With such an established format as the visual novel, games now quite often look to break outside of the text-heavy storytelling with snippets of other gameplay genres  that help break up the monotony of tapping endlessly through often unvoiced dialogue. Some of my favourite games of this style, VA-11 HALL-A and Coffee Talk, let you mix drinks and brew beverages between conversations, and that blend of interaction creates such a unique connection with the game and it’s characters. Tavern Talk takes that formula and steeps it in high-fantasy, but with a uniquely modern and tabletop-inspired voice that makes it one of the most unique takes on a Dungeons & Dragons style setting I’ve seen in gaming.

In Tavern Talk, your humble inn and drinkery serves as a hub for adventurers, warriors, and pretty much anyone else to gather at. Some are looking for rest after a tough battle, others are sharing quests they need party members for, and a few just need a refreshing beverage and someone to talk to.

On the surface, a lot of these characters are pretty standard fantasy stereotypes – your pale blonde elves, your stout dwarf warriors, your aloof assassins and so on – but what makes all of them so interesting is that they aren’t characterised and written like typically stoic fantasy heroes. Instead, their casual tone and quite literal adherence to things like the D&D alignment chart make them feel more like a real persons tabletop character mid-session. It helps them come to life in a much more interesting fashion, and leads to fun moments where you might see two characters with very different personalities instantly connect on a subject because of their placements on the alignment chart – you can even check this in-game through your journal.

When one of these characters visits your shop, they’ll ask you to make a drink for them. On top of general preferences for flavour or style, your patrons will also have stat-related needs that your concoction has to help with, requiring you to brew something that boosts strength, charisma, dexterity, intelligence, or defence.

The act of brewing a beverage isn’t very complicated, and I have mixed feelings about that. On one hand, the simplistic nature of the drink-mixing gameplay makes it easier to vibe with the story and follow it without interruption, but on the other hand, it gets so repetitive so quickly. Despite unlocking new recipes drink modifiers as the game goes on, your patrons will almost always stick to their same usual favourites. A more challenging version of the drink mixing would make your bond with the patrons and the info and rumors they share with you feel so much more earned and meaningful.

Once you learn enough info or rumours from various patrons, you can piece them together and post an open quest on your taverns’ quest-board to let any of your patrons tackle the adventure. This also isn’t as difficult or open-ended as I would have liked. There isn’t a lot of variety or meaningful experimentation that goes into putting these quests, or the drinks your patrons need before tackling them, together. The idea of your interactions with your shop visitors culminating in these big quests is interesting, but it already lacks some oomph since you don’t get to witness the quests at all – the lack of challenge in putting them together makes the most impactful moments of the game fall a bit flat.

Still, there’s a lot of charm and wonderful world-building to Tavern Talk that make it a worthwhile experience despite a lack of gameplay depth. The game is full of diverse, interesting, and engaging characters, and even the patrons who I despised for their rancid vibes or twisted personalities made for really interesting interactions. The world needs more drink-mixing visual novels, and Tavern Talk is a welcome, if slightly flawed, addition to that niche subgenre.

As proudly individual as each game in the SteamWorld series is, sometimes you just want a good old fashioned sequel, a game that goes back over familiar ground and tries to make things bigger and better. With close to a decade since the original, it feels like high time that Thunderful return to one of their most popular entries with the side-scrolling turn-based action of SteamWorld Heist 2.

Where the first Heist was a space-faring jaunt in junky steampunk ships, SteamWorld Heist 2 throws you right into the midsts of a great ecological crisis threatening its watery world where boats and subs are the order of the day. Oh sure, it’s already just a fragment of a planet hurtling through space, but where now Steambots are struggling to find clean water, afflicting them with Rust, and there’s literally just one ship’s captain who’s got a hope of unpicking the mystery of what’s going on. Captain Leeway steps into the breach – no, not “Krakenbane” herself, but her son – or at least, he would do, but at the start of the game, he’s very much down on his luck, his inherited submarine having been confiscated and having lost his good arm for shooting.

So the game opens with an introductory mission with his last two trusty crew members embarking on an audacious mission to steal his submarine back, facing off against the Dieselbots of the Royal Navy to do so. This personal task successfully completed, and Captain Leeway is thrust into continuing his campaign against the Dieselbots, the mysteriously bony Rattlers, and trying to get to the bottom of what’s giving all the Steambots a nasty case of Rust – hint, it’s the salty water.

Just as before, SteamWorld Heist 2 is XCOM given the Flat Stanley treatment. Instead of commanding your handful of crew members through 3D spaces, you’ve got a side-on view of every combat location. It’s a nice and permissive kind of turn-based tactical battling though, letting you aim and shoot through the cover you’re hiding behind and past allies, through thinner gantry-like flooring, and using ricochets to hit enemies who are in cover themselves. And instead of aim being a percentage based roll of the dice, it’s more like Worms in that you have to line up your shot and then time it with the natural sway of the weapon – It helps greatly that one of your first characters is a sniper, which gives you a laser sight that even shows bullet bounces.

SteamWorld Heist 2 comes with a new Jobs system for classes, though, all dependent on which primary weapon is equipped. There’s no limitations to Job switching, and as soon as you’ve gained a level in one role, those skills can then be unlocked for another role by assigning Cogs. The Flanker and Brawler are easy to synergise, giving a melee character much enhanced movement, while you could turn your Sniper into a backline support with cover building and team healing abilities from the Engineer.

The deeper you get into the game, the more weapons and gear that you’ll earn, and there’s further avenues to upgrade your characters and roster as a whole. Higher levelled weapons will dish out more damage, and there’s also Epic weapons with special effects, like a sniper with electric discharge, or a crossbow for the Reaper instead of an SMG.

There’s some great nuances to explore here, especially as you need to make the very most of every advantage your get on higher difficulties, and there’s missions that will hew toward one style of play or another. Compared to the original, level layouts are now fixed, but with randomised cover and enemies, so you have much more repeatable experiences than the more broadly procedural levels of before. That leads to missions where, confronted with countless Rattler totems and a secondary objective not to destroy any of them yourself, you’ll need precision and minimal ricochets – it took me a few tries. And then there’s just stages that are designed for varying team sizes.

Another big area that SteamWorld Heist 2 improves upon is with everything between missions. Yes, there’s downtime at safe havens and bars, where you can rest up to get to the next day, shop for better gear and chat to NPCs – you’ll also get the luxurious vocal harmonies of the original songs by Steam Powered Giraffe stuck in your head – but then there’s the neat open world to sail around to get to each location, and enemy ships to battle.

The submarine is pretty weak to start off, but with weapon mounts to the side, front and top, as well as more unlockable slots for upgrades, it can become a pretty fierce little thing, capable of taking on enemy capital ships. That’s especially true because of how agile it is with responsive arcade handling, not to mention the upgrade to let you dive beneath the surface – where you’ll come to find other subs and mines. It’s a fun diversion between the sometimes gruelling battles.

By default, the game comes at you with the Experienced difficulty level, and through the opening regions, that’s pretty straightforward to handle. However, the Rattlers can really swarm you and levels often have enemy spawn points that make you scramble and rush just to survive – by the third or fourth region the difficulty had really stepped up a few notches. Thankfully the difficulty is customisable beyond the fistful of presets, and a checkpoint system mid-level lets you roll back up to two turns if you want to slap yourself for a dumb move or fluffed shot.