Forgive me for stating the painfully obvious here folks, but this year has been quite unusual to say the absolute least. I would wager that, for at least a few thousand people around the globe, 2020 will likely go down as one of the worst years in our collective memory. I’d say that’s most assuredly justified given the circumstances. That’s why I wish to pose to you a hypothetical question to begin today’s review.

What if there existed a local, hole-in-the-wall coffee shop to which we could all retreat when we wanted to forget about our troubles and just enjoy a nice, non-alcoholic drink while surrounded by pleasant company? I don’t know about you, dear reader, but such a proposition sounds wonderful to me right about now. That’s especially true after the roller coaster of a year we’ve all had.

Well, if that’s what you’re after, I have good news and bad news. The bad news is that I don’t know of any such coffee shops that all of our readers could feasibly visit together. However, the good news is that I’ve recently discovered an absolutely lovely indie game that I believe can provide a similar experience to actually having such a venue nearby. That particular game is what I’d very much like to tell you about today.

The title in question is known as Coffee Talk. It was both developed and published by Toge Productions and released on Steam in late January 2020. In this case, I think the phrase “coffee talk” is quite descriptive of what this title has to offer. I say that because you play as the owner and sole barista of the titular coffee shop in a fantasy version of Seattle, Washington. I’ll come back to the “fantasy” aspect of that sentence shortly.

For now, though, I’m sure you can imagine that as the only barista in the employ of such a venue, there will be equal amounts of coffee and talking involved in your nightly duties around the shop. I say “nightly” duties because, as it turns out, you run the only coffee shop in the city that is exclusively open after sundown. Having said that, I would almost bet you’re wondering why a shop that primarily serves caffeinated beverages would only be open so late.

After all, is it not logical that people are more likely to be trying to wind down, relax, and fall asleep when your shop opens rather than aiming to stay awake all night? Furthermore, assuming that’s the case, how can you reasonably expect to get much business? Well, I have a feeling you might be surprised by the answers to these quandaries. Allow me to elaborate.

You’ll recall my mentioning a moment ago that Coffee Talk takes place in a modern, yet simultaneously more fantasy-oriented version of Seattle. I can make that claim with a certain sense of authority because this version of the city is home to fantastical denizens such as vampires, werewolves, elves, orcs, succubi, fairies, and probably more walks of life that I’ve yet to encounter. There are humans too, of course, although I’ve met comparatively few of them throughout my time with Coffee Talk thus far.

Your first, most regular, and arguably most loyal customer is a green-haired fairy by the name of Freya. She’s employed as a writer for one of this version of Seattle’s most popular news outlets, a publication known as The Evening Whispers. Freya frequents your coffee shop not only to satiate her need for strong, bitter cups of espresso the way only you can make them but also simply because your shop serves as a quiet, cozy place where she can lose herself in either her writing or a particularly enthralling conversation with you and/or any number of your patrons.

Mentioning Freya’s need for her nightly dose of caffeine serves as a decent segue into discussing Coffee Talk’s gameplay. Admittedly though, the game is so focused on the stories it tells that there’s not all that much gameplay to be had. Essentially, your duties can be boiled down thusly: a customer enters, you welcome them, you take their order, and then you brew and serve the drink they’ve requested to the best of your ability. That may sound simple and, in all honesty, it usually is, but there’s actually quite a bit more to it than that. Allow me to elaborate.

When you take Freya’s first order on the initial night of the story, she mentions that you have an app on your in-game mobile phone that tells you how to make every drink recipe you’ve discovered so far. As you might expect, you only start out with a few recipes listed in that app, such as Freya’s favorite triple-shot espresso. It’s up to you to figure out the rest as you play through the story.

You need exactly three ingredients to make a drink, namely a base, a primary, and a secondary. So, for example, Freya’s triple-shot espresso is composed of coffee, coffee, and more coffee. By contrast, a green tea latte is made with one part green tea to two parts milk. The game starts you off simply, with recipes like Freya’s usual order partially to ease you into the gameplay, and partially because you won’t have access to all your normal brewing ingredients for the first few in-game days.

