literally an Owlbear. ○ Also the specific name "Tiefling" is protected by Wizard of the Coast and I have no clue whether or not this indie company got permission or not. ○ Mage Armor has the same shield look as it does in BG3. Again, I think it's great to be inspired by other popular games, but unless the dev team plans on making a comprehensive guide in-game to explain the stats, class, battle mechanics. You just have a lot of random nonsense taken from another game. - Tutorials don't really exist. Outside of, till, plant, water, harvest (which we all know how to do from other farm sims) and how to cook, there isn't much in the way of explaining how in-game mechanics work. ○ This is where the frustration of lack of tutorials comes in. There is eventually a turning point in the game where you unlock 'adventures'. You're just kind of thrown into. There's no pop-up guide. Nothing to explain to you what each person does. It's like the devs are assuming you know the roles of tank, support, range/melee dps, mage already, which isn't a good thing to be assuming. Because not everyone plays battle-style games. I think that there is room for improvement on explaining what the battle mechanics are. What the roles do and how you are suppose to play them. ○ Like yes, there are tool-tips for the skills if you hover over them, but beyond that nothing. ○ There isn't even a tutorial on where to talk to the 'Master' of your role to change skill points around. ○ The follow up to this is that there is no tutorial on how to get new gear or how to upgrade gear, or even how to get materials to MAKE the gear/weapons. ○ This includes the fact that you get these materials from doing quests. Which unless you're frequently looking at the map, which I am not, you wouldn't know who has a quest for you. So a visible indicator above the NPC would be very welcomed. Again, this is just my thoughts on the game as I've been playing it. I will still continue to play it here and there. I just hope there are some changes to mechanics and more helpful tutorials. Because honestly, I'm too anti-social to join a community to ask questions. I would rather just have the information right there at a click of a button.

Refunding it, key bindings dosnt work (particulary space), changing key bindings dosnt work, known issue that have tons of complaints for months. Unplayable.

The game still has a lot of bugs. But they are working on the bugs as they show up. Only issue I have with the dev team, is that they keep trying to get everyone to join their discord for bug reports, and I hate that. Otherwise, it's a nice game for the younger audience or for adults that want to relax. Except that Phoenix. I hate it. I HATE IT.

This game is adorable. much like many other cozy games you have your farming aspect, but I really enjoy researching the cooking recipes in this game! It's still in EA, but the devs put out regular updates to improve quality of live aspects and new content. Looking forward to seeing where this game goes!

Pros

• Unique visuals - besides being cute, it also looks like a pop-up book which is a style I've never seen before!
• Gameplay & UX - My favourite thing about the game in general is how everything has has gameplay mechanics built for each feature - instead of the usual boring crafting which consists of clicking multiple buttons in a generic UI, we actually interact with each step, like the juicer, cooking pot, etc.
• The recipe experimentation mechanic was super fun and adds to the immersion. It reminded me of early days of Little Witch in the Woods, before they removed all the fun mechanics. Dragon Song Tavern has those mechanics and i hope they stay!
• Very happy with character customisation. It has a colour wheel for everything.

Cons

• Sound effects need to be improved. They are plain at the moment and they could add a lot more lively energy to the game, especially adding world/animals sound effects and more UI feedback sfx.
• There is no voice acting for the story, which is quite well written and funny actually!
• The farming mechanic is a bit fidgety. Was really hard to aim properly on the grid. As you progress I guess we can water everything at once so that may be easier as you progress in the game hopefully.

General Overview

• The game overall is in a really good state for an Early Access. If they keep on improving I can see this being the next big farm sim game out there, at pair with titles like Fields of Mistria & Coral Island.
• It has a lot of uniqueness which sets it apart from other farm/sim games, and I think that's exactly what players want at the moment, as many are burnt out from farming games.
• Strong point for me was the story which added immersion, the fact that we are following the story of the two siblings. Personally I also like how the 2 siblings subvert the usual tropes for their personalities and dynamic.
• For an early access I think it's a great solid foundation already. It even has quality of life improvements like the fish net, for those of us who don't enjoy fishing!

Gameplay & Exploration

You can also check me playing this on livestream, if you want to see me exploring the town and the features! I truly enjoyed the game and will keep livestreaming each month as well as on release. https://youtube.com/live/zsP1qWUWQfE

