Coffee shop games have left me hot and cold over the last couple of years. Coffee Talk, with its endearing fantasy characters and sumptuous soundtrack, remains the pinnacle of this growing genre for me, with Necrobarista coming a close second, thanks mostly to its striking bookshop setting and considered meditation on death and the afterlife (even if the time you spend as an actual barista is virtually non-existent). Others, though, like Affogato, reduce their respective drinks-making into slightly tedious box-ticking exercises, asking you to do little more than drag pre-prescribed ingredients into a tedious number of machines with little room for showmanship or interpretation.
Tavern Talk
Publisher: Gentle Troll EntertainmentDeveloper: Gentle Troll EntertainmentAvailability: Out 20th June, 2024Download the demo on: Steam
It’s a tricky thing to get right, and when the balance is off-kilter, it can feel a bit like watching your local Starbuckser pour a gallon of milk in your tea when you’d normally put in just a dash and leave the teabag in at home. Happily, Tavern Talk walks the line between a riveting fantasy visual novel and interactive drinks ’em up with panache, its Next Fest demo giving you the freedom to flex your budding mixology skills with a distinctly RPG twist. I imagine it’s a bit like what Travis Baldree’s Legends & Lattes book series might look like in video game form, only with sharper teeth and a pet dragon whose bottomless stomach acts as a convenient drainpipe for any do-overs or mistakes.
To the premise. You, an invisible, first-person tavern keeper, make small talk with your high fantasy clients as you serve them drinks. In the Next Fest demo, there are six in your recipe book already, and it’s clear a lot of effort’s gone into making them look like their respective names. The Peak’s Sunrise, for instance, has a half slice of lemon cresting the rim of the glass as it rises up from the purple liquid contained within, while the Sailor’s Courage not only has a dimple mug with an actual six-pack of abs detailed on its side, but also a handle shaped like a burly bicep, and a ship’s sail poking out the top like a piratical cocktail umbrella. Top marks goes to the Last Whisper, though, whose cocktail shaker glass is capped by a skull with a dagger through its eye.
1 of 3 Caption Attribution Patrons will ask you to make drinks that match specific stats they want to buff.
There are lots of brilliant little details like this to enjoy in Tavern Talk, but my favourite thing is its ingredients. This being a high fantasy tavern establishment, you’re not dealing in milk, beans and cinnamon sticks here. Oh no. Your five mainstays are classic RPG stats: Dexterity, Intelligence, Defence, Strength and Charisma – with other infusion ingredients becoming available later on to give drinks extra buffs such as Haste and Inspiration. As you much expect from that description, the drinks you make have correlating effects on the characters you serve them to, and we get to see this play out in increasingly complex ways as the Next Fest demo goes on.