Deadwater Saloon

by Aethyna Sep 17, 2022 | 1 Votes | 57 Played | 0 Reviews

8 rate

Genres:

Simulation

Graphics:

Labels:

Building , Shop Design , Management

Platforms:

Publishers:

CreativeForge Games Deadwater Saloon is a fairly in-depth saloon management game where you can develop an entire town around your business, unlocking new items that you can then sell to your customers… at a profitable markup, of course! Interact with townspeople, build a good reputation, and most importantly, grow your saloon! Play Now Similar Games

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Summary Plotline Gameplay Graphics/ Sound Conclusion

Summary

Deadwater Saloon is a fairly in-depth saloon management and tycoon game where you can develop an entire town around your business, unlocking new items that you can then sell to your customers… at a profitable markup, of course! Interact with the people in the town to improve their opinion of you and to get them to visit your saloon as frequently as you can by crook or by hook just so you can earn more profits. You can even purchase businesses that crop up in town, deal with local problems much like the mayor of a town, and most importantly of all, grow your saloon into the money-churning powerhouse you know it could be!

Plotline

In this game, you’ll get to choose your humble, or even not so humble, beginnings prior to setting up a saloon (or inherited one) in the middle of nowhere with only a road, albeit a fairly popular one, passing through it, a well nearby, and a rumor that a railroad will be heading this way as well.

From there, you’ll get to craft your own story as more people flock to build a town around your saloon. You can have a rivalry with the local blacksmith, for example, and later challenged him to a duel (a.k.a. legal murder), or you could seduce the tanner’s wife and marry her instead.

The game also throws events at you, some of which are major ones like the gang of bandits who kept raiding your growing town, while others are smaller but still significant incidences like a quarrel at the saloon between townsfolk or being presented a problem that a fellow townfolk needs help with, where you can choose to either to help or to sweep it under the rug.

Gameplay

To start playing, you’ll need to set up your character and choose a backstory (and the character type) as to how he/she come to own this brand-new saloon in the middle of nowhere. You’ll also be given some starting attribute points that you can then invest in stats that you think can complement or cover the weaknesses of the character type you chose.

From Gambling and Drama to Seduction and Mixology, there are many stats in this game and although you’d like to be good in all of them, it’s usually not recommended to spread out your points. My advice would to be to stick to the ones that you think might be useful for someone who is about to lead a town. Here, you can also customize your game’s difficulty by adjusting parameters like suspicion and stress levels as well as how well townspeople will perceive you initially.

Deadwater Saloon is a saloon management game that doesn’t really hold your hand too much either. Besides the rush of information at the beginning, which can feel a bit daunting, you are then left to your own devices to set up your saloon and get some business going. Naturally, you’ll need to have a bar counter, some tables for your customers, and a kitchen where you can prepare some food to go with the booze. You’ll want to hire a cook, a barkeep, and a server to help get things going as well.

It’s also wise to add a few more storage items just so you can purchase enough supplies to run your saloon, and décor if you can afford it. You can even split the saloon into rooms, such as separating the kitchen from the dining area, so that the saloon will look more organized.

Selling only food and booze won’t keep your saloon afloat for long though. As you progress, the game will introduce new businesses to your town, each of which will offer a new kind of item that you can purchase and then resell in your saloon. They include stuff like smokes, coffee, and even opium.

The townspeople also crave entertainment and, in that era at least, there are only a few, most of which are considered vices. These vice-based entertainment options, namely the brothel and the gambling tables, will earn you some extra cash, while the piano and the dart board provide entertainment without giving you any profits. In fact, in the case of the piano, you even lose money because you have to hire a pianist to man it.

Considering that there is so much stuff that you can buy right from the get-go, the game helpfully gives you a little tip – don’t spend all of your starting cash refurbishing your saloon, because you’ll need to pay for staff wages and upkeep, both of which can be pretty costly at the start. This is especially true considering that you won’t be getting as many customers at the beginning and that you won’t be able to sell them the more lucrative “premium booze” that you can unlock via recipe research and getting more lucrative supplies from other businesses in mid to end game.

One interesting thing about the game is that you are limited as to how many interactions you can perform in a day. You start with just 4 action points that will refresh at 12 am every day, and almost everything will cost you a point, be it hiring new staff or firing old ones, or even buying supplies and interacting with your townspeople. It can be very limiting at first, but once you reach mid-game, have unlocked the Livery, and finally saved enough to purchase a horse, you will be able to increase your action point limit, giving you more points to spend.

Sometimes, you may also get an “action point windfall”, where a positive event grants you a complete action point refresh. These are basically non-existent at the start, but they do get more frequent later on, especially once you’ve raised the townspeople’s opinion of you.

