Hope 2024 is shaping up to be a good year for everyone!

As you might expect from the title, The Hidden Art of Innkeeping is going to have some hidden art. But that's not all that you'll find. While you explore the village and the surroundings, you may come across some mysterious mounds of dirt. It turns out they contain buried artifacts, and you'll meet an archaeologist who can tell you more about them and their historical significance to the local area. (If you've played the prequel, The Lost Art of Innkeeping, you'll have a very good idea of who this archaeologist is.)

In addition, you'll be able to find books by a famous author scattered around the village - see if you can collect them all! By the way, what I try to do in all my games is that the player can take items only if they don't seem to belong to anyone else, or if you have the owner's permission. This is based on a valuable life lesson I learned playing one of the Ultima games when I was very young: you can't just take things from people's houses! (The guards came after me after I happily looted everything in a village, which had seemed like a very normal thing to do in video games back then!)

There's more to discover in The Hidden Art of Innkeeping, and you're going to get a chance to try it out soon... I'm participating in Steam Next Fest on Feb 5-12, so I'll be releasing a demo for that. The demo is going to be about 30 minutes long, and I've been busy putting the final touches on it. I finally had someone else playtest part of the game a couple days ago; this is the first time someone else aside from me has actually played it and I always find that a little nerve-wracking, though it's useful to get feedback and see someone else's perspective of the game.

Anyhow, I'll be posting the demo next month on the Itch.io page as well, so stay tuned!