Necrobarista
Released: July 22, 2020
Game Length: 3 Hours
Grade: D
Expectations: There was an article that came out that mentioned about this awesome "mystery" game that made you feel like a detective, trying to put the pieces of a story together inside a cafe that provides services for both the living and dead. As much as it gave me a Phoenix Wright feeling, the extremely short game length suggested some sort of one-off story. Does the game have any gameplay?
Reality: Unfortunately, there is barely any gameplay involved. What I thought was going to be some sort of interactive game turned into a very bad Anime visual novel. I guess I should have paid closer attention to the game description on the store front. You get introduced to a series of overly-dramatic characters who are all trying to push-the-envelope in some risky endeavors. The game doesn't stop short in the adult categories area either when you have a young girl throwing knives at people for fun, a stressed-out bartender who is not afraid to use her foul language at everyone she encounters, and a by-the-books enforcer that somehow doesn't follow his own rules. The only customers you will see entail a gay guy who smokes and is not afraid to play some dangerous games, a couple of teenagers who don't really contribute to the story in any way, and some sort of risque bounty hunter that chases after supernatural beings. Not only does the game psyche you out with a "let's start this story with a trailer to our season finale" but also includes a very necessary conclusion after the unskippable credits. If that wasn't Anime enough, they include their very own pop-culture introduction and even go the route of Ghost in the Shell by adding small interludes between the chapters with three tiny robot friends chatting about the chapter you watched.
Interactions: Most of the time, all you will be doing is clicking your mouse button to advance the story. The characters barely move and you will see where the lack of budget affects things like water animations, fully-designed customers that are not just a hazy silhouette, and anything outside the actual cafe. Though I guess there is only so much they can do for a game that sells for $20. There will be times when a word will be highlighted yellow. You might think this is a way for people to learn the literal definition of a specific term. On the contrary, this actually brings up a subtle reference to the characters and a hint to which 7 phrases you might need to pick up at the end of the chapter to unlock bonus material in and around the cafe. I had a hard time with this since I wasn't able to collect the appropriate words to unlock about half of them. Since Route 59 Games is located in Australia, you will be getting some obscure culture references from down there as well. I also had to turn the game's volume down a couple notches before starting.
Opinion: I would have given the game the benefit of the doubt for being the complete opposite of what I expected if the story was any good. Honestly, I felt like the game was this big, giant narration explaining how things work when, all the meantime, subverting those very rules and ending the game on some dramatically-long emotion roller coaster. I somehow felt dumber after experiencing the whole thing. Even Death Parade was more entertaining than this. My only reward was finally knowing what the game was truly about after months of wondering.
11-15-2020