Now, in this game, you play as the unofficial mayor since most of the other townsfolk only moved to your part of the wild west because you’ve set up a nice little saloon for them to wet their whistle and get some grub. However, not all of them are fond of you right from the start. Some may take a bit more convincing than most, but most of the time, with substantial action point investment into befriending them, you can eventually raise their opinion of you to 100%.

Having a high opinion matters a lot in Deadwater Saloon because you can get a nice discount on crucial supplies as well as a discount for when you’ve enough cash to buy the business out. To put it simply, it would be a lot less costly for you to essentially own the entire town if you maintain high opinion ratings among the townspeople.

Some, however, just don’t like the look of your face and will frequently cause trouble that will decrease the townspeople’s opinion of you. For these troublemakers, you can usually get a Claim for the trouble they cause, which will allow you to either sue them in court, provided that you’ve got a courthouse built, or you can legally murder them via a duel.

Of course, there are more… ahem, illegal… ways to do things, such as investigating them for some dirt that you can then take your revenge by blackmailing them for cash. You could also straight-up murder them and dump their body into the pig pen to eliminate the evidence, but unless you’re super sneaky, the person’s disappearance will raise a lot of eyebrows, especially considering that everyone knew his/her feud with you.

For people that already have a high opinion of you, you could also take advantage of that to entice them into developing an unhealthy addiction, which directly benefits your fine establishment.

On the more positive side of things, you can try to romance people (of all genders) and if it’s successful, then you can try to propose to them and get their hand in marriage. Having a spouse in this game can be very beneficial since you can get a stress reduction every day passively, which helps to keep you away from thoughts of suicide. You can also succumb to your vices which have a chance of causing triggering an addiction that will penalize your stats, or pay to play with cute pigs or a game to get a stress reduction. To put it simply, stress is a pretty important factor that you’ll want to keep your eye on, lest your run as a saloon tycoon ends prematurely.

You can regale the townsfolk with tales as well, but for that to happen, you’ll first need to have a “Famous story” where you’ve managed to overcome some great obstacle in the story. However, note that initiating an interaction, even a positive one, may not go the way you want and that every failed interaction or decision during events will typically increase your stress levels and decrease the person’s (or even the entire town’s) opinion of you. So, there’s a bit of risk-taking here that you’ll need to balance out, just so you won’t dig too deep of a pit for yourself. Though, on the plus side, you do get a single point increment for the attribute associated with the failed interaction.

Unlike most games, your character doesn’t level up in this game. Instead, character progression is represented by the stats that you can gain either by purchasing one-time items from businesses that have lain down roots in your town or by being successful in interactions. Failing interactions do grant a one-point increment but that’s just too small a number to be really significant. Ultimately, with patience, your character can master all attributes to the point where interactions and events have very little chance to fail.

As fun as the game was, Deadwater Saloon has a ton of bugs that marred the gameplay experience that it could offer, from being unable to move tables because your staff is standing on the spot you want, effectively blocking it; to breaking the function of the gambling table just because you’ve moved it to a different location.

At one point, my cook even became stuck despite having nothing around that can prevent her from moving about in the kitchen I set up for her. Funnily enough, the food kept coming from the kitchen and my server was still able to serve food to my customers.

Graphics/ Sound

The graphics here look really good in a rustic kind of way. The buildings look realistic, at least to the era the game is supposed to be set in, and I love the hand-painted art that goes with all the events and dialogues. However, I do have a bone to pick about the nighttime here in the game. I personally find it to be a bit too dark. That being said, this does only make the lighting even more important when setting up your saloon.

In terms of sound, the game features a variety of soundtracks that not only match the game’s wild west theme, but they also perfectly match the situation you’re facing, be it a gang of bandits or taking out a rival via a duel. The character creation screen though can be a bit too quiet and hence, a bit unnerving. Might be good to include some music there as well.

Conclusion

Deadwater Saloon has all the fundamentals that make it a fairly competent saloon management game, but it’s also unfortunately riddled with bugs. It would probably have fared better had it stuck to early access for a couple of months, instead of rushing into full release.

Thankfully, the game has a very active developing team behind it, working to patch up the issues as fast as possible. So, if you’re interested in the game, wishlist it and come back after a few months. The game might then be in a better state and you can get a much better gameplay experience than all of us who played the game on Day 1.

New Game Added: Deadwater Saloon

by Aethyna Sep 17, 2022

Deadwater Saloon is a fairly in-depth saloon management game where you can develop an entire town around your business, unlocking new items that you can then sell to your customers… at a profitable markup, of course! Interact with townspeople, build a good reputation, and most importantly, grow your saloon!