Greenheart Games' Eleven-Year Journey With Tavern Keeper and the Importance of German VO

GamesMarkt: How did Greenheart Games get started in 2012? Why did you choose to set up in Australia when, as far as I know, both founders, Patrick and Daniel Klug, originally come from Austria?

Patrick and Daniel Klug: "When we started working on Game Dev Tycoon, Patrick was already living in Australia while Daniel was in Austria so we always worked remotely together from the start. We considered both Austria and Australia when starting the company but at the time it was less bureaucratic and simply easier to start a company in Australia."

GamesMarkt: How has the studio developed over the years?

Patrick and Daniel Klug: "Given the scope of Tavern Keeper, we stayed fairly small and lean. We grew the team a little but stayed international remote and hence have team members around the globe."

GamesMarkt: How many people work at Greenheart Games? After all, you also wrote that the studio collaborates remotely with people from around the world.

Patrick and Daniel Klug: "The core team is 7 developers and 2 in social media/support, plus other external contractors and partners. There are a lot of time-zones involved."

GamesMarkt: Tavern Keeper is described as a chaotic and cozy mix of business simulation, creative decoration sandbox and magical fairy tale book. How did you come up with the idea? What sets it apart from other titles that have attempted something similar?

Patrick and Daniel Klug: "There’s many different ways someone can build a tavern sim. When we started Tavern Keeper no other tavern sim existed but even now with so many others on the market, we feel Tavern Keeper is a unique creation that’s unlike any other.

From the very beginning Tavern Keeper was set to have deeply intertwined simulation systems but be approachable, light-hearted and fun. The storybook went through many different iterations but the goal to have engaging storytelling as a core part of the game was also established early on. The decoration sandbox on the other hand was a fairly late edition and caused quite a bit of additional effort but was well worth it in our eyes. It’s astonishing and we are constantly impressed by what players create in the game.

The combination of all these systems really does lead to a cozy/chaotic (and hopefully charming) experience which is why we started to describe the game in such a way."

Tavern Keeper is a fantasy tavern management simulation combining build-up, economic simulation, sandbox decoration and narrative elements. Players take over a tavern in various fantasy regions, expanding it room by room using a flexible building system.

GamesMarkt: You wrote that Tavern Keeper has been in development for eleven years. Why did it take so long?

Patrick and Daniel Klug: "There's many reasons for the long development. Lots of prototyping, changing game engines three times, innovating systems alongside the industry and so on. In the end, we developed probably six different versions of Tavern Keeper in that time. If we knew from the start exactly what we needed to build, it would have certainly been way faster but when you work on a new game and IP, it can take a long time to refine systems until they become fun."

GamesMarkt: During development of Tavern Keeper, you have released your first game, Game Dev Tycoon, for mobile and the Nintendo Switch. Are you happy with how the game has been ported?

Patrick and Daniel Klug: "We didn’t have the knowledge, nor skill to port Game Dev Tycoon to other platforms and also needed to focus on Tavern Keeper. This is why we partnered with Rarebyte, an Austrian company, to port Game Dev Tycoon to these other systems. They have done a phenomenal job and we are happy that these ports have been so well received by players."

GamesMarkt: How important was it to give the game a German voice-over? How did you decide on Matthias Matschke as voice actor?

Patrick and Daniel Klug: "As a native German speaker myself, the German localization was always very important to me and after seeing the immense difference the original English voice over made to the game experience, I knew I wanted to do the German voice over next. Finding the right narrator was definitely an intimidating big task as the role is incredibly demanding. There are hundreds of stories from tons of different characters covering a wide variety of backgrounds. The narrator voices them all which is not only a huge undertaking but also incredibly challenging. We were very fortunate to have Matthias Matschke be the German narrator and I think the result (and the great response from players) speaks volumes."

GamesMarkt: How relevant is the Item Workshop as a creative element in the game? Why aren't you using the Steam Workshop?

Patrick and Daniel Klug: "The Design Mode has been proven to be incredibly powerful and fun for players to not only make their taverns truly their own but for folks to share their creative masterpieces with others. We wanted to be in complete control over the system, hence we developed our own backend but Steam Workshop is definitely a possibility. It was just not something we wanted to delay the initial Early Access release for any longer."

GamesMarkt: Why did you opt for an Early Access launch, and what advice would you give to other developers?

Patrick and Daniel Klug: "Tavern Keeper might look like a fairly small game but it’s far larger under the hood and has a lot of hidden depth and complex systems. Early Access gives us a chance to tune all these systems to different play-styles, observe player feedback and polish late-game content further before releasing it in stages ahead of the full release."

GamesMarkt: Your website's press section states that "games need to be more than thinly-disguised slot machines optimized solely to generate profit", and your Steam description implies that you did not use (generative) AI to develop the game. How important is it to make such a statement, especially in the current environment?

Patrick and Daniel Klug: "It’s important to us. Games can have big positive impacts on players but they can be equally devastating. I think games that are largely designed for retention statistics, addictive mechanics and monetization are dangerous, greedy and wrong. Generative AI is ever evolving and I think it will be increasingly difficult not to use it but we spent 11 years on Tavern Keeper without generative AI and it would feel wrong to now allow this creation to become anything but 100% human crafted. It might very well be the last game of its kind created without AI."