Time to mix drinks and change lives.
VA-11 Hall-A was the final game I beat in 2023 and what a great sendoff it was. Huge thanks to @wheatie again for providing me with a copy of this game as a christmas gift - please consider showing her some support!
As a visual novel, VA-11 was quite different from the ones I played before, since I never got around to actually playing a normal slice-of-life VN. Considering I've (nearly) only played murder mysteries in this format, it was a nice change of pace to read a visual novel with a welcoming and cozy atmosphere for once. The cyberpunk aesthetic and soundtrack are a perfect match for the direction of VA-11 and quickly help to immerse you in the setting. I might just talk about the soundtrack a little more while I'm at it. The game allows you to pick 12 different songs from a diverse collection so you can set your own soundtrack. There's an integrated music player so you can listen to your favorite songs on shuffle and repeat or even skip some if you're not feeling them at the moment. Thankfully you can always switch out the jukebox songs each in-game day, so if you happen to really dislike a song, you can just swap it out for something else. So yeah, there's that. However, a good visual novel shouldn't need to rely on the soundtrack alone to be enjoyable, it also needs unique and entertaining characters. VA-11 has quite the quirky cast; seeing the talking Shiba with sunglasses for the first time certainly got a good chuckle out of me. His name being Rad Shiba didn't help.
The actual gameplay itself is really simple and nothing noteworthy. You click some ingredients on the right side of the screen and drag them together to mix a drink. While this mixing mechanic is just a plot device most of the time, sometimes you'd also get different dialogue from the customers, depending on the amount of alcohol they had. Somehow I only realized this when I already was nearing the end of the game, but I don't think it makes a huge difference, just a different topic every now and then.
That wraps pretty much everything up I wanted to say about this game already. It's a solid experience and I'd strongly advise anyone who likes cyberpunk settings or a good visual novel to try VA-11 out. Just please listen to my advice from earlier and don't rush it - take breaks if you're feeling bored. Grab a snack and just enjoy what lies ahead.
Thanks for reading. See you in 2024!
VA-11 Hall-A was the final game I beat in 2023 and what a great sendoff it was. Huge thanks to @wheatie again for providing me with a copy of this game as a christmas gift - please consider showing her some support!
As a visual novel, VA-11 was quite different from the ones I played before, since I never got around to actually playing a normal slice-of-life VN. Considering I've (nearly) only played murder mysteries in this format, it was a nice change of pace to read a visual novel with a welcoming and cozy atmosphere for once. The cyberpunk aesthetic and soundtrack are a perfect match for the direction of VA-11 and quickly help to immerse you in the setting. I might just talk about the soundtrack a little more while I'm at it. The game allows you to pick 12 different songs from a diverse collection so you can set your own soundtrack. There's an integrated music player so you can listen to your favorite songs on shuffle and repeat or even skip some if you're not feeling them at the moment. Thankfully you can always switch out the jukebox songs each in-game day, so if you happen to really dislike a song, you can just swap it out for something else. So yeah, there's that. However, a good visual novel shouldn't need to rely on the soundtrack alone to be enjoyable, it also needs unique and entertaining characters. VA-11 has quite the quirky cast; seeing the talking Shiba with sunglasses for the first time certainly got a good chuckle out of me. His name being Rad Shiba didn't help.
The actual gameplay itself is really simple and nothing noteworthy. You click some ingredients on the right side of the screen and drag them together to mix a drink. While this mixing mechanic is just a plot device most of the time, sometimes you'd also get different dialogue from the customers, depending on the amount of alcohol they had. Somehow I only realized this when I already was nearing the end of the game, but I don't think it makes a huge difference, just a different topic every now and then.
That wraps pretty much everything up I wanted to say about this game already. It's a solid experience and I'd strongly advise anyone who likes cyberpunk settings or a good visual novel to try VA-11 out. Just please listen to my advice from earlier and don't rush it - take breaks if you're feeling bored. Grab a snack and just enjoy what lies ahead.
Thanks for reading. See you in 2024!
despite how fucked up we and the world can be, we move on, sometimes painfully, but such is inevitable.
putting out something pretty minimal without whole ton of thought, mainly piecing together shit i wrote on discord
i really enjoyed the subtext about capitalism and societal influence, also how theres no real resolution. it’s an outlet for its creators to express, it doesnt try and convince you there’s something wrong with this futuristic dystopia where basically everyone is fucked up and corporate corruption overwhelms, it simply just manifests. whether it’s “good” or “bad” is simply up to the player’s interpretation. i found myself in this morally gray area, seeing the overarching corrupt madness that influences everyone’s moods as a bit depressing yet motivational for some. this is how their world is and despite how it operates, people move forward. acceptance of the circumstances has sank in and acceptance of others also in the process, everyone is in the same boat. dogs, machines, talking brains; you name it. all in mutual understanding of one another.
i think some of the more sexual content can be pretty uncomfortable but it’s only very prevalent in one character and part of it does help build upon how shitty the world is, sexual desires overcome in the face of hopelessness.
characters are all super cool and i had been expecting the story to be more grandiose but i’m glad it wasnt in the end. a short but sweet small outlook into a much larger world we still don’t have a complete grasp on, but ultimately thats okay and not even its citizens fully have a grasp on it. lots of neat writing and exchanges that both satisfy with being fun and contributing to the overall ideas. it’s quirky in its own way. a fun and cozy time where you can forget and just be with these tragic yet lovable people. the infamy of the foot-tapping soundtrack also delivered. maintaining that level of intimacy with its audience that resonates. at the end i was kinda like “thats it?” but thinking about it more, va-11 hall-a doesn’t overstay its welcome at all and does exactly what it sets out to do. def one of my most memorable experiences with the genre. i’m a sucker for anything post-modern or cyberpunk related.
putting out something pretty minimal without whole ton of thought, mainly piecing together shit i wrote on discord
i really enjoyed the subtext about capitalism and societal influence, also how theres no real resolution. it’s an outlet for its creators to express, it doesnt try and convince you there’s something wrong with this futuristic dystopia where basically everyone is fucked up and corporate corruption overwhelms, it simply just manifests. whether it’s “good” or “bad” is simply up to the player’s interpretation. i found myself in this morally gray area, seeing the overarching corrupt madness that influences everyone’s moods as a bit depressing yet motivational for some. this is how their world is and despite how it operates, people move forward. acceptance of the circumstances has sank in and acceptance of others also in the process, everyone is in the same boat. dogs, machines, talking brains; you name it. all in mutual understanding of one another.
i think some of the more sexual content can be pretty uncomfortable but it’s only very prevalent in one character and part of it does help build upon how shitty the world is, sexual desires overcome in the face of hopelessness.
characters are all super cool and i had been expecting the story to be more grandiose but i’m glad it wasnt in the end. a short but sweet small outlook into a much larger world we still don’t have a complete grasp on, but ultimately thats okay and not even its citizens fully have a grasp on it. lots of neat writing and exchanges that both satisfy with being fun and contributing to the overall ideas. it’s quirky in its own way. a fun and cozy time where you can forget and just be with these tragic yet lovable people. the infamy of the foot-tapping soundtrack also delivered. maintaining that level of intimacy with its audience that resonates. at the end i was kinda like “thats it?” but thinking about it more, va-11 hall-a doesn’t overstay its welcome at all and does exactly what it sets out to do. def one of my most memorable experiences with the genre. i’m a sucker for anything post-modern or cyberpunk related.
This review contains spoilers
The technocapital singularity is a unique and flashy hell.
It’s a hell full of spectacle. The city glows with lights at night, people have cybernetic augmentations that enhance them in different ways - some people are even just brains in jars. It’s truly something to behold how far technology has come, the way that talking dogs and people with vestigial cat ears walk into bars without so much as a second glance. Robots with advanced artificial intelligence are citizens of this city and are just as much human as you or I.
But no matter how much glitz and glamor permeates its outer shell, the city is still a hell.
It’s a capitalist dystopia, one where nanomachines are implanted in every person from birth in order to control them and track them and sell their data. People talk like they’ve been on the internet constantly because all versions of the self have been consolidated, capital allows no room for privacy or identity outside of its own simplistic understanding because nuance isn’t profitable. A company has complete control over the city’s laws, with a bumbling fool as a front for the malicious actions committed by it. A group of military police funded by said company runs the city, one that’s above the laws and commits atrocities against the people frequently with beatings being on the regular.
In all this, there’s a single glimmering light in the darkness. Through the depths of hell, as one travels down further and further through its nine circles with Vergil, one comes to a member of heaven's nine spheres sitting idly in a small corner on a street. It’s a small, slightly run-down, bar called Valhalla.
Well, not really called “Valhalla”, that’s just the nickname for its designation name, which is VA-11 Hall-A. However, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that such a place would be named after a place where noble warriors fly when they die in combat, the drinking hall of the gods. In a similar fashion, this is where those who fight the everyday battle of work go for respite, though their rest is only temporary instead of permanent.
Our time in this world is through the eyes and ears of Jill Stingray, a bartender who works here and talks to all of her clients about their troubles. All of which are caused directly by the city that made things this way, the corporation that controls their lives. It’s a hopeful yet depressing game, one where despite everything every character is able to hold on, if only because they have each other.
