Coffee Talk Review

The gameplay is incredibly simple. It’s a basic visual novel, and all you really do is read the dialogue from yourself and the various characters you interact with. The unique piece with Coffee Talk is that in addition to talking to the characters, you have to make them drinks. You are able to mix ingredients together and create different types of coffee, tea, hot chocolate, and other drinks. It’s pretty fun to experiment with all of the ingredients (you get access to more as the game goes along) and figure out how to make each kind of drink and fulfill the requests of your customers. The game's title pretty much explains everything. You make coffee and you talk.

The story is also pretty simple. As the coffee shop owner, you have to listen to the stories and problems of all the people and monsters who come into the shop. Patrons come and go, but the one constant is Freya, a girl who works for the local newspaper and has dreams of writing her own novel. She decides to write about the happenings in the coffee shop, so she is there pretty much every night observing, writing, and talking to people. Overall, I enjoyed playing through the game and seeing how the characters’ lives progressed. Coffee Talk is a pretty short game, with the main story taking around 4.5 hours to finish. Although it is short and not overly complicated, it has a lot of charm, quality visuals, and a very calm and relaxing soundtrack. I’d definitely recommend playing it, especially if you can get it on sale. I got it for $6.49 on the Switch, which is a very good platform to play it on. The ability to save and resume from any point in the game makes it a great handheld game.