Coffee Talk Review (tatiana)
I have now completed my first playthrough of Coffee Talk and feel ready to write a review for it.
The game takes place in an alternate reality where all the fantasy races exist side-by-side. Your character is a barista, and also the owner, of a coffee shop in Seattle. Every day, customers come, you make drinks for them, and they tell you about their problems. Other customers who are at your coffee shop at the same time, often act as agony aunts/advice columnists, even though you also occasionally put in a remark or two - and always lend a sympathetic ear! When the customers return on a different day, their story continues. And the storyline is excellent! All the characters are more complex than they appear at first - including the barista.
Initially, I was a bit disappointed by the lack of actual drink-making - there are never more than 3 customers a day, ordering one drink each, and the rest is just talking. However, the game also has the Endless section, which has two modes - a Free mode, where you make drinks mixing ingredients in any way you like, and a Challenge mode, where various in-game characters tell you what drinks they want you to make and you fulfil the orders on a timer. Both these modes are very good for unlocking drinks for your menu earlier than they appear in the story.
The highest-rated negative review for this game criticises it for the lack of depth and seriousness in handling the issues it raises, but I disagree. The developers of Coffee Talk have obviously realised that not every game needs to be an anonymous hotline, and are content with being advice columnists. And while the issues raised are not particularly tragic, they are all very widespread.
I would also like to praise the game for accessibility. The Challenge mode mentioned earlier is the only one with a timer. I found the default conversation auto-scrolling speed to be perfect for me, making for a very relaxing experience. Finally, although the latte art is quite hard to do "beautifully", I was only tasked with doing it once during the story. I made a random blob with the milk, served it, and the customer still called it "cute" - no problems there.
In summary - an absolutely wonderful game!