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Barfender

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Barfender

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Barfender is a chaotic co-op bar management game where you build your dream bar, serve wild customers, and desperately try to survive the nightly madness. Craft drinks, clean messes, stop bar fights, and keep your crew sanity intact. Do you have what it takes to run the messiest bar in town?

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Most popular community and official content for the past week. (?)

THE "PLUG AND PLAY" UPDATE

May 1

THE "PLUG AND PLAY" UPDATE

Last update smoothed out the early shifts. This one is about how you play them. Full gamepad support, a character creator, a settings screen that doesn't fight you, and meaner nights behind the bar.

CO-OP DEVELOPMENT STATUS

Still cooking. We're working on it from both sides: the technical side (netcode, sync, all the stuff that makes two players in one bar not fall apart) and the balance side (a chaotic shift with a friend needs to feel right, not just functional). No date yet. We'll show it when it's ready.

FULL GAMEPAD SUPPORT

The big one. Full gamepad navigation across the main menu, pause menu, the phone, the shop, A-Mart, and the bar itself. Rotation works on stick now, so placing furniture isn't a wrestling match. Steam Deck players, you're in.

CUSTOMIZE YOUR BARTENDER

Full character creator at runtime. New presets, a better default look, and the whole thing is localized. The bar is finally yours.

VIRTUAL KEYBOARD

MIKEA and the shop have a proper on-screen keyboard now, with hardware fallback. Heads up: Asian languages aren't currently supported on the virtual keyboard. You'll need a hardware keyboard for those.

SETTINGS, REBUILT

Cleaner layout, better navigation, fewer pause-menu bugs, bigger text where it was squinting at you.

MEANER NIGHTS

A new Night Director paces the late shift. Hobos read the room better. Customers get frustrated when you reject orders. Ragdolls feel smoother. Price reactions are in (still cooking, tell us how they feel).

STEAM CLOUD SAVES

Your bar travels with you now. Save on desktop, pick up on Steam Deck, keep going. Existing saves get pulled into the cloud automatically.

NOTABLE FIXES

• Feedback window no longer wipes your text on close

• Difficulty card text aligns properly across all languages

• Game time resets correctly on new game from template

• Bunch of bug fixes like customer behaviour, interaction problems, physics etc..

TALK TO US

Got an idea or hit something weird? Steam Discussions or Discord[discord.gg].

See you behind the bar.

Barfender

Demo stream

Hey guys, I streamed the demo today and was pretty surprised when Kaan Kürkçüoğlu showed up. The game looks really promising, I can definitely see the potential in it. There’s still a lot going on in single-player, but I’m really looking forward to when multiplayer gets added. For sure gonna try it with my friends in a future stream or video. Cheers, DD (Mocsokkandur)...

Mocsokkandur

Apr 28 @ 12:27pm

General Discussions

THE "SMOOTHER SHIFTS" UPDATE

Apr 23

THE "SMOOTHER SHIFTS" UPDATE

We've been watching clips, reading your feedback, and digging through the data since the demo went live. While we love the chaos, some of those first shifts were landing more frustrating than fun. This update cleans up onboarding, sharpens the early quests, and squashes the bugs that were getting in your way behind the bar.

ABOUT CO-OP

You've been asking. A lot! So let's clear something up.

We originally planned to keep co-op for the full release. But after seeing how many of you have been itching to wreck a bar with a friend, we've changed our minds. Co-op is coming to the demo in a future update.
It's not in this one, and we want to take our time to make it feel right, so we're not putting a date on it yet. But it's happening!

Wishlist Barfender so you don't miss the moment co-op demo drops.

HIGHLIGHTS

Reworked onboarding and early quest flow so progression feels natural
New voiceovers on every quest, with updated localization across all supported languages
Critical performance fixes: expect an FPS boost, and GPUs with low VRAM should stop crashing
Steam Deck low-battery warnings no longer hijack your screen mid-rush
Older saves migrate over to the new progression format automatically. No bartender left behind.

PERFORMANCE

Fixed several critical performance issues. You should see an FPS improvement across the board.
Graphics cards with limited VRAM were crashing on some machines. Those crashes should now be gone, or at least a lot rarer.

