The Thick Table Tavern

by manonamora. 37th place, IFComp 2022.

What was that? Parts of it work, and parts of it feel like work. And the author clearly put a lot of work into it.

What’s working for me:

• The characters and the tavern itself have a lot of character.
• The routines and cadence of the work week are oddly satisfying. I liked roleplaying the bartender’s superstition of knocking on the sign, tidying up before each shift, etc.
• The drink mixing minigame doesn’t really wear out its welcome; the mix-up of session lengths and how it sometimes connects up to the narrative works. Even though the game is basically following directions, the variety of drinks and ingredients and the different names given to familiar recipes kept it fresh long enough.
• The mysterious animated wheel card is a nice touch of mystery and lampshading a theme.
• In the end there’s a camaraderie among the characters that’s genuinely touching.
• The level of care and polish that went into the visual experience and interactions really makes The Thick Table Tavern stand out in a crowd. It’s unlike anything else I’ve played this year.

What’s not working for me:

• Some of the prose is awkward, to the point that I found myself skimming. The line-by-line experience of reading wasn’t pleasant. I also think the odd speech patterns of the alien (or whatever it is) would come through stronger if the other writing was cleaner.

• I could have done without the alien scenes entirely; I didn’t feel like they contributed a lot to the total experience.

• There is a content warning for language, but I wasn’t expecting the c-word and the writing is uneven in its treatment of coarse language. At one point, the player character says (uncensored):

“Ya can be such a c*** boss.”

  Which not only feels crude for the general tone of the game, it also seems out of place for the relationship between these two characters and it passes without comment. Then later in the story, we’re chastised for a softer insult:

[…] “OF COURSE, I’M SURE, YOU COW!”

> “JOHN!” Roscoe growls. “Language!”

  This interferes a bit with my understanding of the characters.

• The idiom “order up” is used incorrectly. Normally it means the kitchen is done preparing a dish and it’s ready to serve to the customer, but here it’s used to indicate an order has been placed.

• There are enough typos and some other small implementation bugs to be distracting, like places where text replacements didn’t work. At one point a character called “Young Sam” was called “Young Same” at least twice.