A character who begins frequenting the bar after the first day is Sei, a member of the aforementioned military police I mentioned. Sei is an interesting character because she’s someone who does everything right by the standards of society. At first, it appears she’s going to be an argument for police. After all, how could these terrible fascists be so bad when there’s such a nice girl working with them? Of course, it’s not that simple, and she’s quickly used to turn that image around. Sei, despite doing everything right and going above and beyond to be the model member of her organization, like saving people who she was instructed to let die or bringing medical supplies to doctors in need of them in her free time, ends up betrayed and abandoned by the people she fought so hard for. She’s left behind, locked in a terrorist situation inside a bank, and only manages to escape by casting aside her identity as one of them. When they disband, she doesn’t know where she’ll end up going next, but she’s glad to have broken free from them. Sei is a character who is bound by the rigidity of capital and seems to be doing fine, but then she’s cast from it and it’s revealed how even working hard won’t save you from the realities of systems that don’t care about you.
Dorothy Haze is a complicated character to talk about. A 24 year-old sex worker robot who willingly never upgraded her model from that of a child’s in order to get a leg up on the competition, she represents a disgusting truth about the fetishization of youth presented by capitalism. When she appears, it’s always uncomfortable. She’s never meant to be titillating for the player, seeing as how she is never as sexy onscreen for them, only serving as a grim reminder of what capitalism at its extremes is: that is to say, its obsession with youth, which we see in our understanding of beauty standards. A lack of wrinkles, a lack of body hair, smaller frames and facial features - these things that our society values so much are a microcosm of this utterly vile conclusion. Younger people are prized in our society because they’re more easily influenced, more easily made to work and become “efficient”. This fixation becomes fetishization, if youth is good… then it must be attractive. That is how we get these beauty standards, and how this pedophilic look on life is something that goes part and parcel with capitalism. She even has her own existential dread over this. She wants to age normally, she wants to be able to have those human experiences, but because that would entail a disadvantage in her field of work created by societal predilections, she chooses not to. She’s a stark testament to how much capitalism fetishizes youth, the logical extreme of when that happens.
Even some of the smaller characters, who you never end up really meeting, end up factoring into this. Mario, a delivery driver who shows up twice at the bar, is someone who feels as if he has to hide his true identity. Capitalism divides us into groups so it’s easier for us to be controlled and marketed to, so he feels as if he has to fit into being the “tough biker type”, even if he’s quite sweet at heart, and jeopardizes parts of his personality for this. It’s only through embracing that sweet side that he finally gets to be happier, instead of insulting everyone all the time in half-hearted aphorisms. The dogs that frequent the bar, Rad Shiba and his boss, both have trouble finding funding for their dog rescue organization. The commodification of living is too much for them to handle, let alone extend to hundreds of other animals. So many characters hide who they are, or can’t fully achieve their potential because of capital. From brains in jars unable to find love to pompous critics putting on a front to bury their past created by police corruption in order to find a new future.
Then there’s our protagonist, Jill Stingray. While she initially seems as if she’s just a blank slate for the player to project onto, it turns out there’s more to her than meets the eye. A relationship Jill adored being in, one that she ended three years ago, haunts her because of the choices she was forced to make in order to preserve her autonomy. As stated, capitalism forces people into groups and to decide what they want to do with their life at a young age, no matter how ridiculous an expectation that is. Jill went through all of college and got a job at a research station, which was her ordained role in life, but realized she didn’t want to do that with her life - but breaking free from the trodden path that profit had laid out for her came with the cost of her lost Lenore. Despite this, she keeps going, she mixes drinks, and she banters with her coworkers and clients. She’s part of what makes VA-11 Hall-A, well, Valhalla. Without her, it would not be complete. Even though she’s lost everything, she keeps going. No matter what happens, even when she’s evicted, she never gives in.
One of the nine spheres of heaven rests in the depths of the circles of hell. Though Dante didn’t write of it, it’s a place for those beleaguered by the battering of fiscal burdens to come and relax for a while. It’s a place of sagacity - if only for a little bit.
And that’s really all you can ask for, sometimes.
It’s a hell full of spectacle. The city glows with lights at night, people have cybernetic augmentations that enhance them in different ways - some people are even just brains in jars. It’s truly something to behold how far technology has come, the way that talking dogs and people with vestigial cat ears walk into bars without so much as a second glance. Robots with advanced artificial intelligence are citizens of this city and are just as much human as you or I.
But no matter how much glitz and glamor permeates its outer shell, the city is still a hell.
It’s a capitalist dystopia, one where nanomachines are implanted in every person from birth in order to control them and track them and sell their data. People talk like they’ve been on the internet constantly because all versions of the self have been consolidated, capital allows no room for privacy or identity outside of its own simplistic understanding because nuance isn’t profitable. A company has complete control over the city’s laws, with a bumbling fool as a front for the malicious actions committed by it. A group of military police funded by said company runs the city, one that’s above the laws and commits atrocities against the people frequently with beatings being on the regular.
In all this, there’s a single glimmering light in the darkness. Through the depths of hell, as one travels down further and further through its nine circles with Vergil, one comes to a member of heaven's nine spheres sitting idly in a small corner on a street. It’s a small, slightly run-down, bar called Valhalla.
Well, not really called “Valhalla”, that’s just the nickname for its designation name, which is VA-11 Hall-A. However, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that such a place would be named after a place where noble warriors fly when they die in combat, the drinking hall of the gods. In a similar fashion, this is where those who fight the everyday battle of work go for respite, though their rest is only temporary instead of permanent.
Our time in this world is through the eyes and ears of Jill Stingray, a bartender who works here and talks to all of her clients about their troubles. All of which are caused directly by the city that made things this way, the corporation that controls their lives. It’s a hopeful yet depressing game, one where despite everything every character is able to hold on, if only because they have each other.
A character who begins frequenting the bar after the first day is Sei, a member of the aforementioned military police I mentioned. Sei is an interesting character because she’s someone who does everything right by the standards of society. At first, it appears she’s going to be an argument for police. After all, how could these terrible fascists be so bad when there’s such a nice girl working with them? Of course, it’s not that simple, and she’s quickly used to turn that image around. Sei, despite doing everything right and going above and beyond to be the model member of her organization, like saving people who she was instructed to let die or bringing medical supplies to doctors in need of them in her free time, ends up betrayed and abandoned by the people she fought so hard for. She’s left behind, locked in a terrorist situation inside a bank, and only manages to escape by casting aside her identity as one of them. When they disband, she doesn’t know where she’ll end up going next, but she’s glad to have broken free from them. Sei is a character who is bound by the rigidity of capital and seems to be doing fine, but then she’s cast from it and it’s revealed how even working hard won’t save you from the realities of systems that don’t care about you.
Dorothy Haze is a complicated character to talk about. A 24 year-old sex worker robot who willingly never upgraded her model from that of a child’s in order to get a leg up on the competition, she represents a disgusting truth about the fetishization of youth presented by capitalism. When she appears, it’s always uncomfortable. She’s never meant to be titillating for the player, seeing as how she is never as sexy onscreen for them, only serving as a grim reminder of what capitalism at its extremes is: that is to say, its obsession with youth, which we see in our understanding of beauty standards. A lack of wrinkles, a lack of body hair, smaller frames and facial features - these things that our society values so much are a microcosm of this utterly vile conclusion. Younger people are prized in our society because they’re more easily influenced, more easily made to work and become “efficient”. This fixation becomes fetishization, if youth is good… then it must be attractive. That is how we get these beauty standards, and how this pedophilic look on life is something that goes part and parcel with capitalism. She even has her own existential dread over this. She wants to age normally, she wants to be able to have those human experiences, but because that would entail a disadvantage in her field of work created by societal predilections, she chooses not to. She’s a stark testament to how much capitalism fetishizes youth, the logical extreme of when that happens.
Even some of the smaller characters, who you never end up really meeting, end up factoring into this. Mario, a delivery driver who shows up twice at the bar, is someone who feels as if he has to hide his true identity. Capitalism divides us into groups so it’s easier for us to be controlled and marketed to, so he feels as if he has to fit into being the “tough biker type”, even if he’s quite sweet at heart, and jeopardizes parts of his personality for this. It’s only through embracing that sweet side that he finally gets to be happier, instead of insulting everyone all the time in half-hearted aphorisms. The dogs that frequent the bar, Rad Shiba and his boss, both have trouble finding funding for their dog rescue organization. The commodification of living is too much for them to handle, let alone extend to hundreds of other animals. So many characters hide who they are, or can’t fully achieve their potential because of capital. From brains in jars unable to find love to pompous critics putting on a front to bury their past created by police corruption in order to find a new future.
