HomeReviewsCoffee Talk
Wot I Think: Coffee TalkNo logo on the foam
No logo on the foam
Mellow. I see little value in reducing games to a single word, but here that word is inescapable.Coffee Talkis a light visual novel with a drink mixing system, that lets you gently nudge its subplots towards good or bad outcomes.
I can’t tell you it was a particularly gripping, dramatic or funny story. But it was very mellow. That may sound like faint praise. Perhaps it is, but it seems to be exactly what developers Toge Productions were going for.
There was once a place in Canterbury called Coffee and Corks. It was the only good coffee place ever.
Mixing the drinks is straightforward and natural enough. Each drink has a primary ingredient like tea or chocolate and then two more from the secondary shelf (a nice touch I just clocked is that the milk takes up two shelves because it’s the only element that’s both primary and secondary). I can’t say it made me want a coffee the wayAutomachefmade me want a burger, but then coffee is horrible anyway.
I was hoping for a little more, I think, and I was a bit surprised that it ended when it did. The micro-epilogues for the main characters were a nice touch, although on my milk run (where I gave everyone milk, unless they asked for milk, in which case they got an espresso) one of them seemed to contradict what had happened earlier. None of its characters particularly spoke to me, although I sort of liked the orc who initially just sat quietly on her own drinking tea while everyone else gossiped.
It was so comfortable that on my first night there I forgot it was a café and left without paying.
You have no drama of your own to deal with. Because of that, and again in contrast to Valhalla, it feels less like a slice of life concept, than it is just a comfortable place to hang around.
Sure, it’s a bit unlikely how all these strangers immediately bond and start talking about their personal lives, before giving each other slightly corny advice. Everyone’s remarkably receptive to this advice too, even when devoted regular Freya keeps telling the younger Rachel she’s “not an adult”, a phrase universally guaranteed to annoy the hell out of any 18 year old. But the days of Coffee Talk are very short indeed, so it’s easy to shrug it all off as a condensed time effect.
I used to make coffee in an Italian place. Lattes are as annoying to make as they are disgusting.
Like the animations, the camera does a lot of mood work, panning about and zooming somewhat to frame more intimate scenes, or to mark minor transitions. There’s one conversation where two characters argue, and the screen is filled with their two portraits, in the centre of which sits the third character they’re talking over, whose portrait gets smaller and more overlapped the more she’s overlooked. This almost belongs in a game with more raw conflict, and on its own it’s not much, but I’m bringing it up in attempt to work out why Coffee Talk works, despite everything in it being fairly inconsequential. There’s a disarming sincerity to it, and even its minor tampering with the fourth wall now and then is harmless (although unfortunately not really compelling enough for me to dedicate the time needed to unlock every detail it hints at).
The fantasy references sound silly out of context. It acknowledges that elves are the worst, though.
Feeling comfortable and provided for is important. That’s not really a truth that Coffee Talk explicitly gets into, but it’s fundamentally what it’s about. It could have been longer, it could have been more substantial and dramatic. But it’s a good way to relax for a few hours.
