Review for Crossroads inn. Game for PC, Steam and Xbox One, The release is scheduled: 2019
The taverns, during the medieval period, were considered an ambiguous and sordid place, but they were also an integral part of city life. They were places of leisure, escape and useful socialization for the circulation of ideas. Frequented mainly by humble peasants and travelers but, sometimes, also by nobles who did not disdain a good drink or the company of some gentle woman.
In Crossroads Inn, a PC game developed by Klabater, you will have the opportunity to run a tavern all yours: from the construction of the various rooms to the hiring of staff, from the choice of dishes to serve to the supplies needed to keep your place alive. Unfortunately, not always everything will go according to your plans because the unexpected will always be around the corner and you will also have to pay close attention to the management of economic assets.
There are two modes of Crossroads Inn: the classic Sandbox, that is free construction, and the Campaign in which you will have to go through various chapters to finish the game. There will be a story in the campaign mode, well developed and cared for, where you will start by managing a small inn in a remote county of the kingdom and then continue until you arrive directly at the king's court. The first chapter that you will face will be, in essence, a tutorial that will allow you to become familiar with the various mechanisms present in the game.
The construction menu of Crossroads Inn takes inspiration, in part, from the one already seen in The Sims and will allow you to enlarge the inn by expanding the area dedicated to dining, add kitchens, warehouses, sleeping rooms or game rooms. It will be possible to expand the building not only in width but also in height, developing it on several floors. Unfortunately, once you have completed the rooms, you will no longer be able to build walls or partitions inside them: you will have to first eliminate them and then rebuild them again based on the changes you want to make to the project.
For each room it will be possible to buy and add a good variety of useful objects to make it more attractive and comfortable for customers. For example, in the dining room you can place tables for eating and stools but also ornaments, lights and decorations while for the kitchen you can buy boilers, ovens, pantries and so on. Of course, everything will come at a cost and you will have to be able to manage your guldens - the currency in the kingdom - to avoid bankruptcy.
To make your business work you will also need workforce and, for this, you can hire various types of helpers: from simple dishwashers to warehouse workers, from cooks to croupiers. Each of them will have characteristics or traits that can affect, for better or for worse, during the performance of the work you have assigned to them. They will logically get paid and you can also decide whether to reward them with an extra or take them back if they take too many breaks from work. The management of employees, in some situations, will be chaotic and confusing, especially when the tavern is crowded with customers. Yes, because, after having built everything necessary and hired more or less qualified personnel, you will have to open to the public and, at that point, the inn will come alive with characters belonging to various categories: ordinary citizens, storytellers, nobles, outlaws or travelers. It is in this respect that Crossroads Inn will give its best. The overall view of the tavern, crowded and animated with people, combined with the attention paid by the developers to the textures of characters and objects, recreates an almost perfect medieval atmosphere: men staggering drunk, others celebrating singing or groups of people discussing they are, on the whole, quite a sight.
Too bad for some pathfinding problems which will make the game frustrating at times. In fact, it will often happen that some NPCs or even some of your employees get stuck in front of a wall or between two beds without any visible obstacle and for no apparent reason.
Another important aspect of Crossroads Inn, in addition to construction and personnel management, will be the ability to manage the warehouse where the various materials are stored. Through a map of the kingdom it will be possible to select the markets of the various cities from which you can buy a large amount of useful goods such as plates and glasses, but also, and above all, consumable goods such as wine, beer, bread, vegetables and vegetables. The combination of one or more ingredients will allow - through a simple recipe creation system - to create typical dishes of the medieval period to be served directly in the tavern. But be careful because each type of characters will have their own preferences. The peasants, for example, will be satisfied with a simple soup based on bread and water while the nobles will be much more demanding but, if satisfied, they will also be willing to pay extra in addition to the cost of the dish just consumed.
You can rely not only on food or drinks to increase your income; you can add, for example, rooms with beds for travelers to rest or rooms dedicated to gambling. It will be up to you and your financial resources to decide how to best manage everything.
Crossroads Inn, from a purely graphic point of view, performs quite well. However, the same cannot be said for animations. The game, from this point of view, seems not yet completely complete. Managing your employees, especially when the tavern is very crowded, is really a difficult task. The game interface also doesn't help with resource management which, in our opinion, could have been handled better. Many, too many, things to keep an eye on that often cause confusion. A pity because other sides of the game, such as the storyline present in the campaign mode or the background music are well done. The latter, among other things, were created specifically for the game.
For all lovers of management games Crossroads Inn could give some satisfaction even if, at present, it unfortunately shows itself as a game that is not 100% complete. There are many management aspects, perhaps too many, and if on the one hand some of them are very well cared for, others instead show gaps from the point of view of development. The end result is a general feeling of confusion that makes the game too repetitive and frustrating at times. The game, in our opinion, still needs time to improve and turn into something more complete. Too bad because the guys from Klabater did a great job from a historical point of view recreating excellent medieval atmospheres from an artistic point of view and they also planned a roadmap of the game for next year. There remains a bit of a bitterness in the mouth because the potential is there but for the moment it remains only partially expressed.
► Crossroads Inn is a Management-Simulation game developed by Kraken Unleashed and published by Klabater for PC, Steam and Xbox One, Expected release: 2019