Then there’s our protagonist, Jill Stingray. While she initially seems as if she’s just a blank slate for the player to project onto, it turns out there’s more to her than meets the eye. A relationship Jill adored being in, one that she ended three years ago, haunts her because of the choices she was forced to make in order to preserve her autonomy. As stated, capitalism forces people into groups and to decide what they want to do with their life at a young age, no matter how ridiculous an expectation that is. Jill went through all of college and got a job at a research station, which was her ordained role in life, but realized she didn’t want to do that with her life - but breaking free from the trodden path that profit had laid out for her came with the cost of her lost Lenore. Despite this, she keeps going, she mixes drinks, and she banters with her coworkers and clients. She’s part of what makes VA-11 Hall-A, well, Valhalla. Without her, it would not be complete. Even though she’s lost everything, she keeps going. No matter what happens, even when she’s evicted, she never gives in.
One of the nine spheres of heaven rests in the depths of the circles of hell. Though Dante didn’t write of it, it’s a place for those beleaguered by the battering of fiscal burdens to come and relax for a while. It’s a place of sagacity - if only for a little bit.
And that’s really all you can ask for, sometimes.
This work is too fucked, its problematic pain points harder to swallow over time for me, but I cannot reconcile that discomfort when this was a very heartfelt comfy experience during a more formative time in my life. So in some ways I avoid and reject that, but one thing I feel righteous in rejecting is the notion of a work being too 'online' to experience, as if something that reminds you of the too-many-hours you spent on twitter or whatever is a not-very-valid perspective. We're in an era of people who are going to spend further or similar time looking through the internet in a way that fragments their personality into ways that become a part of what they are and having that be called "too online, feels like twitter/reddit/etc." is honestly a bit frustrating for me! I guess it's cuz i'm too online, I suppose.
Anyways Jill is me that's what I'm getting at
Anyways Jill is me that's what I'm getting at
i didn't care much for this game but i like the art and the music and im excited for the art and music in the sequel
Cara... que jogo gostosinho de jogar, fazia tempo que eu não relaxava jogando alguma coisa. VA-11 é uma visual novel ambientada em um bar num mundo cyberpunk (shocking). Invés de seguir um plot, o jogo investe 90% de seu tempo numa abordagem ''character-driven'' em que seus personagens são tudo aqui.
Juliann...Jill nossa protagonista é muito boa. Ela é extremamente divertida mesmo sendo uma personagem cínica, isso traz muitos dialógos hilários com as figuras mais inusitadas possíveis em um jogo que tem uma comédia excêntrica que eu pessoalmente acho bem engraçado. É um jogo cheio de piadinhas pervertidas também, o que me pegou de surpresa, mas de uma forma positiva já que eu sou imaturo e acabo rindo dessas piadinhas. O drama pessoal dos personagens mais ''sérios'' é muito bacana também, bem realista e muita gente pode se relacionar com vários personagens aqui. Dana merece uma menção pois ela é fã de wrestling e defende com unhas e dentes. Ela bate em quem fala mal então cuidado ao falar mal das nossas queridas lutas de mentira.
Queria dedicar um parágrafo pra falar sobre o world-building do jogo. É fantástico. Tirando o quarto e varanda da Jill o único cenário é o do bar, e eles conseguem te imergir nesse mundo de forma fantástica com apenas os personagens falando e dando suas opiniões sobre tudo que aconteceu e acontece nesse mundo. Fica muito a critério da imaginação do jogador pensar em tudo isso, em como as coisas eram antes do mundo se tornar como é agora, enquanto também te faz de imaginar como ele é nos dias atuais. Adorei.
Synthwave:
Eu: Trilha sonora 10/10. Só isso mesmo.
A arte do jogo é muito bonita, quem não gosta de temática cyberpunk? Eu como um apaixonado pelos anos 80 e essa temática simplesmente deslumbrei o visual do jogo.
Super recomendo pra quem tá iniciando ou quer começar a jogar visual novels, é bem curtinho, eu zerei em 13 horinhas. Agora é terminar de platinar. Valhalla é um jogo que já me faz sentir nostálgico mesmo tendo acabado de zerar, e tomara que o próximo seja tão bom quanto.
Juliann...Jill nossa protagonista é muito boa. Ela é extremamente divertida mesmo sendo uma personagem cínica, isso traz muitos dialógos hilários com as figuras mais inusitadas possíveis em um jogo que tem uma comédia excêntrica que eu pessoalmente acho bem engraçado. É um jogo cheio de piadinhas pervertidas também, o que me pegou de surpresa, mas de uma forma positiva já que eu sou imaturo e acabo rindo dessas piadinhas. O drama pessoal dos personagens mais ''sérios'' é muito bacana também, bem realista e muita gente pode se relacionar com vários personagens aqui. Dana merece uma menção pois ela é fã de wrestling e defende com unhas e dentes. Ela bate em quem fala mal então cuidado ao falar mal das nossas queridas lutas de mentira.
Queria dedicar um parágrafo pra falar sobre o world-building do jogo. É fantástico. Tirando o quarto e varanda da Jill o único cenário é o do bar, e eles conseguem te imergir nesse mundo de forma fantástica com apenas os personagens falando e dando suas opiniões sobre tudo que aconteceu e acontece nesse mundo. Fica muito a critério da imaginação do jogador pensar em tudo isso, em como as coisas eram antes do mundo se tornar como é agora, enquanto também te faz de imaginar como ele é nos dias atuais. Adorei.
Synthwave:
Eu: Trilha sonora 10/10. Só isso mesmo.
A arte do jogo é muito bonita, quem não gosta de temática cyberpunk? Eu como um apaixonado pelos anos 80 e essa temática simplesmente deslumbrei o visual do jogo.
Super recomendo pra quem tá iniciando ou quer começar a jogar visual novels, é bem curtinho, eu zerei em 13 horinhas. Agora é terminar de platinar. Valhalla é um jogo que já me faz sentir nostálgico mesmo tendo acabado de zerar, e tomara que o próximo seja tão bom quanto.
I went into this game knowing absolutely nothing other than the existence of a couple characters and needless to say I am so fucking thrilled I went in blind. This game absolutely enveloped my time for a solid period of 5 days, I adore everything about the game. Upon completion I couldn't help but smile like a moron while tears silently hit my desk. I felt so much for the characters and was so engaged. A brief breeze of sadness hit as I realized I had reached the end. Needless to say this is one of my favorite video games of all time.
"Time to mix drinks and change lives."
"Time to mix drinks and change lives."
VA-11 Hall-A is a rather simplistic game, even in terms of being a visual novel. It’s not this complex, grandiose story that takes dozens of hours to complete. While there are some additional endings you can unlock, they’re small and really only serve to expand upon the game’s primary ending. There aren’t a whole bunch of branching paths with their own long and intricate routes. While it does have some elements of romance and mystery to it, they’re very passive, and the game isn’t particularly married to either genre. Despite the science fiction nature of its cyberpunk setting, VA-11 Hall-A is rather… mundane. And as I grow older, I gradually find myself relating to its mundanity more and more as time passes.
VA-11 Hall-A is the game for twenty-somethings. It’s the perfect game to boot up after a long day at work and just relax with. It’s not extremely long, nor is it a huge commitment. It’s just a comfy visual novel/bartender simulator with fantastic pixel art and a catchy synthwave soundtrack. It has a relatable story about the struggles of finding what makes someone happy, as well as the value of community in a world where everything sucks all the time and is gradually getting worse day by day, all lessons which are primarily learned by the main character, Jill. Jill is the perfect encapsulation of someone in their mid-twenties working a dead end job who isn’t quite sure of what they want from life. She’s intelligent, witty, charming, and sarcastic in a way that’s not obnoxious. Most importantly: she’s a very caring person, and all of these personality traits serve to really enhance the conversations she has with her patrons as a bartender.
The primary focus of the narrative is just lending an ear to the patrons that come into the bar, as they share with you the unique problems that they struggle with on a day to day basis. There’s a serious incident that takes place early on in the game, and the fallout from that incident affects a few of the regulars who frequent the bar. As a result, they’ll often talk about how this event affects them or the people close to them. Jill is of course, merely a bartender, and there isn’t much that she can do to help those people. However, she still lends her ear to those who need to talk about these things, and she does her best to offer valuable input. She doesn’t always know what to say, but it still means a lot to many of her patrons that she’s willing to hear them out, and it’s a trait of hers that I find deeply admirable and relatable. The rest of the game’s characters are mostly fantastic, even if some of them aren’t necessarily the best people. Just about every character has something about them that adds to the story, whether its exposition about how the world works, a compelling subplot, or even just fun or comedic character interactions.
There is a character in this game that I feel like I should mention ahead of time because they’re a character that has caused a lot of controversy for the game. Dorothy is a sex worker android with the mind of a 24-year-old and the body of a 13-year-old. Despite the nature of her job, she’s constantly acting bright and happy-go-lucky, and she makes numerous sex jokes over the course of her appearances. She also frequently talks about her job in vivid detail. Understandably, her character really sticks out and has made several players of this game rather uncomfortable. It’s a bit hard to see her as anything but this game’s version of the stereotypical anime loli character with the mind of an adult. Her character could have been used as the springboard for a discussion about the morality of utilizing a life-like sex worker android with such a body type, but that doesn’t really happen. Her character isn’t completely about sex, as she mentions that she’s often hired just to provide comfort to people or to pretend to be their daughter in a non-sexual way. She even gets into a philosophical discussion with Jill regarding the concept of death. Still, I don’t think that the game treats her situation or her background with enough tact to really justify it. If a character like this is a dealbreaker for you, well, I totally get it, and I don’t really blame you.
