Cooperatively Managing a Viking Tavern

Meadgard has you fighting to gather ingredents during the day and running your own Viking inn during the evening, keeping everyone happy.

Chaotic cooking games are a dime a dozen, but this one feels like it’s well worth checking out. This game takes part in two stages, switching between chaotic cooking and gathering the items that you need and using your kitchen tools as weapons!

Meadgard has tasked you and your friends to become innkeepers. You will need to work together to run the best Viking tavern, gathering resources and then running the inn in the evening, hoping to make some gold. During the day, you need to fight various monsters, using your kitchen tool of choice to stay alive. There are often hidden treasure chests and various items that can be found while you’re exploring and clobbering beasts before you move to your inn for the evening.

When it’s opening time at the inn, you will need to plan your menu and then execute it. The menu will depend on what you have done during the day and reflect what you have gathered. There is a sort of skill in creating your menu in Meadgard, as some of the roasting items can be complex.

When it’s time to open, you need to work together to bring Vikings to their table, take their order, then make their food. Sometimes they just need a pint of beer and other times you need to chop ingredients and then cook them to get what they are after. Even things like replacing the keg take time, so having more people working together helps! If you frustrate your customers, they are Vikings, so they might make a mess of the place.

I played a demo of Meadgard at the European Game Showcase where I really enjoyed how fast cooking became when you played together as well as the diversity of play in this game. It’s still a work in progress, but if you like busy cooking games it’s one to keep an eye on.

Meadgard is currently in development, but in the meantime, you can grab a demo or add it to yoru Wishlist on Steam.

About The Author

Jupiter Hadley

Jupiter is a prolific indie game journalist, writing for Metro UK, Big Boss Battle, AlphaBetaGamer, and many more, all with a focus on smaller indie gems. She covers thousands of game jams and indie games on her YouTube channel, letting every game have a moment in the spotlight. She runs indiegamejams.com, a calendar of all of the game jams going on in the world, judges many jams and events.