Literally right on the heels of reviewing the new Coffee Talk Tokyo, it was interesting to contemplate my time with Tavern Talk Stories: Dreamwalker. With both of them essentially being visual novels in the disguise of coffee shop simulators, and with their storytelling conveyed through your interactions with your diverse patrons, there’s no mistaking their similarities. That said, it’s also terrific that their approaches in a few key areas are quite different, still making them quite distinct from one another, and I’d say that depending on what you’re specifically looking for, either one may be the better choice.

Given the game’s name, it should be no surprise that you’ll be working to manage your tavern, and serving up drinks for your patrons. Where this title takes its own path is with how that works though, not only featuring drink-making that’s a bit more involved (be ready to do some simple-ish math, trying to figure out how to replicate the stats of your target concoctions), but also in terms of how you’ll use collected rumors from the people you talk to, in order to put together quests for them to go on as well. Depending on who you’re talking to, and the adventure they’re about to embark on, you’ll then need to wisely consider what may best help them out.

This sort of points to the other contrast this series has with the competition, and that’s the fact that the storytelling is a little more fluid since you have a part to play in it, but also then more fanciful on a general level rather than being more grounded. Given that you’ll interact with patrons of many persuasions, even if in more fanciful trappings, there’s still room for more contemporary and inclusive elements, but I just didn’t find the stories they had to tell on a general level to be as compelling. That said, they could easily speak to some people better than others, and perhaps a little levity is what you’re looking for when contemplating fictional tavern sims.