There is a bit more to the gameplay aside from simply reading through the narrative. You do actually prepare the drinks that patrons order at the bar yourself. Making drinks isn’t at all complicated. After the customer orders their drink, Jill will recall what they chose and you just look the drink up in a recipe book and follow the directions. Sometimes, a patron will order a large version of a drink, but in those cases, all you have to do is double the ingredients in the recipe. It’s that simple. It's so simple, I don't even know if there are any repercussions for getting a drink wrong because it never happened to me.
Aside from that, Jill has an apartment, and before each shift, you have the opportunity to browse the internet on your phone. When you browse the net, you can visit a news site, a blog, and a message board in order to get updates on all of the happenings that are going on in Glitch City. This is a great way to learn about the larger setting despite not experiencing a lot of the things that go on within it yourself. You can also go shopping to purchase various things, such as decorations for Jill’s apartment or additional songs that you can play in the bar’s jukebox. As the day begins, Jill will sometimes desire an item from the store, and if you don’t purchase that item, Jill will be distracted and won’t be able to immediately recall a customer’s order during that night’s shift. Jill being distracted isn’t really a problem, though. As long as you’re paying attention to what people are ordering, it’s not hard to recall a customer’s order at all. However, there are mandatory things Jill needs to pay for, such as electricity and rent for her apartment, and if she doesn’t have the money to pay for those things by a certain date, you’ll get the “bad” ending to the game, so you can’t just purchase every single thing that Jill has her eye on. You’ll have to be smart with your money. It’s worth occasionally purchasing something, but not all the time.
The game does potentially date itself by implementing a lot of mid-2010s internet culture and humor, particularly by referencing common posts from 4chan and Tumblr at that time. These references aren’t frequent, nor are they especially in your face. They’re mainly made on the message board you can browse on her phone, and you can also spot some commonly posted comments flying across the screen whenever Streaming-Chan visits the bar. After nearly a decade of these types of posts going out of style, I feel like it might be a bit hard to really recognize them unless you were someone who was on the internet at the time those posts could typically be found. The game also makes several references to YIIK: A Post-Modern RPG, which was still in development at the time VA-11 Hall-A was released. I gotta tell ya, those YIIK references really hit like a truck in the wake of its… controversial release.
For the most part, VA-11 Hall-A manages to be a consistently endearing and entertaining story, despite some distractions that may or may not take you out of the cozy atmosphere it creates. For me, the struggles that Jill goes through were ones that I could really relate to, and the overall message the game conveys really struck a chord with me. My second playthrough of the game, now that I’m older, felt so much more personal than when I first played it. Finishing the game left me with a little bit of optimism, something that I’m really struggling to muster as each day passes and the world gradually resembles the worst aspects of cyberpunk settings more and more. I feel like a lot of people could really learn from Jill. The world sucks, so we should all do what we can to make it suck a little less for those around us, even if the only thing you can do is serve a drink and lend an ear to someone who needs to talk.
VA-11 Hall-A is the game for twenty-somethings. It’s the perfect game to boot up after a long day at work and just relax with. It’s not extremely long, nor is it a huge commitment. It’s just a comfy visual novel/bartender simulator with fantastic pixel art and a catchy synthwave soundtrack. It has a relatable story about the struggles of finding what makes someone happy, as well as the value of community in a world where everything sucks all the time and is gradually getting worse day by day, all lessons which are primarily learned by the main character, Jill. Jill is the perfect encapsulation of someone in their mid-twenties working a dead end job who isn’t quite sure of what they want from life. She’s intelligent, witty, charming, and sarcastic in a way that’s not obnoxious. Most importantly: she’s a very caring person, and all of these personality traits serve to really enhance the conversations she has with her patrons as a bartender.
The primary focus of the narrative is just lending an ear to the patrons that come into the bar, as they share with you the unique problems that they struggle with on a day to day basis. There’s a serious incident that takes place early on in the game, and the fallout from that incident affects a few of the regulars who frequent the bar. As a result, they’ll often talk about how this event affects them or the people close to them. Jill is of course, merely a bartender, and there isn’t much that she can do to help those people. However, she still lends her ear to those who need to talk about these things, and she does her best to offer valuable input. She doesn’t always know what to say, but it still means a lot to many of her patrons that she’s willing to hear them out, and it’s a trait of hers that I find deeply admirable and relatable. The rest of the game’s characters are mostly fantastic, even if some of them aren’t necessarily the best people. Just about every character has something about them that adds to the story, whether its exposition about how the world works, a compelling subplot, or even just fun or comedic character interactions.
There is a character in this game that I feel like I should mention ahead of time because they’re a character that has caused a lot of controversy for the game. Dorothy is a sex worker android with the mind of a 24-year-old and the body of a 13-year-old. Despite the nature of her job, she’s constantly acting bright and happy-go-lucky, and she makes numerous sex jokes over the course of her appearances. She also frequently talks about her job in vivid detail. Understandably, her character really sticks out and has made several players of this game rather uncomfortable. It’s a bit hard to see her as anything but this game’s version of the stereotypical anime loli character with the mind of an adult. Her character could have been used as the springboard for a discussion about the morality of utilizing a life-like sex worker android with such a body type, but that doesn’t really happen. Her character isn’t completely about sex, as she mentions that she’s often hired just to provide comfort to people or to pretend to be their daughter in a non-sexual way. She even gets into a philosophical discussion with Jill regarding the concept of death. Still, I don’t think that the game treats her situation or her background with enough tact to really justify it. If a character like this is a dealbreaker for you, well, I totally get it, and I don’t really blame you.
There is a bit more to the gameplay aside from simply reading through the narrative. You do actually prepare the drinks that patrons order at the bar yourself. Making drinks isn’t at all complicated. After the customer orders their drink, Jill will recall what they chose and you just look the drink up in a recipe book and follow the directions. Sometimes, a patron will order a large version of a drink, but in those cases, all you have to do is double the ingredients in the recipe. It’s that simple. It's so simple, I don't even know if there are any repercussions for getting a drink wrong because it never happened to me.
Aside from that, Jill has an apartment, and before each shift, you have the opportunity to browse the internet on your phone. When you browse the net, you can visit a news site, a blog, and a message board in order to get updates on all of the happenings that are going on in Glitch City. This is a great way to learn about the larger setting despite not experiencing a lot of the things that go on within it yourself. You can also go shopping to purchase various things, such as decorations for Jill’s apartment or additional songs that you can play in the bar’s jukebox. As the day begins, Jill will sometimes desire an item from the store, and if you don’t purchase that item, Jill will be distracted and won’t be able to immediately recall a customer’s order during that night’s shift. Jill being distracted isn’t really a problem, though. As long as you’re paying attention to what people are ordering, it’s not hard to recall a customer’s order at all. However, there are mandatory things Jill needs to pay for, such as electricity and rent for her apartment, and if she doesn’t have the money to pay for those things by a certain date, you’ll get the “bad” ending to the game, so you can’t just purchase every single thing that Jill has her eye on. You’ll have to be smart with your money. It’s worth occasionally purchasing something, but not all the time.
The game does potentially date itself by implementing a lot of mid-2010s internet culture and humor, particularly by referencing common posts from 4chan and Tumblr at that time. These references aren’t frequent, nor are they especially in your face. They’re mainly made on the message board you can browse on her phone, and you can also spot some commonly posted comments flying across the screen whenever Streaming-Chan visits the bar. After nearly a decade of these types of posts going out of style, I feel like it might be a bit hard to really recognize them unless you were someone who was on the internet at the time those posts could typically be found. The game also makes several references to YIIK: A Post-Modern RPG, which was still in development at the time VA-11 Hall-A was released. I gotta tell ya, those YIIK references really hit like a truck in the wake of its… controversial release.
For the most part, VA-11 Hall-A manages to be a consistently endearing and entertaining story, despite some distractions that may or may not take you out of the cozy atmosphere it creates. For me, the struggles that Jill goes through were ones that I could really relate to, and the overall message the game conveys really struck a chord with me. My second playthrough of the game, now that I’m older, felt so much more personal than when I first played it. Finishing the game left me with a little bit of optimism, something that I’m really struggling to muster as each day passes and the world gradually resembles the worst aspects of cyberpunk settings more and more. I feel like a lot of people could really learn from Jill. The world sucks, so we should all do what we can to make it suck a little less for those around us, even if the only thing you can do is serve a drink and lend an ear to someone who needs to talk.
Playing this game with no lights on and scanlines feels amazing, it just fits the vibe perfectly. The music in this game was great too, it almost felt like the playlist on shuffle somehow knew when to play the right tracks and everything feels well crafted.
Trauma dump simulator set in Weeb City, with a level of horniness usually reserved for porn games. Also gay but only, like, the kind of gay thats sexy to straight people. Solid vibe tho.
my comfort game. its really chill, has a slow pace and you get as much gameplay as you would expect from a visual novel. music is also chill and cool and Dana is best boss.