I've been playing this style of games (harvest moon, rune factory, stardew valley, et cetera) since I was a little kid back in like 2005 and still continue to play them on an ongoing basis... so... a lot of time with the farming sim style of game. That being said, this game is everything I had been wanting for years. The farming aspect is fun, relaxing and quite intuitive, with tools to streamline the process even more when you eventually purchase them. The story itself is SO MUCH fun and so interesting that I feel myself constantly hoping that when I start a new day there might be a new quest that starts. Additionally, you unlock several lovable characters throughout the story. Side quests are plentiful as well, to get you some extra items. I have always wanted more reason to cook meals in this type of game instead of just shipping off the ingredients, and this game finally gives that reason beyond perhaps some healing items--- because, obviously, you own a tavern! And the mechanics for running the tavern as well as cooking the food are SO engaging and fun to do. Learning recipes, getting new unlocks when you acquire different ingredients, all of the different means to get ingredients and new unlockable areas to add more ingredients to your list... they are all things the game devs have gone into detail far beyond expectation with. That leads to my final point which is about the dev team. They are all phenomenal, lovely individuals who keep constantly engaged with their players. Their discord server is full of kind players and they take every single players feedback into account. They are CONSTANTLY coming out with new mechanics and items in their updates, as well as keeping on top of fixing bugs as quickly as possible. The amount of love they put into the game, as well as the amount of care that they have for their community are incredible. I could not love this game more, and I would recommend it to absolutely everyone who enjoys these type of games.

its so much fun! i have been playing with my wife, and we love it. hoping a co-op feature comes soon!!

I brought this game on release and i have to say its a very cute and addictive game with nice music and relaxing atmosphere. the art is very cute but can be a bit too bright at times. developers are paying attention to peoples comments and will do regular updates as well which is great and something you dont see to often. which is great as obviously with it being a early access game there will obviously be kinks and bugs to smooth out also there is a friendly and active discord that helps with any issues or even finding out what is in a particular recipe that your currently stuck with. now saying all that i do feel the dungeons are lacking. could do with more different types of finds and more mobs but to be honest i have to say that is my only quibble.

I'm loving this game but I've come to a point where when I opened the game that I can go no further than the green loading screen. Very sad. I'm playing on a Windows laptop. I'm a bit over 8 hours of play. I restarted the game and I noticed this time around that I had more lemons and apples the next day, which made me happy. Added to my review to answer a Dev question: I'm a Mac person so I can only tell you a description of my laptop. It's a Dell G16 7630, intel core i7 Nvidia RTX . I don't know what that means or if it's helpful. I'm going to set the game aside for a while because while I really like the game I very much dislike the shortness of the stamina. I'm against stamina bars anyway, it takes the cozy factor down. My Time at Sandrock has a stamina bar but it doesn't get in the way with what I need to do and it lasts a long time. It took me a bit of time to learn the mechanics of fishing and cooking in DST and I was a bit frustrated but now that I've learned the fishing one I wish I had more stamina. I find I'm eating too much of the food I've cooked and grown.

A good start with some annoyances that can be overcome Hello - I would like to start by saying I like this game. It combines a lot of the types of games I play all into one. The graphics are cute but there needs to be more in the tutorial as to how to do things like change clothes/ appearance etc. One of my main frustrations for now is going to do something and seeing that it costs silver or gold but no one explains how to get those types of coins. I like talking to the players and finally found out the if you hit x you can find out where individuals are on the map in town. I would like to be able to shift from the tavern area map to the town map so I can know if I have someone that wants to talk on days that I don't really need to go into town. The overall mechanics of the game are simple enough but I have to say the first time I got into the boat, I was confused on how to make it go to the islands. I also agree that there needs to be higher amounts on the food to regain stamina. Overall this is a good beginning and I can't wait to see what comes next.

LOVE LOVE LOVE THIS GAME. You hunt, fish, grow and cook all of your tavern dishes to sell AND THE COMBAT IS TURN BASED I AM HOOKED

I love this game, my kid loves it, its not stressful and I can go at whatever pace I want. The controls are interesting in a good way for both keyboard and controller. The gameplay in general is pretty cool, and there's a lot of lore. The devs are awesome and fix bugs and other issues very quickly. The community is awesome too, everyone is super helpful and kind. I'm genuinely looking forward to everything that the devs have planned in the future.

