Review: Orcish Inn

Orcish Inn is a tavern simulation game, created by Steven Colling, where players farm and brew beer to keep the local Orc clans happy. The happier you keep them, the more clans that come around, and the more popular you become.

You play as a local Orc who’s given up his/her ways of fighting and war to instead become a local tavern businessman. Players must plant and grow crops and then process the crops into malt, then wort, and finally beer. It’s a simple recipe in the beginning, but as you advance you must add special characteristics to the beer, like alcoholic strength, acerbity, or flavors. At night your Orcish guests wander into your tavern looking to get drunk. It’s your job to make them happy.

Once the first clan reaches a certain level of happiness, you get the option of adding another clan.

The more clans you take on, the higher their requirements for beer are. The first clans typically don’t care if they’re drinking much more than toilet water, but the more clans you get, the higher the quality of beer wanted. To raise the quality of the beer, you have to raise the quality of the crops by keeping an eye on wetness, eutrophy, windbreak and plant density.

I’m not sure of the maximum number of clans you can take on. I’ve never gotten above 4 myself. Last game I played I was able to hold three different brews in my tavern, but once I took on a fourth clan, I had to open another tavern. At that point, it got a little daunting to keep all 4 different breweries brewing four different beers and to keep straight which recipes went in which ones. I’m not exactly sure if the fourth clan was even going into the second tavern to get what they wanted or if they were going into the first tavern and then not being happy because the beer they desired was not served there. As I’m writing this, I’ve started a new game to see if I can get above my max clans.

Orcs are pretty lazy, so if you do too much work, they quickly run out of stamina, and you have to either take a nap or go fishing to help him rest. You also need to fry fish and make bread to feed yourself.

The developer promises more animal management in the future, which I’m kind of excited about, so I’ll definitely be playing again when that happens. Currently, if you find a pigeon egg, you can hatch it and it’ll fly around retrieving objects for you. Occasionally, your Orcish guests will give you a quest to complete. Maybe they want some fish, maybe they just want you to drink with them. Whatever it is, once you complete it, you’re offered a reward.

There’s so many components to this game. It’s really fun. The game is still in pre-alpha mode, so they’re still fixing bugs and adding content. It’s designed by one guy. It’s very impressive. It’s currently free, so now would be a good time to try the game out and see how you like it. I highly recommend it for people into simulation games.