My indubitably based (opposite of loosely acid) rizz when half the characters show up on screen: LET ME HIT LET ME HIT LET ME HIT LET ME H-
i'm glad i could get that line out of the way. Haven't done a review about games I played before this year for quite a time really, but now that we're in the year 2800 this game hits home. Yes this review was in dev hell just like the sequel but we shall believe brothers and sisters.
This game is nothing we haven't seen before and stands on its own at the same time. You cant go behind the counter and beat up customers so instead I played the very linear role of always adding as much alcohol as can fit bcuz im a very good bartender always looking to make dough. I may have finished the game with rent deadline exceeded, electricity bill unpaid, no hoes in the house no hot water no jillmobile no
i'm glad i could get that line out of the way. Haven't done a review about games I played before this year for quite a time really, but now that we're in the year 2800 this game hits home. Yes this review was in dev hell just like the sequel but we shall believe brothers and sisters.
This game is nothing we haven't seen before and stands on its own at the same time. You cant go behind the counter and beat up customers so instead I played the very linear role of always adding as much alcohol as can fit bcuz im a very good bartender always looking to make dough. I may have finished the game with rent deadline exceeded, electricity bill unpaid, no hoes in the house no hot water no jillmobile no
"a bartender is just a pharmacist with a limited inventory." - albert einstein
everything i would (theoretically) like about foodservice work neatly packed in a 7.5 hour game about just getting by and living on the sidelines of life. in my 3-4 years of working in line cook and customer service jobs i don’t think there’s any job more soul-sucking and bitter than that. it’s all too easy to fall into the pit of fearing the very real possibility that your life could be like this forever (which is the case for a lot of line cooks!), working a dead-end job with no real purpose to pursuing any real meaningful goal in life. in that sense, jill’s a well-written protagonist in that she’s a girl who’s long made peace with the fact her life isn’t going to go to any particularly extraordinary places. it kind of feels like seeing a what-if of sorts in my own life; if my current pursuit of higher education doesn’t pan out, i’d probably be in a place not too dissimilar to where jill is right now. but despite throwing away higher aspirations and goals, life goes on, and so does she.
in the life that jill and her fellow glitch city denizens live, it’s a weird kind of comforting to imagine that in the future, years and years from now when our generation is gone, people will still argue about video games and anime and media like we always have, and all the jill stingrays of the world will still be working dead-end jobs to make ends meet, likely carrying the burdens of life regrets with them. though i will say that whenever i get a little too comfortable basking in that thought, the game hits me in the kneecaps with how much it hyped up YIIK and other writing choices that carbon-date it to the post-ironic tumblr/4chan humor era when VA-11 HALL-A was made. sometimes it gives small chuckles, and other times it’s just mildly unfunny. it’s not exactly a dealbreaker, but i think the game could have benefitted from more tact and a more conscious attempt at timeless writing.
VA-11 HALL-A is an unambitious game with a lot of it in service of being unambitious, which i think is the right thing for a game about just some girl who works a bartending job trying to pay rent. it’s about caring enough to help others and accept help, it’s about reconciling with your regrets, and it’s about going out of your way to find the little things that make life worth living. it’s undeniably something of a romanticized look at this line of work, but i’d be lying if i said i missed absolutely nothing about it, despite how miserable it gets a lot of the time. for me and all the other jill stingrays of the world, i hope we all find some semblance of the peace and mundanity jill gets at the end of her story.
everything i would (theoretically) like about foodservice work neatly packed in a 7.5 hour game about just getting by and living on the sidelines of life. in my 3-4 years of working in line cook and customer service jobs i don’t think there’s any job more soul-sucking and bitter than that. it’s all too easy to fall into the pit of fearing the very real possibility that your life could be like this forever (which is the case for a lot of line cooks!), working a dead-end job with no real purpose to pursuing any real meaningful goal in life. in that sense, jill’s a well-written protagonist in that she’s a girl who’s long made peace with the fact her life isn’t going to go to any particularly extraordinary places. it kind of feels like seeing a what-if of sorts in my own life; if my current pursuit of higher education doesn’t pan out, i’d probably be in a place not too dissimilar to where jill is right now. but despite throwing away higher aspirations and goals, life goes on, and so does she.
in the life that jill and her fellow glitch city denizens live, it’s a weird kind of comforting to imagine that in the future, years and years from now when our generation is gone, people will still argue about video games and anime and media like we always have, and all the jill stingrays of the world will still be working dead-end jobs to make ends meet, likely carrying the burdens of life regrets with them. though i will say that whenever i get a little too comfortable basking in that thought, the game hits me in the kneecaps with how much it hyped up YIIK and other writing choices that carbon-date it to the post-ironic tumblr/4chan humor era when VA-11 HALL-A was made. sometimes it gives small chuckles, and other times it’s just mildly unfunny. it’s not exactly a dealbreaker, but i think the game could have benefitted from more tact and a more conscious attempt at timeless writing.
VA-11 HALL-A is an unambitious game with a lot of it in service of being unambitious, which i think is the right thing for a game about just some girl who works a bartending job trying to pay rent. it’s about caring enough to help others and accept help, it’s about reconciling with your regrets, and it’s about going out of your way to find the little things that make life worth living. it’s undeniably something of a romanticized look at this line of work, but i’d be lying if i said i missed absolutely nothing about it, despite how miserable it gets a lot of the time. for me and all the other jill stingrays of the world, i hope we all find some semblance of the peace and mundanity jill gets at the end of her story.
words can't describe how amazing this game is
if you haven't already please go and play it you won't regret it
if you haven't already please go and play it you won't regret it
Solo hay una clase personas que alaban este juego: Weebs adictos a la pornografía que se complacen con cualquier estereotipo de anime.
Aburrido a mas no poder, tiene un mundo...¿Interesante? supongo, cool esto de tener una vida tranquila en un entorno hostil viendo otras perspectivas, pero bah, al final solo se resume a conversaciones referenciales que no llegan a nada y gente hablando de sexo. Un sistema de bartending desastroso y lineal que por mucho que la cagues el juego te llevara a un mismo resultado.
Aburrido a mas no poder, tiene un mundo...¿Interesante? supongo, cool esto de tener una vida tranquila en un entorno hostil viendo otras perspectivas, pero bah, al final solo se resume a conversaciones referenciales que no llegan a nada y gente hablando de sexo. Un sistema de bartending desastroso y lineal que por mucho que la cagues el juego te llevara a un mismo resultado.
Promotes alcoholism
Veredito: A distopia MAIS GOOD VIBES que você vai jogar na vida.
Fiquei feliz de ficar surpreso com o quanto VA-11 HALL-A (além de ter um nome difícil pra caralho de escrever, pqp) era um jogo mega confortável. Tudo nele é aconchegante: sua casa, seus clientes, seu gato de estimação, os sites que você acessa em casa, seus clientes, o bar onde você trabalha, a trilha sonora, seus clientes, sua chefe, seu colega no emprego e seus clientes. Tudo tem uma vibe extremamente aconchegante e acolhedora, o que faz um contraste bem maneiro com o futuro distópico onde você se encontra.
Afinal, nanomáquinas estão matando pessoas, o governo e polícia são corruptos até o pescoço e vendidos para megacorporações sanguessugas, a violência urbana tá comendo solta e tu só está lá, preparando drinques e trocando ideias com o resto da população.
Já mencionei que seus clientes são amigáveis pra caralho? Alguns são lixos de pessoas e um pé no seu saco, mas até com esses você sente prazer em servir umas bebidas e bater um papo.
O que mais me surpreendeu na verdade é o quanto esse jogo é uma história cyberpunk mas ao mesmo tempo ele não parece uma, não dá a sensação de uma. Pra ser sincero, dá a sensação de um slice-of-life. Todas as histórias dos clientes são mundanas, banais, corriqueiras.
Uma estagiária reclamando do chefe bosta. Uma amiga programadora comentando como deu errado o último encontro dela com um peguete. Ir brincar de Verdade Ou Consequência na festa de natal da firma. Uma bombeira que gostaria de ter uma aparência mais feminina, apesar do corpo musculoso. Pessoas comuns, com dramas comuns envolvendo os respectivos empregos, estudos, vidas amorosas e sexuais, problemas de relacionamento com familiares e amigos. Inclusive o texto não tem medo de tocar em temas pesados e necessários, e o faz com muita maturidade, ao mesmo tempo que não tem medo de usar estética de anime e de rir de memes.
Tudo muito bem escrito e caprichado, principalmente quando a gente lembra que foi feito por meia dúzia de gatos pingados na Venezuela, que nem de longe é o país com mais investimento em videogames do planeta.
E essas coisas estão em meio a implantes mecânicos cibernéticos avançados, cérebros conscientes e pró-ativos guardados em potes, cachorros falantes que abrem uma empresa própria, robôs que ganharam cidadania plena e mais um monte de treco que em tese não tem espaço nenhum num slice-of-life.