However, the gameplay can prove challenging at times precisely because you don’t have immediate access to the recipes for every drink you can make. That and your customers’ orders aren’t always perfectly straightforward. That is to say, they usually won’t give you the exact name of the drink they would like (such as a green tea latte, for example). More often than not, they’ll tell you they want a drink with a couple of specific ingredients and leave the rest up to your best judgment. This system has its pros and cons as far as I’ve found up to this point in the story.

One of the pros of this gameplay mechanic is that if a customer doesn’t order a specifically-named beverage and instead simply orders something with, say coffee and lemon as an example, that gives you the opportunity to potentially discover new recipes because it leaves the final ingredient open for experimentation on your part. However, the biggest drawback of doing things this way in my opinion is that you have to know (or more frequently in my experience, guess) what would pair well with the ingredients the customer requests to be present in their drink.

Your customers will be quick to tell you whether or not they like what you brew for them. There’s no real punishment of any sort for brewing and serving the wrong drink, in fact, you even get a Steam achievement the first time you do so. You can also discard a drink before serving it up to five times per in-game day if you think you got it wrong. For what it’s worth, you’ll also be awarded a Steam achievement the first time you discard a beverage.

Even so, Coffee Talk still manages to make me feel particularly terrible whenever I screw up a customer’s order. Despite how that may sound, I actually think that’s a point in the game’s favor. The best way I can think of to describe my reasoning behind that claim is to ask you to imagine a much less intense version of the sensation of getting a citation in Papers, Please, just without that soul-crushing noise of the late-1980s dot matrix printer spitting out said citation at you (or any associated penalties).

You may have noticed that I haven’t spent quite that much time discussing the story of Coffee Talk by this point in my review. I suppose that’s unusual considering most reviews I’ve published in the past. That’s primarily because, although I would absolutely love to spend the rest of this article gushing about how much I adore the tales told in the game, I can’t help but feel that letting slip anything more than just the most minor details would cause us to venture into spoiler territory. I elect to let that statement serve as a testament to how story-heavy this title is.

If story-focused games like Coffee Talk aren’t your thing, I once again have good news and bad news. The bad news is that I wholeheartedly believe you would be doing yourself a massive disservice if you didn’t at least give Coffee Talk’s story a chance to win you over. The good news is that if you like the gameplay mechanics this title has to offer and want to do more of that during your time with it, there are two readily-available “endless modes” that might interest you.

The first of these modes is a challenge mode which tasks you with correctly brewing drinks for as many customers as you can within a certain amount of time. This concept is not dissimilar to one of the challenge modes in the aforementioned Papers, Please. The other endless mode is known simply as “free brew,” which does exactly what it says on the tin. It lets you experiment with as many combinations of ingredients as you like to see what you can discover. This is definitely a more relaxing element of Coffee Talk in my opinion.

I think it’s time I concluded this review by finally summarizing my answer to the question I pose with each game I review. Why, exactly, do I adore Coffee Talk as much as I’ve hinted that I do? Well, I would say that’s because it’s most definitely what I would classify as a “feel-good” game. It’s not too heavy on the challenging gameplay aspects and I feel it makes up for what it may lack in the gameplay department in spades because of the content of its story.

I know I’ve avoided saying much about the story for the sake of not spoiling anything, so let me just say this. You’re going to have to deal with some moments in the story that you may find uncomfortable, like arguments and awkward conversations among your patrons. Despite how things may feel in the moment, many things end up working out peacefully when the dust has settled and all is said and done. This concept of Coffee Talk actually helps me deal with many aspects of my own anxiety to a considerable extent, believe it or not.

Essentially, these moments in the game’s story help me remind myself of the mantra, “this too, shall pass.” I’ve been convinced that Coffee Talk is one of those games that I can turn to when things get rough and just lose myself in a more pleasant world for awhile. As I alluded to earlier, I think we could all use at least a couple of games that have this power after the year we’ve all endured. For that, I cannot recommend Toge Productions’ Coffee Talk strongly enough.

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Coffee Talk

$12.99

9.5

Score

9.5/10

Pros

• Highly Immersive Story
• Gameplay Could Be Considered Relaxing
• Challenge Modes are Present for Those Who Enjoy Them

Cons

• Gameplay Mechanics Could Be Considered Lacking

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