I'll Need More Spice in That Cup

2020/02/22

Review of (or maybe more like a light diatribe on?) Coffee Talk, a game by Toge Productions.

Does anyone else find it ironic that coffee, being a drink with caffeine, is meant to wake you up, to buzz you up, to give you energy to go blaze through the day, and yet coffee shops is usually associated with chilling out and winding down? Sorry, just a thought I have to let out.

Coffee Talk is a visual novel and a small coffee shop barista simulator where your job consists of just chilling out, listening to the conversations of the people who pop into your shop, and maybe occasionally make a warm drink for them. It’s a chill, quiet, low-stake. It’s the kind of game best played when you have absolutely nothing looming over you, when you can just relax and sit down with a warm drink of your own. It’s best played when you’re already so comfortable that you don’t mind reading the most boring story, because you’re not here for the story, you’re here for the chill.

Wait, no, I guess it’s not very fair to say Coffee Talk is boring. Some people can find the small-time drama playing out with its 10-cast characters interesting, maybe even relateable. There’s the lovers who can’t get together because of their racist parents, the shy immigrant engineer girl who wants to develop indie games, the aspiring journalist-turns-fiction-writer, the idol girl who’s having problem communicating with her overbearing dad.

There’s nothing wrong with their individual story, per se, but God I wish there’s more to it. I wish the writing doesn’t try to play it so safe. While playing the game I keep wishing, desperately, to be surprised, to see something wild and daring and interesting, something I can’t see from miles away. Exactly one interesting thing happened: we received an alien from outer space who’s trying to get laid with humans on earth, but they’re failing spectacularly because earth’s social custom is a nightmare. And then the game just drags the alien guy into their mundane conversations and carry on as usual. Please, I can literally scroll through Twitter any given day and that’s more exciting than this.

But I guess it’s entirely my fault for expecting this game to be something else, when it just wants to be this small chill experience. I heard someone describing it as “mellow”. I’d like to humbly add one more adjective to it: “mild”. This game is “mild”, or maybe even “bland”. It’s coffee without the kick. It’s a plain salad. If it’s fried chicken, it’s the one that’s barely seasoned, and when you ask the cook why they can’t add just a little bit of salt to it, they’ll say it’s because they want the natural chicken flavour to be there, or something.

But let’s not look at a thing sold as a “plain salad” and expect it to have thirty different layers of spice. Coffee Talk is a game that wants you to chill and is best played when you’re chill, and it’s great at being that kind of game. The soundtrack: not my kind of thing, but very chill. The art and general visual direction: extremely good, aesthetically pleasing, full of life and character. The interface: nothing to complain about. You can open your in-game phone in the middle of a conversation to change the music, look up social media profiles of the characters you’ve met, or read short stories from the in-universe newspaper. That’s brilliant.

I suppose I enjoyed the 5 or so hours I spent to play the game from beginning to end. But throughout those 5 hours I have also been incredibly upset at what this game doesn’t have. It doesn’t really have a story as much as a string of coincidences featuring the people who drop by your cafe and the small drama they carry with them. The characters themselves have good consistent personality, but I feel they’re severely limited, that they could have been more, had the game being longer, had the circumstances around their life being more interesting, had they be allowed to get excessive. The game itself, I think, lacks a personality. It’s like it doesn’t even want to have any sort of excitement within it. It’s just… it’s just chill. Literally nothing, man, it’s just vibing. What do you want from it?

Would I recommend Coffee Talk? Like, man, if you just want something to accompany your evenings, and your evenings happen to be incredibly chill and mild, then yes, sure, it’s a good game for those kind of evenings. Excellent, in fact.

But if you’re anything like me? Well, Coffee Talk taught me that I apparently like EXCESS and DRAMA and HIGH-STAKES BATTLES. I like my stories larger than life, my plots intricate, my characters unafraid of flaunting their personality traits, even if it makes them feel shallow (although I also like an extra heaping of hidden depth, thanks). Playing Coffee Talk doesn’t make me relax, playing it when I have trouble relaxing just makes me angry at how relaxed it is.

As a side note, I wish they didn’t let you name the barista character, or at least that they let you rename them later, or that it has a more convincing default name than “Barista” (“Fahmi” would do nicely, hint hint nudge nudge).

Naming the character implies you can put yourself in their shoes, that you can have some agency within them. The barista actually have a pretty clear personality, a personality that’s just not mine and not something I can relate to. This guy just sit and nod when I want to yell. No, I can’t put myself in their shoes like this.