QUESTS & ONBOARDING

Shorter, punchier objective text for trays, orders, and the coffee machine
Added a dispenser highlight for the coffee machine fill step
New quest narration and updated flow for Act 1 (orders/trays) and Act 2 (tray location)
Fixed several cases where onboarding could get stuck

GAMEPLAY & BALANCE

Mud spawns slower and snack trash is smaller. Less janitorial work between shifts.
Empty refill items can now be dumped directly
Fixed bottle scales, improved animations, and cleaned up general customer behavior
Fixed a case where customers would get stuck in a puking loop (you're welcome)

CONTROLS & FEEL

Input handling updated for better responsiveness
Tweaked default mouse sensitivity and fixed low-sensitivity edge cases
Fixed jump input being queued while ragdolled. No more launching yourself into orbit the moment you stand up.

VISUALS

Brighter mornings and a full lighting cleanup pass
Fixed the infamous pink hands
Cleaned up oversized FPS hand textures
Fixed missing highlights on several interactive objects

TALK TO US

If a quest feels off or you've got a wild idea for the bar, hit us up in the Steam Discussions or on Discord. We've still got plenty on our list, and we want to hear yours.

See you behind the bar.
Proto Division

Barfender

THE BARFENDER DEMO IS LIVE

Apr 17

Pour. Clean. Break up fights. Try to survive.

The Barfender demo is OUT NOW on Steam!

Grab it, fire it up, and see how long you can keep the bar standing before it all falls apart.

IGN dropped our trailer!

So what is Barfender?

A chaotic bar sim where everything spirals out of control. You're behind the counter. Orders are stacking up. Someone's drunk. Someone's throwing a punch. Someone just walked off with the till.

Customers get drunk, and start fights
Orders pile up faster than you can handle
Glasses shatter and the mess keeps spreading
Unwanted guests wander in

Serve drinks. Manage disasters. Stop fights. Hold the bar together before it completely collapses.

Good luck.

Play now

The single-player demo is free and available right now. Play solo and see if you've got what it takes behind the bar.

And if you want to bring a friend into the chaos? Wishlist Barfender! The full game ships with co-op, and wishlisting means you'll be the first to know the moment it drops. It genuinely helps us out too.

See you behind the bar. Try not to burn it down.

— Proto Division team

Barfender

Playtest suggestions

Give an option to lock and unlock the chairs in place - at least from being bumped by walking npc's and the character. NPC's can still pick them up and move them, but it's super annoying having a mess of a dining room because an NPC walked through everything on the floor. It makes sense for everything to be out of whack after a fight, so maybe auto unlock the tables and chairs while a fight has been initiated, but still offer that functionality for everything else. Also slightly lessen the amount of moppin...

CrypticWizard

Mar 28 @ 6:54am

General Discussions

DEMO FEEDBACK

Nice game. I want to play with my friend. So I'm looking forward to the full edition. By the way,It might be a good choice to continue enriching to the content on the basis of the existing system

LUOQINGJIE

Apr 28 @ 4:42am

General Discussions

Demo Feedback

I got dangerously close to getting addicted. There’s this constant pull to push into the next day—earn more, buy more, sell more. It’s hard to stop. I’m especially excited about the upcoming co-op multiplayer update; even imagining splitting tasks with a friend during the chaos sounds incredibly fun. The game already shows a lot of potential. If the demo is this solid, it’s hard not to wonder how impressive the full release will be. Huge shoutout to the devs—congrats!...

meluv2feed

Apr 26 @ 2:28pm

General Discussions

Nice Bar Demo

Hey there! Thanks for sharing this demo with us. I streamed it the other day on Twitch and for the most part found it enjoyable. There were a few things I noticed while playing and I know in the end they will be worked out. The main ones that I recall were the stretching of some of the customers (gumby tearing effect?) and then where the customer is supposed to be vomiting and there is no animation to match. I had to punch him and then he vomited lol. Side notes - The one arcade game was kinda dull but...

Aculexx

Apr 25 @ 3:28pm

General Discussions

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