Dungeon Inn Review

Inn-troduction

Inns in RPGs are truly miraculous.  However bruised and battered your adventuring party may be, if they rest up for the night at an inn then they will emerge the next day fully healed and ready for more.  Dungeons, meanwhile, serve the opposite purpose. A fresh and ready adventuring party delves down into a dungeon and emerges exhausted and beaten, but hopefully with huge loads of loot.

Dungeon Inn is a game all about running an RPG inn of your very own, located conveniently at the entrance to a sprawling dungeon.  RPG inn management games are a familiar concept. Tavern Talk, Inn Tycoon, and Travellers Rest all focus on different aspects of running an inn in a fantasy world. Nevertheless, Dungeon Inn puts some fresh spins on its central concept that make it worth a look.

The game features a greedy dragon landlord that must be appeased, as well as rival adventuring factions that threaten to turn your humble rest stop into a bloody battlefield. Dungeon Inn’s central premise is solid, its world-building is comfortably cozy and it is overall an enjoyable time. While there are a few problems that hold Dungeon Inn back from being a flawless innkeeping experience, none of these issues are major and they can easily be addressed during the game’s remaining time in early access.

An Inn-teresting Premise

You would think, given that Dungeon Inn is all about running a business, that it would be a simulation game.  While Dungeon Inn certainly contains simulation elements, you need to focus on upgrading the rooms and facilities at your inn, as well as managing your finances, arguably the game is primarily a puzzle game.

Adventurers make the journey down to your inn by travelling down one of two lanes. The western route from the port city or the eastern road from the highland city. These two cities are at war with one another, and they both believe that you are only accommodating adventurers representing them and neither knows that you’re also serving their rival.   Because of this, you ensure that adventurers from both cities never arrive at the inn simultaneously, otherwise fights break out and both communities become more and more suspicious about what’s really going on.  If the port or the highland city ever figures out that they aren’t your only client then you get a game over, as your grift is exposed.

You can ensure that the opportunity for violence never arises by interfering with the travel speed of different adventurers. You can place potions that speed them up, food stalls that slow them down as they pause to grab a bite, and mesmerising spinning wheels that stop them in their tracks completely. As the game goes on more mechanics are added such as adverse weather conditions that can slow down, or even kill, unlucky adventurers, and portals that can warp them straight to your door.

At its heart, this is a game about managing traffic. You need to ensure that enough adventurers stop by so that you can keep the money streaming in, but you don’t want to overwhelm yourself by sending too many rival adventurers to your door which will end up causing anarchy.

While this sort of gameplay isn’t really what I was expecting heading into Dungeon Inn, it’s undeniably interesting.  The market is already loaded full of simulation games where you run hotels, pubs, and inns so this focus on enforcing a sort of medieval highway code is novel and sets the game apart.

A World of Inns and Animals

Dungeon Inn aims for a cozy aesthetic, and it pulls it off nicely.  The art style is very cutesy and the characters, while not very deep, are all pretty likeable. The game stars Sara, an avaricious innkeeper out to make it big.  She’s accompanied by her two talking cats Butter and Bami. Butter is recklessly brave, while Bami is timidly cautious and their contrasting personalities play off one another nicely.

Sara’s talking cats demonstrate that many of the adventurers who will stop off at your inn are animal folk, there are even some sentient plants around as well. Seeing penguins, acorns and bees stop by to order a beer is honestly charming. It’s all very reminiscent of a picture book, something that’s aided by the game’s cutscenes which convey plot developments through a series of animated illustrations that are high energy and light on words.

The game is still in early access, so its story is still a work in progress. Currently though things seem promising. The trio running the inn attempt to strike the same balance narratively that you strike in gameplay. They need to advertise the inn well enough that it becomes popular and turns a profit, but not so well that the two rival cities discover what they are up to and shut them down. As the plot progresses a cactus detective, who takes a few leaves (a few bristles?) from Columbo’s book begins investigating the inn.  The looming question of whether you’ll get found out gives the plot some stakes, and keeps you invested day by day.

Getting Inn to the Weeds

Even the cuddliest cat can sometimes scratch you, and this game has some faults that should be addressed.

Only two difficulty levels are available, casual and courageous. Casual difficulty presents little challenge and allows the game to be breezed through. This in itself isn’t a problem, lots of games offer a difficulty option like this for accessibility. A very low level of challenge allows players to take in the story at their own pace without having to worry about getting a game over. 

The issue is that the only other option, the courageous difficulty level, is really tricky.  You need to ensure that you always take the optimal course of action, and that you advertise to just the right adventurers in just the right way at just the right time. A middle setting, between these two choices, would be greatly appreciated for players who are looking for a challenge but who don’t want the stress of having to play with the level of precision that courageous mode requires.

The game is also a bit slow getting going. The primary gameplay loop of guiding adventurers to your door, whilst steering them away from hazards and fights, is really fun, but it takes Dungeon Inn just slightly too long to roll out everything that it has on offer. For the initial few in-game weeks you’ll be guiding adventurers in with little to disrupt your flow or to give you pause for thought.

Neither of these issues is a deal breaker though, and there’s still plenty of time before the full release for tweaks to be implemented.

Conclus-inn

If you’re looking for a bright and cheerful game to play, possibly while curled up by a gently crackling fire in a charming rustic inn, then Dungeon Inn can scratch that itch. The game is incredibly wholesome with an endearing cast and an engaging premise.

Dungeon Inn is currently available on Steam Early Access. It costs $12.99 USD or £10.99 GBP.