Deadwater Saloon - PC Review

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With its mostly positive reviews, Deadwater Saloon has landed on Steam.

From the developers Creative Storm Entertainment and Tanglefoot and publishers CreativeForge Games and PlayWay S.A. Games, this single player building SIM lets you deep dive back in time to a wild west saloon, in a volatile frontier town.

Get that rooting tooting cowboy out of my bar!

I donned my ten-gallon and spurs and headed in to the old wild west to try and make a living in a saloon. Don’t forget to check out the other reviews on the site and join in the discussion over on our community Discord!

Gameplay

Deadwater Saloon, as like many Sim games, starts off by creating your character and while you see your usual Name, Sex and Location, You get to select predefined attributes that set them up in a particular style. I found, after many goes of setting up my saloon, setting as many points into seduction helps a lot towards the start of the game to get those people into the saloon and start spending their hard-earned cash.

You have to be a devious Saloon owner, right?

Once you have set up your character and what sort of game settings you want to start with, it’s time to make money at your saloon. It has a little bit of an RPG vibe in that there are a good few prompts, such as these below, when interacting or doing something as the game progresses. Also, you can upgrade and build your stats up too, so your character grows and grows, just like your saloon.

As it is on the roadside, Maybe I should call it the New Little Chef?

Once you have entered into the game, you’re presented with your very own saloon.

A great thing that you will notice right away is some very, very useful hint and tips. These are present through-out the game and help you navigate on what to do with your saloon.

After lots of trying and failing, you tend to know what works and doesn’t within your own style of play. For me, for example, I found by researching one booze and one food recipe allowed me to be a little more flexible when trying to bring in customers.

A Bottle of your finest Panther Piss, Bar keep!

When you get the saloon rocking, you can start shaping your saloon just like the old wild west. Adding a bar, a kitchen, tables and even a Saloon cat, dog and pig.

Saloon by Night, How quaint does it look?

The one suggestion I would make, after getting your first booze and food recipe, is to get a Brothel Bed. Getting a “Lady of the Night” Setup in your saloon covers more areas, as most patrons will want one or the other. However, gambling is another item you can add.

This will cover more areas, but I found with gambling, it doesn’t bring in as much as the rest.

Once your saloon is getting established, getting more customer and making some decent profit, you can go wild and build another floor, adding more activities for everyone.

Maybe I should call it New Amsterdam Saloon?

The other side of things to manage is the staff. There’s a limitation on how many of each you can hire which at first gets a little confusing, however, it’s all stats based.

So if you hire someone as bar keep at level 2, then a level 10 pops up on the hire list, it’s better to fire and higher than to keep the level 2 as this keeps the drinks coming faster.

Don’t bother tipping the staff, they will be replaced faster than emptying a Spittoon

Before starting your wild west adventures, Action points (looks like a speech bubble) are using to do most things such as hire and firing staff, interacting with customers and how to run the saloon. So use them wisely at first, but they do get refreshed. They also reset every day at 1am.

Graphics & Audio

It’s set in the wild wild west and what more you can ask for is some classic wild west tunes. Well country I guess without the words, but it suits the mood exactly. Nothing too fast or too slow, a perfect paced music selection to get your saloon rocking and rolling.

Graphically though, it isn’t going to win awards, but for a SIM builder, it is spot on. The items, the layout and look of the game feels like you are running a bar in the old west, which is exactly what you want.

One your bar is booming, everyone wants a piece of the action, so other business start appearing.

Longevity

With these type of games, only you can define a true ending, as you can spend as much or little as you want playing it. However, I have noticed that I have sunk many hours into Deadwater Saloon and feel like I’m only just cracking the surface.

This is a good thing as I have become immersed into the scenarios that I have power over and, well, I want to have a booming saloon.

The game itself has potential to have a wide array of DLC, even different locations etc. to set up the saloon. I see weekly updates from the developers and their discord is full of people giving tips on certain things. The developers are also updating everyone on what’s coming next. I can only see the game becoming bigger and better adding to what I have already played so far.

Final Thoughts

I loved every moment of the Deadwater Saloon as it got me thinking, every time I attempted to get my bar, what went wrong and how I can improve.

That’s a good thing because each time you play the more and more immersed into the world you become. What helped is the Wild west theme, and does it so well. From the buildings and the décor, even the things the customers say (best not repeated here).

With the massive potential for this game has for the future, what they already have now and how much I’m still loving it, I’m awarding Deadwater Saloon a Thumb Culture Gold award.