The first challenge of writing about Travellers Rest: resisting the temptation to compare it to Stardew Valley. Why resist, you ask? Before I concede that Stardew Valley could be a semi-useful comparison point, let’s give in and give it a go:
“It’s like Stardew Valley but for inn-keeping”
“It’s like Stardew Valley but less farming and more brewing”
“It’s like Stardew Valley but less pixel graphics and more cartoony”
“It’s like Stardew Valley but in Early Access with no quests or relationships”
“It’s like Stardew Valley but half-cooked in every way”
Helpful?
If you are a Stardew Valley fan looking for a similar fix, the last couple of points will make you look elsewhere, and rightfully so.
If you are a Stardew Valley fan looking to do some low-stakes grinding in a colourful environment, Travellers Rest in its current state could be for you.
Travellers Rest is charming. It offers an intriguing premise of a fairytale land where innkeepers enjoy the respect and reverence akin to rulers and clergy.
Enter you, a nobody, who got tricked into buying a decrepit tavern complete with rats in the basement and a smartass spirit companion to guide you towards innkeeping glory.
You’ve got all sorts of kitchen machinery, brewing equipment, crops and recipes to work with and work towards. You can open your tavern to earn gold slinging drinks and food. You can mine, forage and fish. There’s some NPC dialogue and a whole lot of promise in various areas of the map.
There is also very little substance in the game besides the core gameplay loop of running your tavern. Open, make money, invest it into ingredients and improvements, farm and gather, prep food and drinks, open the tavern again, repeat ad nauseam.
No quests, no story progression, no NPC relationship building, no new areas to unlock. The spirit companion I mentioned disappears after the tutorial, not to be seen again. You have to grind, and grind hard, to get on your proverbial feet and unlock skills and recipes. Once you do, there is nothing else to work for.
This is not a criticism. Travellers Rest is unfinished—it has been in early access since July 2020. I absolutely love what exists in the game now! The core mechanic is fun. The environment is vibrant, colourful, and whimsical. Some NPC designs are truly unhinged. There are aspects of the game that are clever and subtly humorous.
In short, I yearn to do more in this world than just be stuck in my inn pouring beer and hitting an occasional rude customer with a broom! (Yes, really.)
What bums me out is that this is the state of the game in the year 2025. Travellers Rest is still playing like a prototype a full four years after its EA release. What’s more, the current roadmap for Travellers Rest prioritizes incremental improvements without delivering any progress on the story or lore that would make the game a completely different, better experience.
The devs are busy adding another shop and another pet, while the “Main story” is relegated to the “Very long-term” column together with minor things like “Social relationships”, “Magic system” and “Combat system”.
What a bummer.
So, the concession I promised at the beginning of the review: sure, Travellers Rest is similar to Stardew Valley as much as it’s also a pixel-ish RPG management game with all the features of a cozy game like farming, fishing, mining and crafting. So are dozens of other cozy games. (That also probably get compared to Stardew Valley a lot too, fairly or not.)
The premise of Travellers Rest sounds a lot like Stardew Valley. Should it ever live up to its potential, it may very well end up a similarly rich, enjoyable, story-driven experience.
Maybe by 2030?