This is a cute hybrid of a Cozy game and a really basic RPG. The development is still ongoing, but what is in there already is significant enough to keep your attention for a while. The premise is to fish (a LOT) and adventure to gather ingredients to help run your tavern. Over time, you build up the tavern to hold more customers and more dishes/alcohol. As you level and round out your adventuring gear more, special enemies start to populate your calendar (and I do enjoy that the 'rumor mill' that actively runs in your tavern nightly contributes to how you discover some of the special bosses. i.e. You hear a rumor from the blacksmith that there's a really angry dinosaur on a certain island every second of the month, you show up there on your daily excursion and bam, T-Rex special fight) HOWEVER, that isn't the only way you can discover the special bosses so it's pretty freeform in how you discover things. The daily adventuring limitation (1x unless you use a special spell from Luca) is a bit bothersome, but the development team actively listens on the discord and does try to balance things so that this isn't as much of a sticking point as most games in this genre are. I will say this, if you don't like to fish in mini-games, this is NOT the game for you. Mythic dishes and many of your daily dishes you need to eat for energy are fish-related and thus, the times you are not tending to your garden for the vegetable ingredients or are out adventuring, you are fishing. You are given a start of 120 energy per day and can eat extra dishes up to 300 energy per day; plenty of energy to do everything you need typically. Hate timers? Great! No problem here. While there is a running hour timer in the corner, you are not stressed for time at any point in the game; in fact, there's an achievement for opening the tavern right at midnight. Pros: - Timers are non-existent in the main part of the game. There are some timing mini-games when you make certain drinks and food, but those are very few and far between. - Ingredients feel scarce and important; you actually have to balance your menu to change it daily. - RPG elements are super simple and easy to pick up. Fighting an Ice Elemental? Throw on ice protection and fire damage boosters. Good for introducing to younger audiences. - Farming is simple; after a while you gain a magic wand that uses no energy to water your crops daily. One of the best early upgrades is that artifact. - Rumors from your tavern patrons help you find rare ingredients. You can also be assigned special adventuring tasks from folks in the tavern for unique items. These are usually worth doing as you get equipment or sigil upgrades from them. - You can mix and match as well as set up how you place your team. When you step on the boat to adventure, I like that you can move your supports to one side or a full back line. You can customize everything about the setup. - Cheap stat rerolling. As you get higher in levels, you'll eventually unlock subclasses and will notice that the basic skills are no longer needed. You can literally go back to these training NPCs and pick all high skills if you want. The rate is the same and you can pick and choose how you build out. Cons: - Fishing for mythics is actively frustrating; they actually feel like mythic fish even when you have the equipment to boost their spawn rates. The plus side is you get many common fish for other dishes. - No minimaps on adventuring maps; you will have to learn and eventually just memorize where ingredient drops are on these adventuring spots. Granted, they're not huge, but it's still inconvenient. - No flags telling you if you're underleveled for a certain area. I appreciate that it's old school style 'find out as you go', but for the most part, if you go looking at levels, see stuff more than 1 level higher than you, it's going to be a bit of a struggle. - It's still in development; expect a few bugs here and there. The great news about this though is how RESPONSIVE the dev team is. Seriously, ridiculously fast turnaround for reports. All in all, worth the investment for your Cozy Corner.

Very cute cozy game! I love how many different aspects of cozy gaming are in one place. Tavern management alongside the classic fishing/gardening/harvesting type things. Along with some night battle scenarios too! I’m most excited for potential multiplayer, and the Halloween skins from the Kickstarter to be completed 💜

This game is so cute and fun to play. Running a tavern, farming, fishing, combat, cooking, brewing! I love it! I loved it so much I not only backed on kickstarter I bought it for my friend too!

Tentative recommend so far. It's cute and like others have said, reminds me of a more feature rich Little Dragon's cafe. I have only played a very short amount but already have some issues. On controller (steam deck) the target tile shows "A" but the tool bar choice say "Y" to use. Both work but it looks strange. Things feel a bit janky overall and fps drops into single digits and low teens when there is a day night transition. It's been less than a month of EA so it's accceptable, but hopefully that gets ironed out. Also something bizarre, I picked a darker skin tone for my character and it looks fine but when she blinks her eye lids are the original color. Maybe its just the face I picked (don't recall which). As it is now I feel like like it costs a lot for the amount of jank in the game, i'm hoping I can stick it out to see what more the game offers. An option to disable minigames would be nice too. Plays well on Steam Deck OLED and looks nice, I appreciate achievements in EA and thats why I bought the game now. If they keep at it i'm sure it will be a great game if it isn't already.

Even after 30 minutes or so the gameplay started to feel very tedious. I'm no stranger to farming sims, or minigames, but this just felt like overload, and the charming visuals just can't make up for it. I simply can't see myself repeating these tasks endlessly. Not when there are better, more entertaining entries in the genre.

Recommend with caveats CONS: The map is large but there's no sprint button You're given the option to customise your character but if you choose bard or fighter you're still forced to choose between binary clothing & hair options An inability to navigate your storage/crafting options with WASD (I have to break out my mouse in an otherwise not mouse needed game just to select a slot from the drop down and to pick what item to make when it could've easily been integrated to use WASD for selection since the keys aren't used for anything else on those screens) The numbered inventory slots to mean nothing (when planting and you have multiple seeds in your inventory you're forced to select the seed again for redundancy instead of being able to plant what you've got "in hand") You can't serve drinks & food at the same time (this doesn't make any sense to me, you have four slots on your tray and diners will be at different stages of eating and drinking but instead of picking up a drink and a meal and serving two customers at once you are forced to walk back and forth). It's not unrealistic for a server to be serving a meal and a drink at the same time, all this does is make things less realistic and more inefficient. PROS: runs well, super cute, great concept. Really hope that they adjust these things to make it more friendly and intuitive I'd really love to love it but your character is slow and the game play clunky for me. Hopefully it smooths out and I can re-buy it because this is totally up my alley!!

I want to love this game. It's adorable, but it's unplayable in its current state. It crashed on me SO many times in less than an hour of gameplay

Was very excited for this game only to find out cheese and such for processing them are real time. items go from 3 hours to 7 days real time !! Not a fan of that.