Tavern Crawler
1st Place finisher in IFComp 2020! 2020 XYZZY nominee for Best Game, Best Story, and Best NPCs!
Slaying the dragon? Easy. Collecting your pay? Not so much.
When you and your companions are approached by a man in a tavern who offers you more gold than you can spend in a lifetime to slay a dragon, you're torn. The money would buy you out from under the boot of the tyrannical queen. You'd never want for anything again. But do you schmucks really stand a chance against a dragon? And what did this dragon do to deserve being slain, anyway?
Your instructions are simple. Travel to the cave, chop off the dragon's head, and bring it to Akema, the village at the base of the mountains. Meet your patron in a tavern to collect your spoils.
If only you hadn't been too drunk to remember which tavern you were supposed to meet him in.
Now, you'll have to journey from tavern to tavern looking for him. An inn full of yearning hearts and true believers. A burlesque house full of cutthroats and intrigue. A dive bar where you're likely to walk out with fewer fingers than you walked in with. As you uncover the strange secrets of Akema, you begin to realize you've been lied to, set up. Can you unravel the mystery and get out from under before last call?
Comments
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This game so amazing and so engaging. LOVED IT. I chose mage route and went out with only Aurora. I survived and I think got the best ending you could get. I also used up heaps of coins to get lvl8 rogue as well as being lvl15 mage so I could complete some stories. All in all, once again, I loved this game.
This was cute and fun, i really enjoyed the story
ahh this was delightful. thanks for making this <3
Wonderful! Thanks :)
Lovely game, so well written and much more in depth than I aniticipated! Newest comfort game for sure. I do wish there was a way to bring the dragon back, I feel so guilty making her leave for nothing.
Same! I kept blowing the horn over and over again hoping she would come back. 🐉
Haven't enjoyed a text adventure this much in a while. Beautifully done! If you're thinking of playing it, just save yourself the favor and do it already.
that was awesome
I loved every moment of this game, the writing was amazing and I would love to see a longer version of the game perhaps released to steam as I believe this has real potential to get big if it's found. I feel dragging the characters into a war between the queen and a revolution would be a good way to expand greatly on the game's current content as choices made in the current portion of the game could effect which side the player ends up on, though even if it goes a completely different direction I'd still love to see more of this game.
Is there a way to make the dragon stay and not fly off? I have tried a plethora of ways but couldn't figure out how, if there is just say yes and i'll keep trying, if there isn't then thats a bit sad imo.
Extremely good cyoa text adventure btw, one of the best i have played.
Wow. Well more in-depth than anticipated! I had fun playing this.
Hi, long comment ahead with some thoughts. However: I'm loving this so far. I do, however have a question but don't know how easy this would be. I'm a blind person. Is there any way you could make choices into actual links? A lot of other twine games do this (see, Tree that Touched The Moon, for instance). At the moment unless I use the tab key it's hard to know where the actual choices are or if there are any other hotspots. Nothing says link, it's a clickable, not an actual, webpagified, link the way that "Tree That Touched The Moon" does this. Now, if this might be too tricky to add as it may be more of a revamp, it's OK, as I think I can tab around to find most choices. But if this was added, it would be a huge, huge boon for accessibility, and you'd be looking at a fully accessible game for blind people. It's pretty much doable at the moment even in it's current state. I'm at the part where I'm going after the dragon, so still have a while to go as that's essentially the intro. I haven't checked if the menus (companions, loot, quests) read with my screen reader or not, so I'd have to get back to you on that one. For reference, I'm on windows using a screen reader called NVDA, so if you'd like to do any testing, NVDA is free. YOu use the arrow keys to move up and down a web page and use tab to go to links. Usually, NVDA should say link when finding a link. For the current clickables, it just says their name but it's sometimes hard to know exactly where I am in the page.
HI jukesy1992, appreciate the helpful comment. A lot of this game was pretty kluged together from my limited CSS/html/JavaScript. I would definitely like to make it more accessible at some point in the future, but because of the chaos of its initial construction I fear that may be a task that's a little while off from completion. I will take your suggestion and download the screen reader to experience the game as you do, and try to scope the difficulties of executing this or if a separate screen reader accessible version is the best way to go in the future. I'll comment here to let you know if there is progress on this front. Would you be comfortable with me adding you to the "special thanks" for your advice if/when I get an accessible version up?
I'd be fine with that. Also, I've now actually completed my first playthrough even in this state, which bodes very well indeed. I really enjoyed this game, it's got a lot of heart. It was a really cool way to spend a few hours, and I hope to come back to it for another playthrough to see what the other paths bring.
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I managed to escape the fire with my character's lives in tact, with help from one of the allies of Madamme.
Wow. Just wow. I could say I enjoyed every bit of it, from the beginning to the end. Love the method of the game, tasks & mysterys & such. Like a dungeon crawler - but in taverns! And I managed to find an ending that's good enough for everyone - that's probably my favourite part about games like this, best with some romance XD. Hell I love this so much.
A piece of art. So good that I played it in a few hours. Thank you!
this rules and i loved it
im stuck there is no continue options its just on the part with aurora
Otherwise good game
That's odd, sorry you ran into that! Can you be more specific as to which part? If you provide me a quote with a text sample I should be able to find and correct the issue ASAP.
when u say ''we didnt finish our discussion from earlier ''and the next option ''we deserve to give this a try'' and to get it stuck ''not yet''
thank you for the detailed report, I'll check this out and fix it asap.
The issue should be fixed on the version just uploaded. Any saves on that conversation node should now show a link at the bottom allowing you to exit the conversation! Thanks again.
I'm having a bit of trouble with the save slots; I can't seem to save at any part in the game ><
Kept giving me a "Sorry, I couldn't save your game"
Thanks for the heads up! I'll check it out to make sure nothing is deprecated, though unfortunately issues with Twine's save functionality often have to do with the browser you're using and how it keeps history. What browser are you on?
I was playing on Google; may have been something on my end, but I didn't get time to check ><
Its a really cool and great game. Good job 😁
I loved it! It was teally nice and i dont have anymore words because i suck at that
This is delightful, creative, and heartfelt. I love it. I played it through once and got a good ending, though I think not the ONLY good ending. Thanks so much for making this, it really cheered me up. This game is something special.
THIS IS CRAZY. I wonder how you made it in Twine, of all engines! I'm working on my own RPG, so props to you! May I ask how long it took to make?
Hi Nordaca, I'd say it was about three-four months of work, but some of the underlying functionality -- CSS, design thinking, etc. -- is pilfered from other half-finished Twine projects so it's not necessarily indicative of the full effort behind it. Good luck with your RPG!