Coffee Talk is a visual novel set in a coffee store. You play as the owner, with a default name of Barista, and basically the game’s story revolves around listening to the customers’ lives, their issues, and some philosophic discussions. The game has a pixel art-style, but in a higher detail that gives it a unique yet old-school charm look to it. The game completely takes place at the coffee store, so the background is always the same bench, chairs and windows, but it gives it a familiar warm feel to the atmosphere.
The unique aspect of the game is that it takes place in a world where there are many fantastical races. Your customers will range from humans to vampires to aliens to werewolves to orcs and others. There is a regular who is always there, Freya, a journalist who’s looking for inspiration for her novel. The coffee store only opens at night, and is the only coffee place still open at midnight, so it attracts all sorts of unusual clientele. Given their fantasy roots, the topics and problems that the customers discuss is different, and yet the game will take this opportunity to allow it to mirror reality, into a sort of philosophic and meaningful discussion.
Perhaps the way the characters are written and how their discussions sound so close to normal, and what you’d experience, that makes them feel much closer than you’d expect. The coffee store has a homely feel to it, and given you learn about the biggest problems the customers are facing at that moment, and usually it’s the closest thing to them, that it defines them and develops them much more than you would expect in such a short period of time.
The character interactions are well written, and customers come and go. The game takes place over a period of two weeks as you play through each day. Therefore, over the course of the two weeks, customers will return and basically give updates or further developments from when they visited before. It depends on your reading speed but each day is fairly short, taking only around ten to fifteen minutes to pass.
Apart from the reading, the only other gameplay element is the making of the drinks. It is a very simple system, the customer will order a drink, and you select three ingredients to blend together to create the drink. There are recipes that you’ll “discover” that’ll make the drinks, and the customers will usually give you an idea on what they’d want, and the ingredients required. However, it’ll still be a bit of a trial and error although there’s little penalty in getting the order wrong. The story will continue to progress, although it might change the events a little bit.
The game doesn’t take long to complete, only around two to three hours if you have a decent reading speed. However, even with its short run-time, it manages to create such an engaging, charming and relaxing game thanks to its characters, and their stories that you can relate to. It’s writing is impressive since this is no easy feat and something a lot of games fails in their attempts. The ending can feel a bit rushed as it quickly and unceremoniously gives a quick epilogue to all the characters, and then tacks on an interesting (but seemingly out of nowhere) revelation at the end.
There’s not much to do after you complete the story. You can play through the story again as there will be some slightly differing dialogue on certain days. If you served the wrong drinks to the characters, then you can attempt to brew the correct one to perfectly complete their scenario. There is a free mode where you can just brew random drinks to your heart’s content. And finally there is a challenge mode where characters will order specific drinks and you need to serve him, trying to gain a high score in the time limit. The orders get harder as you will need to eventually memorize (or have a handy reference list) of the ingredients needed for certain drinks.
Overall, Coffee Talk is a great visual novel. It perfects in creating a chill and relaxing atmosphere as you would expect of a coffee store, and the pixel art aesthetics used is fitting. Being set in a fantasy world was a good idea as it gives that exotic element to each character’s issues and problems, while still making it relatable and understandable. The main flaw is that the game is short, since it serves something that you’d want more of.
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