Se VA-11 HALL-A tem qualquer contra-indicação, é o fato de ser uma visual novel até o talo, sem vergonha nenhuma. Você vai ler muito, mas muito, mas MUITO texto. A jogabilidade se resume a conseguir preparar as bebidas certas com os ingredientes certos, a lembrar do que cada cliente gosta, e a ter dinheiro quando chega uma conta pra pagar em débito automático.
Mas as punições são irrisórias: prepare a bebida errada e você não recebe bônus extra no fim do expediente, fique sem dinheiro pra pagar a luz e sua casa fica no escuro. É pra dar um quê de jogabilidade, pra você ter algum nível de atenção necessária, mas é só isso.
Não é um defeito, com certeza, mas é algo que pode afastar quem não curte o gênero. Ou você aceita que vai basicamente ler texto pra caralho e preparar uns drinques, e que o jogo é só isso, daí senta e relaxa e curte a partida... ou não.
Pessoalmente, eu curti pra cacete.
Fiquei feliz de ficar surpreso com o quanto VA-11 HALL-A (além de ter um nome difícil pra caralho de escrever, pqp) era um jogo mega confortável. Tudo nele é aconchegante: sua casa, seus clientes, seu gato de estimação, os sites que você acessa em casa, seus clientes, o bar onde você trabalha, a trilha sonora, seus clientes, sua chefe, seu colega no emprego e seus clientes. Tudo tem uma vibe extremamente aconchegante e acolhedora, o que faz um contraste bem maneiro com o futuro distópico onde você se encontra.
Afinal, nanomáquinas estão matando pessoas, o governo e polícia são corruptos até o pescoço e vendidos para megacorporações sanguessugas, a violência urbana tá comendo solta e tu só está lá, preparando drinques e trocando ideias com o resto da população.
Já mencionei que seus clientes são amigáveis pra caralho? Alguns são lixos de pessoas e um pé no seu saco, mas até com esses você sente prazer em servir umas bebidas e bater um papo.
O que mais me surpreendeu na verdade é o quanto esse jogo é uma história cyberpunk mas ao mesmo tempo ele não parece uma, não dá a sensação de uma. Pra ser sincero, dá a sensação de um slice-of-life. Todas as histórias dos clientes são mundanas, banais, corriqueiras.
Uma estagiária reclamando do chefe bosta. Uma amiga programadora comentando como deu errado o último encontro dela com um peguete. Ir brincar de Verdade Ou Consequência na festa de natal da firma. Uma bombeira que gostaria de ter uma aparência mais feminina, apesar do corpo musculoso. Pessoas comuns, com dramas comuns envolvendo os respectivos empregos, estudos, vidas amorosas e sexuais, problemas de relacionamento com familiares e amigos. Inclusive o texto não tem medo de tocar em temas pesados e necessários, e o faz com muita maturidade, ao mesmo tempo que não tem medo de usar estética de anime e de rir de memes.
Tudo muito bem escrito e caprichado, principalmente quando a gente lembra que foi feito por meia dúzia de gatos pingados na Venezuela, que nem de longe é o país com mais investimento em videogames do planeta.
E essas coisas estão em meio a implantes mecânicos cibernéticos avançados, cérebros conscientes e pró-ativos guardados em potes, cachorros falantes que abrem uma empresa própria, robôs que ganharam cidadania plena e mais um monte de treco que em tese não tem espaço nenhum num slice-of-life.
Se VA-11 HALL-A tem qualquer contra-indicação, é o fato de ser uma visual novel até o talo, sem vergonha nenhuma. Você vai ler muito, mas muito, mas MUITO texto. A jogabilidade se resume a conseguir preparar as bebidas certas com os ingredientes certos, a lembrar do que cada cliente gosta, e a ter dinheiro quando chega uma conta pra pagar em débito automático.
Mas as punições são irrisórias: prepare a bebida errada e você não recebe bônus extra no fim do expediente, fique sem dinheiro pra pagar a luz e sua casa fica no escuro. É pra dar um quê de jogabilidade, pra você ter algum nível de atenção necessária, mas é só isso.
Não é um defeito, com certeza, mas é algo que pode afastar quem não curte o gênero. Ou você aceita que vai basicamente ler texto pra caralho e preparar uns drinques, e que o jogo é só isso, daí senta e relaxa e curte a partida... ou não.
Pessoalmente, eu curti pra cacete.
The fact that YIIK and Christine Love games are shilled in VA-11 Hall-A at the behest of the publisher would nominally be a terrible flaw in any other game, but in VA-11's case as a very tongue-in-cheek but incredibly sincere look at what it's like to be an everyday civilian in a cyberpunk dystopia, there's something brutally and morbidly real about this love-letter to cyberpunk's heart and soul being tainted by being forced to promote artistically hollow products.
VA-11 Hall-A is a game about knowing where home is, and how important that is in a cruel and violent world. "Comfy" is a word that gets thrown around a lot to describe it (including in the game itself, before a playthrough!) and in more ways than one there's not a better way to describe it.
VA-11 Hall-A is a game about knowing where home is, and how important that is in a cruel and violent world. "Comfy" is a word that gets thrown around a lot to describe it (including in the game itself, before a playthrough!) and in more ways than one there's not a better way to describe it.
I don’t really have any desire to talk about most of Vallhalla, it’s well known and well liked, and I don’t have much to say that hasn’t already been said. I really just want to talk about Dorothy.
Dorothy is, at least in my perception, the most controversial aspect of Vallhalla. She’s a playful, flirty, talkative sex worker who looks 13 years old, and the game explicitly says this. She is not vaguely “young”, the game tells you she looks like a child and that she gets clients who want to have sex with her because she looks like a child. She details the jobs she has had to do and talks about the kinds of fantasies her body allows people to fulfill. This very understandably makes people uncomfortable and can definitely shift how you feel about the rest of the games blatant and overt sexuality.
When I first played this game sometime around its launch in 2016, Dorothy didn’t sit right with me. Her inclusion in the game felt like a poor decision at best and a thinly veiled “fetish” at worst, and I really couldn’t settle on which of those two options I had created in my head it was. Dorothy does talk bad about her clients, she calls them gross and creepy and predatory and like, sure. If the game didn’t do this, she would just be another character people would post softcore porn of in r/animememes with captions that say shit like “I look 12 but am actually 100! Kyah!”. But like, what was being said here? What about her calling her clients predatory justified her describing their fantasies and wishes so often? If the game wanted to call lolicons freaks, then why do it this way?
At the time I didn’t really have an answer, I couldn’t justify her inclusion in the game. If she had been cut from the game entirely and replaced with a scene where someone else says that pedophiles suck it would have been preferable to me, would’ve meant I didn’t have to read about her roleplaying as people’s daughters during sex. I can’t say Dorothy was the only factor in me dropping the game as a teen, but it was part of it; I dropped it about 3/4ths of the way through.
The game stayed with me though, and I knew at some point I’d replay it and finally see it through to the end. Finally, now, as an adult in 2023 I picked it back up and finished it, and I completely see Dorothy in a new light now.
Since I had last experienced the game, two things changed that led to this shift in opinion: I transgendered and I became a sex worker. Every single day, regardless of what I do, say, post, or want, my sex work revolves around me being a girl with a penis. Every client I get, every job I do, every single piece of content I make is tied to how people feel about trans women both consciously and unconsciously. When I read Dorothys dialogue, all of this new life experience made it all click for me. I’ve dealt with weird requests, had to do jobs for clients that made me feel gross. Her dialogue about wanting to cyberpunk body upgrade to a more adult appearance but choosing not to went from feeling like a lame excuse to a lived reality. Any thoughts about bottom surgery I have, regardless of if I want it or not, are filtered through knowing that if I do choose to get the procedure, I’ll be destroying any audience I’ve managed to build for myself. Her talking about the weird jobs she’s done doesn’t read like the writer’s kinks leaking through, it reads like how I talk about the weird jobs I’ve done. I have had the thought that I overshare to friends, that I talk too much about gross shit and should just not talk about it, but when I try it fucking sucks. I need an outlet to talk about that stuff, and for me I have close friends, but Vallhalla is a game about bartending so for Dorothy it's a bartender.
Last thing I want to mention is how often Dorothys safety is talked about in game. It’s something that I basically completely overlooked when I first played as a teen, but it’s brought up a lot. She’s modified herself to have a gun built into her hands, broadcast signal jammers disguised as wearable cat ears, has had to upgrade her skin to better recover from bruises. It’s all a bit silly, all explained with sci-fi technobabble, but it made it clear to me the writers understood that a character in Dorothys position is not safe, is forced to put herself in vulnerable positions for her job.
I just wanted to write this all out because it’s something I’ve never seen discussed when people talk about Dorothy. I don’t expect it to sit right with everybody, but if you had a sense of unease preventing you from enjoying the game, I hope maybe I’ve convinced you to give it another shot. Time to mix drinks and change lives.
