The comparisons to VA-11 Hall-A are so obvious that the game seems to lampshade them itself in the first few days. In order to evaluate this game properly on its own merits, I will not reference VA-11 Hall-A again for the rest of this review.

This game has a really compelling visual style. It has a core mechanic that is subtle enough for the game to be a visual novel yet rich enough to allow the player to make meaningful choice through it. And it completely fails to create a story worthy of either of those. In fact it is so desperate to find a story to tell that it contorts itself into a story about storytelling, and not in the good way. The main character (excluding the player's Barista, who is not a character) is a writer. Two other regular clients are video game developers. The writers of the game have nothing to say about writing or game development; it just seems to be the only thing they can relate to.

And even that must have been a sprint across the finish line, because the characters are as shallow as they are vague. I have no problem with short games or simple games, check out all those kinetic novels on my profile, but the allusion to a depth that isn't there is profoundly underwhelming. Earlier when I said the player can make choices through the gameplay? By my count that is relevant exactly once. The only other attempts at longevity are a challenge mode with frustratingly broken English (developer Toge Productions is based in Indonesia) and an achievement for sitting on a certain screen for an hour because of course. As far as I can tell I saw everything there is to see by the end of my second playthrough.

BUT! I did play through it twice! Which brings me to maybe the main tragedy of this game. In the epilogue it teases a new revelation that I won't spoil which encourages a second playthrough. And makes the second playthrough more interesting. And then.... that's it. What in my opinion is the obvious hook for an exponentially more compelling narrative is actually little more than an easter egg. Toge currently has a game in Steam's summer free demo expo, A Space for the Unbound, which suffers from a similar problem and makes me worry it will be a trend with this developer. They can create characters, they can worldbuild, and they don't have confidence to see it through. They line up their dominos, knock the first one over the wrong way and give up. Whereas the individual customers are expressions of the worldbuilding and overarching plot in VA-11 Hall-A, this game fails because it trie- oh god dammit.

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Miscellaneous other things I forgot to mention when I posted this yesterday:

I found at least 2 moments when you can get a reaction from a customer by serving them the wrong drink, but only the 1 seems to have an effect on the story.

Between the portrayal of the police and the mysterious virus C-plot, I picked either the best or worst time to play this.

The soundtrack SLAPS.

I'm not totally sure yet but I think the subplot about the elf and succubus dating in secret is an allegory for racism?

Una visual novel sencillita pero con personajes muy simpáticos y con un girito al final que no me esperaba para nada.

Muy en la línea de VA-11 Hall-A pero más calmado y ambientado en un mundo como el nuestro pero en el que también viven criaturas mágicas.

Jugablemente no tiene mucha chicha porque es básicamente solo preparar bebidas, pero los diálogos son estupendos y eso es lo verdaderamente importante en un juego como este.

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A simple visual novel with very nice characters and a twist at the end I didn't expect at all.

Quite similar to VA-11 Hall-A but more chill and set in a world like ours but inhabited by magical creatures.

Gameplay-wise it's not very deep because it's basically just serving drinks, but the dialogues are great and that's what really matters in a game like this.

Both a compliment and a complaint, but I wish we just had more. I know the limited pov is the whole point, but I thought the world and the characters were so fascinating that as they were tying up loose ends I thought to myself, "oh so this is about to end already?" For example, one of my fave parts was reading the newspaper headlines every day because it was fun learning about stuff beyond the coffee shop. Also, I appreciate that it tried to talk about timely topics, but these discussions didn't feel well-written enough to have real impact on me as a viewer. It was nice but barely thought-provoking.

Otherwise, I thought this was generally a super cozy, cute and chill game. I've never played that valhalla game so I have nothing to compare it to either. I'd play it again to revisit these characters and bask in lo-fi music and rain sounds tbh

Very chill narrative experience. Mechanically the game feels fair, giving you enough information to be able to work out what a character wants without making it completely obvious, and a little room to experiment or try again if you think you got it wrong.

The narrative is pretty laid back, the drama mostly coming from the personal lives of the characters. The world seems fairly well imagined and fleshed out, with the exception of a couple of very weird elements that stand out even compared to the rest of the setting. I'm not 100% complaining here as my favourite character is one of those incongruous elements.

At points the story touches upon some subjects such as using the private lives of real people as subject matter and the translation of racial issues to fictional worlds and never really follows up on either of these topics, despite seeming to indicate that it will.

Finally there is a late game revelation that comes out of nowhere and doesn't really seem to impact the narrative or otherwise serve any real purpose. It doesn't spoil the story or my enjoyment of it, it just seems like poor utilization of a concept i've seen used well elsewhere.