Dorothy is, at least in my perception, the most controversial aspect of Vallhalla. She’s a playful, flirty, talkative sex worker who looks 13 years old, and the game explicitly says this. She is not vaguely “young”, the game tells you she looks like a child and that she gets clients who want to have sex with her because she looks like a child. She details the jobs she has had to do and talks about the kinds of fantasies her body allows people to fulfill. This very understandably makes people uncomfortable and can definitely shift how you feel about the rest of the games blatant and overt sexuality.
When I first played this game sometime around its launch in 2016, Dorothy didn’t sit right with me. Her inclusion in the game felt like a poor decision at best and a thinly veiled “fetish” at worst, and I really couldn’t settle on which of those two options I had created in my head it was. Dorothy does talk bad about her clients, she calls them gross and creepy and predatory and like, sure. If the game didn’t do this, she would just be another character people would post softcore porn of in r/animememes with captions that say shit like “I look 12 but am actually 100! Kyah!”. But like, what was being said here? What about her calling her clients predatory justified her describing their fantasies and wishes so often? If the game wanted to call lolicons freaks, then why do it this way?
At the time I didn’t really have an answer, I couldn’t justify her inclusion in the game. If she had been cut from the game entirely and replaced with a scene where someone else says that pedophiles suck it would have been preferable to me, would’ve meant I didn’t have to read about her roleplaying as people’s daughters during sex. I can’t say Dorothy was the only factor in me dropping the game as a teen, but it was part of it; I dropped it about 3/4ths of the way through.
The game stayed with me though, and I knew at some point I’d replay it and finally see it through to the end. Finally, now, as an adult in 2023 I picked it back up and finished it, and I completely see Dorothy in a new light now.
Since I had last experienced the game, two things changed that led to this shift in opinion: I transgendered and I became a sex worker. Every single day, regardless of what I do, say, post, or want, my sex work revolves around me being a girl with a penis. Every client I get, every job I do, every single piece of content I make is tied to how people feel about trans women both consciously and unconsciously. When I read Dorothys dialogue, all of this new life experience made it all click for me. I’ve dealt with weird requests, had to do jobs for clients that made me feel gross. Her dialogue about wanting to cyberpunk body upgrade to a more adult appearance but choosing not to went from feeling like a lame excuse to a lived reality. Any thoughts about bottom surgery I have, regardless of if I want it or not, are filtered through knowing that if I do choose to get the procedure, I’ll be destroying any audience I’ve managed to build for myself. Her talking about the weird jobs she’s done doesn’t read like the writer’s kinks leaking through, it reads like how I talk about the weird jobs I’ve done. I have had the thought that I overshare to friends, that I talk too much about gross shit and should just not talk about it, but when I try it fucking sucks. I need an outlet to talk about that stuff, and for me I have close friends, but Vallhalla is a game about bartending so for Dorothy it's a bartender.
Last thing I want to mention is how often Dorothys safety is talked about in game. It’s something that I basically completely overlooked when I first played as a teen, but it’s brought up a lot. She’s modified herself to have a gun built into her hands, broadcast signal jammers disguised as wearable cat ears, has had to upgrade her skin to better recover from bruises. It’s all a bit silly, all explained with sci-fi technobabble, but it made it clear to me the writers understood that a character in Dorothys position is not safe, is forced to put herself in vulnerable positions for her job.
I just wanted to write this all out because it’s something I’ve never seen discussed when people talk about Dorothy. I don’t expect it to sit right with everybody, but if you had a sense of unease preventing you from enjoying the game, I hope maybe I’ve convinced you to give it another shot. Time to mix drinks and change lives.
Pretty much everything I hate about video game writing wrapped up in one package. Constant callbacks to jokes that weren't funny in the first place, out of place references to memes and pop culture, anime-esque mannerisms and personality traits, sex being brought up so frequently that things just become unbearably awkward, you name it. There are some decent nuggets of worldbuilding in here, but they're absolutely not worth weeding through the terrible dialogue to find. Speaking of the dialogue, that's all the game is. I'm sure how you prepare the drinks has an impact on the story seeing as there are multiple endings, but it sure doesn't feel like anything in the game actually responds to your decisions when you're playing, and I'm not going to sit through it again to try to find out. It offends me that this game thinks it's worthy of making multiple references to Seinfeld.
>no lesbian sex with dorothy
A game that simply gets better the longer it progresses. What starts as a game with an impeccable vibe and strong writing ends up becoming an extremely strong story about moving on. A must-play.
There’s no way I can give a VN I beat in 2 days out of sheer being engrossed anything less than 5 stars this shit is peak and so relaxing.
Never expected this to stick with me the way it did. Such a comfy little game to get lost in. There's very little to it, but there doesn't have to be.
I don’t drink. I’ve never even been to a bar, and I feel a weird sort of melancholy about it. One of mankind’s longest traditions is to come home from work and enjoy a beer or hang out with your mates at the bar, so I wish alcohol didn’t taste like paint to my immature palette. VA-11 Hall-A only made this little fear-of-missing-out worse, since it’s the perfect romantic version of the bar experience. The lights are low and moody, you get to choose which songs are playing, it’s quiet enough to understand people, and everyone there is friendly and attractive. Since chapters are separated by individual nights, and most people will be playing the game right after coming home from work or school, it ends up naturally emulating the reality it intends to portray, with nights in game corresponding to your nights in real life. These qualities make for a game that feels weirdly comfortable, it's just a nice visual novel with some fun characters and a great atmosphere that you can sink into like a lounge chair. I think there’s a lot of potential for games to build off the knowledge of their audience like this and create relaxing experiences, and this an interesting pioneering of the concept. On the other hand, maybe the real thing would always be better, but until my taste in alcohol is as unimpeachable as my taste in games, I’ll just keep enjoying VA-11 Hall-A.
“Here, brutality in all its forms is an everyday reality. The quality of life for the non-powerful decreases at an alarming rate. For many, this can be overwhelming. Some devote themselves to their jobs, their families, or even their studies. Some look for ways to escape this place, and others… just give up. But for many, the answer lies at the bottom of a glass.”
There’s something especially bittersweet about playing VA-11 Hall-A. The often gloomy setting shows its wear on even the most upbeat of the game’s characters, but they continue to do the best they can to live and find enjoyment in the world they were born into. Their reality is harsh yet I can’t really say that it seems particularly beyond belief (the most implausible thing in the game is YIIK becoming a beloved classic), and many of us among the non-powerful of today’s world are able to find kindred spirits in these characters just trying to get by the same as us. It’s a game that appeals most to adults dealing with similar amounts of regret, sexual frustration, anxiety, and a lack of purpose, which in many ways makes this game a breath of fresh air.
Jill Stingray is also the perfect protagonist for this type of story, being incredibly down-to-earth with her bad habits and odd quirks while doing a mostly good job at talking to people and working them through their problems. She doesn’t have any major reason for being where she is, it’s just where she happened to end up, and many decisions could have led her somewhere else. The closest this game really comes to having a main plot revolves around her past and the resolution she finds as she confronts it, even if it’s too late to truly fix everything. She embodies what makes much of early adulthood so confusing, and why connecting with people in an otherwise uncaring world helps to bring out the best in oneself and make life more meaningful through looking out for one another.
VA-11 Hall-A succeeds at delivering a thoughtful, relaxing experience that’s perfect for easing off the stress of a long day. Perhaps it’s the uniqueness of the setting paired with the music and overall tone of the game, but it creates a vibe that is simply unmatched—a feeling not unlike the romanticized vision of going to a bar to forget your worries. At no point does it drag, and the less focused approach to the story allows for the coming and going of many characters who we’ll never see the complete picture of, but rather hear a little bit about the world from their perspective. While this keeps things fresh, the game’s heart really shines through the handful of characters with whom Jill has the closest relationships with. What this all creates is a nice little slice-of-life story with a pessimistic setting contrasted by an optimistic message, and I think that’s largely why it resonates with me so much.
There’s something especially bittersweet about playing VA-11 Hall-A. The often gloomy setting shows its wear on even the most upbeat of the game’s characters, but they continue to do the best they can to live and find enjoyment in the world they were born into. Their reality is harsh yet I can’t really say that it seems particularly beyond belief (the most implausible thing in the game is YIIK becoming a beloved classic), and many of us among the non-powerful of today’s world are able to find kindred spirits in these characters just trying to get by the same as us. It’s a game that appeals most to adults dealing with similar amounts of regret, sexual frustration, anxiety, and a lack of purpose, which in many ways makes this game a breath of fresh air.
Jill Stingray is also the perfect protagonist for this type of story, being incredibly down-to-earth with her bad habits and odd quirks while doing a mostly good job at talking to people and working them through their problems. She doesn’t have any major reason for being where she is, it’s just where she happened to end up, and many decisions could have led her somewhere else. The closest this game really comes to having a main plot revolves around her past and the resolution she finds as she confronts it, even if it’s too late to truly fix everything. She embodies what makes much of early adulthood so confusing, and why connecting with people in an otherwise uncaring world helps to bring out the best in oneself and make life more meaningful through looking out for one another.
VA-11 Hall-A succeeds at delivering a thoughtful, relaxing experience that’s perfect for easing off the stress of a long day. Perhaps it’s the uniqueness of the setting paired with the music and overall tone of the game, but it creates a vibe that is simply unmatched—a feeling not unlike the romanticized vision of going to a bar to forget your worries. At no point does it drag, and the less focused approach to the story allows for the coming and going of many characters who we’ll never see the complete picture of, but rather hear a little bit about the world from their perspective. While this keeps things fresh, the game’s heart really shines through the handful of characters with whom Jill has the closest relationships with. What this all creates is a nice little slice-of-life story with a pessimistic setting contrasted by an optimistic message, and I think that’s largely why it resonates with me so much.
Não esperava o impacto que me causou.
Mesmo sendo uma visual novel, ele tem um gameplay interessante mesmo que seja bem simples, você não escolher os diálogos pra progredir na história e sim fazer as bebidas e as bebidas que você faz mudarem os diálogos, além do jogo deixar você mesmo selecionar as músicas pra tocar e ser a trilha sonora, escolhendo o mood das músicas.
Mas é óbvio que a parte mais importante é a história, e ela é linda. O jogo se passa numa distopia capitalista, em um mundo controlado por corporações e que comandam uma polícia opressora com os civis, e o bar é um descanso pras pessoas em meio ao caos desse mundo, problemas cotidianos, de relações, trabalho, sexuais, familiares, muitos desses problemas sendo frutos desse sistema onde eles vivem, mas em meio a tudo isso, existe esperança, o tema central desse jogo. As pessoas tentando seguir em frente, porquê eles tem um ao outro, eles não conseguem mudar esse mundo, mas eles conseguem mudar a si mesmos e aproveitar a vida com quem o que elas tem e quem elas tem, não é sobre submissão, é sobre ter paz interior em mundo colapsando. Uma abordagem mundana de distopia, contrária a maioria das obras desse tema.
A própria sensação de jogar o jogo se encaixa no seu tema, é um jogo relaxante, confortante, assim como o bar é para os clientes, mesmo você as vezes atendendo pessoas horríveis, é interessante ver elas sendo elas mesmas e o que elas tem a dizer, sempre que eu ia jogar eu me sentia confortada, um conforto que eu senti com pouquíssimas obras. Os personagens são pessoas normais, buscando significado pessoal, ao invés de heróis e salvar o mundo, e isso faz eles serem tão relacionaveis, você consegue se identificar com eles, o jogo captura muito bem o sentimento de estar na casa dos 20 poucos anos, o sentimento de não saber o que fazer, não ter certezas ou muitas perspectivas, o dilema de escolher algo para se dedicar a vida, ser útil nos moldes do sistema capitalista e gerar lucro, ou simplesmente ser você e ter liberdade, fazer algo real pra você.
Esse jogo é sobre ser humano (mesmo com os personagens robôs, eles passam a mensagem), sobre se perdoar, não se prender a erros passados pra se punir e impedir de aproveitar o presente, não se prender no futuro, simplesmente aproveitar o agora e fazermos o que podemos.
Mesmo sendo uma visual novel, ele tem um gameplay interessante mesmo que seja bem simples, você não escolher os diálogos pra progredir na história e sim fazer as bebidas e as bebidas que você faz mudarem os diálogos, além do jogo deixar você mesmo selecionar as músicas pra tocar e ser a trilha sonora, escolhendo o mood das músicas.
Mas é óbvio que a parte mais importante é a história, e ela é linda. O jogo se passa numa distopia capitalista, em um mundo controlado por corporações e que comandam uma polícia opressora com os civis, e o bar é um descanso pras pessoas em meio ao caos desse mundo, problemas cotidianos, de relações, trabalho, sexuais, familiares, muitos desses problemas sendo frutos desse sistema onde eles vivem, mas em meio a tudo isso, existe esperança, o tema central desse jogo. As pessoas tentando seguir em frente, porquê eles tem um ao outro, eles não conseguem mudar esse mundo, mas eles conseguem mudar a si mesmos e aproveitar a vida com quem o que elas tem e quem elas tem, não é sobre submissão, é sobre ter paz interior em mundo colapsando. Uma abordagem mundana de distopia, contrária a maioria das obras desse tema.
A própria sensação de jogar o jogo se encaixa no seu tema, é um jogo relaxante, confortante, assim como o bar é para os clientes, mesmo você as vezes atendendo pessoas horríveis, é interessante ver elas sendo elas mesmas e o que elas tem a dizer, sempre que eu ia jogar eu me sentia confortada, um conforto que eu senti com pouquíssimas obras. Os personagens são pessoas normais, buscando significado pessoal, ao invés de heróis e salvar o mundo, e isso faz eles serem tão relacionaveis, você consegue se identificar com eles, o jogo captura muito bem o sentimento de estar na casa dos 20 poucos anos, o sentimento de não saber o que fazer, não ter certezas ou muitas perspectivas, o dilema de escolher algo para se dedicar a vida, ser útil nos moldes do sistema capitalista e gerar lucro, ou simplesmente ser você e ter liberdade, fazer algo real pra você.
Esse jogo é sobre ser humano (mesmo com os personagens robôs, eles passam a mensagem), sobre se perdoar, não se prender a erros passados pra se punir e impedir de aproveitar o presente, não se prender no futuro, simplesmente aproveitar o agora e fazermos o que podemos.
One of my favourite shows is an anthology drama series called midnight diner.
Its about a small hole in the wall, and each episode is about a regular who frequents the place, telling their story to the chef of the diner. What goes on in their lives in that specific period of time, and then it ends. There's no big event, no epilogue, no closure or clear definitive end to the story. Just a few days in a person's life, and then the story ends, usually with the customer's favourite dish being shown. Not much happens.
And it's brilliant.
Vallhalla reminded me of midnight diner. Which is probably why it's one of my favourite games I've played all year.
Vallhalla is about the last few days before a bar's closure, Jill's interactions with her regular customers and the lives they live in glitch city, a cyberpunk shithole. But just through these interactions, the place feels lived in.
You're thrown straight into the middle of Jill's life, with no context and information, but it's easy to gain your bearings when the world building is as strong as it is in vallhalla.
Every character's visit was something I was looking forward to, my personal favourite being the head writer of a local newspaper. The events going on in their lives never failed to entertain, mundane or otherwise.
The snappy writing and distinct character design makes the 12 hour runtime of this bartender simulator feel short, and I'm excited to see what the developers of this game have in store for the sequel.
The drinks are crappy, the location is awful, the place makes no money, and it smells like dog piss.
Time to mix drinks and change lives.
Its about a small hole in the wall, and each episode is about a regular who frequents the place, telling their story to the chef of the diner. What goes on in their lives in that specific period of time, and then it ends. There's no big event, no epilogue, no closure or clear definitive end to the story. Just a few days in a person's life, and then the story ends, usually with the customer's favourite dish being shown. Not much happens.
And it's brilliant.
Vallhalla reminded me of midnight diner. Which is probably why it's one of my favourite games I've played all year.
Vallhalla is about the last few days before a bar's closure, Jill's interactions with her regular customers and the lives they live in glitch city, a cyberpunk shithole. But just through these interactions, the place feels lived in.
You're thrown straight into the middle of Jill's life, with no context and information, but it's easy to gain your bearings when the world building is as strong as it is in vallhalla.
Every character's visit was something I was looking forward to, my personal favourite being the head writer of a local newspaper. The events going on in their lives never failed to entertain, mundane or otherwise.
The snappy writing and distinct character design makes the 12 hour runtime of this bartender simulator feel short, and I'm excited to see what the developers of this game have in store for the sequel.
The drinks are crappy, the location is awful, the place makes no money, and it smells like dog piss.
Time to mix drinks and change lives.
To beat a game and get the bad ending, yet still give it a rating of 5/5 is high praise.
There's not much to VA-11 HALL-A, it's a visual novel where you serve drinks to customers, but it feels much more than just a visual novel. Learning all the characters stories, what drinks they like, along with making decisions on what to do with the money you earn (which I was great with, apart from the $50~ I was short to pay rent to get the good ending) makes for a great experience and definitely a unique one at that.
But it's the music that carries the whole experience. You can choose what songs you want to listen to at the bar, and it elevates the whole game to a new level. It's hard to explain why a game this simple is so good, but I guess it just feels fresh, and that's what makes it so enjoyable. A must play.
There's not much to VA-11 HALL-A, it's a visual novel where you serve drinks to customers, but it feels much more than just a visual novel. Learning all the characters stories, what drinks they like, along with making decisions on what to do with the money you earn (which I was great with, apart from the $50~ I was short to pay rent to get the good ending) makes for a great experience and definitely a unique one at that.
But it's the music that carries the whole experience. You can choose what songs you want to listen to at the bar, and it elevates the whole game to a new level. It's hard to explain why a game this simple is so good, but I guess it just feels fresh, and that's what makes it so enjoyable. A must play.
VA-11 Hall-A: Cyberpunk Bartender Action is like mixing the perfect cocktail of cyberpunk vibes and bartender banter. It's the only game where you can save the world one drink at a time, all while listening to your customers' wild stories. Just remember: in this world, the drinks are strong, but the conversation is stronger! Probably not the only game but-