InBest Served Cold, you’re a bartender working at an illegal speakeasy in alternate history Europe. Roped into aiding a cop with his criminal investigation, your job is to get your customers drunk so they spill their secrets. You collect clues, piece the mystery together, and figure out who the culprit is over the course of five different cases, saving lives and keeping your illicit business open all the while.
In practice, this is a fairly straightforward process. You make drinks for your customers and ask them questions about themselves or the case you’re investigating. They may reveal clues to you, which will pop into your notebook, and you’re able to present said clues to other characters for their thoughts.
Other investigators, like the police officer you collaborate with or a private investigator you’ll meet later on, act as hint suppliers, pointing you in the right direction.
At the end of each day, you return to your clue board where you can draw links between different clues to create new ones or come to conclusions. To have enough information to convict a suspect, you need to identify a means and a motive. To rule them out, you need to find a solid defense, whether that be an alibi or another character willing to testify on their behalf. In almost every case, the killer is a customer. You might suspect them immediately, or the culprit might surprise you entirely.
The clue board is very easily brute forced, as is clue finding. If you’re stuck, just show every clue to every customer, and connect every clue with every other clue. Ask every possible question. Deduction is satisfying, but not strictly necessary, which detracts from the strength of Best Served Cold’s gameplay.
Pick Drinks, Make Drinks, Serve Drinks
Despite your job description, there isn’t all that much actual drink-making in this game. To make a beverage, you play a fairly simple minigame where you trace a symbol matching the name of a cocktail you’re mixing. Each cocktail will add a certain number of actions to the character you’re speaking to, which in turn gives you more or less time to show them evidence or ask questions.
Making a customer their favourite drink will improve your relationship and put them in a good mood, perhaps making them more amenable to answering certain questions. Or you may intentionally ruin their drink, putting them in a bad mood, which may make them more likely to rant about something weighing heavy on them. Characters may need to reach a certain level of inebriation before they’re willing to open up. All of this is marked with icons next to dialogue options, and it’s up to you to manipulate them with your craft to get the information you need.
Your menu changes between cases due to liquor availability, which means your customers’ favourite drinks may get taken off the menu, forcing you to find a new one.
There isn’t all that much strategy to this aspect of the gameplay, unfortunately. Once you discover a customer’s favourite drink, there’s very little reason to serve them anything apart from that drink unless you need them to meet a specific condition to answer a question. Trying to work out a customer’s favourite drink can be fun, if made challenging enough, but itisn’talways challenging.
As a visual novel, Best Served Cold is a fairly simple one. The dialogue isn’t very reactive – characters often seem to ‘forget’ information you’ve revealed to them and act as if earlier events never happened. One clue I discovered was attributed to a conversation I hadn’t had yet.
Some dialogue can also be redone, diluting the significance of some choices, especially pertaining to my own character’s characterisation.
A Story Worth Playing For
But if you’re able to look past this fairly basic gameplay, it otherwise shines in its writing. The worldbuilding is solid and compelling – Best Served Cold’s setting is one in crisis, on the verge of war, full of wealth inequality, political corruption, and violence. The customers you serve may be rich people trapped in their own bubbles, or working class citizens just trying to get by, or immigrants looking for a better life, or even criminals.
Each of them is colourful, unique, and layered, with their own secrets and baggage. Many of them were terrified of the future in ways that feel incredibly timely. There is much to be afraid of in our world, and in Best Served Cold’s. Many of them become angry, but some, with your help, learn to find hope in the face of horror and unrest.
What makes the game really work is how each case flows into the next. Characters you meet in the first chapter may continue returning to the bar, updating you about how their lives have changed, turning to you to help them cope with their grief. Customers you may have written off as one-dimensional grow and change over time, revealing sides of themselves you never expected you’d see. People who didn’t have anything to do with your case may become unexpectedly helpful later.
I found myself surprisingly endeared to each of these characters by the end – Iwantedthem to find their way through the horrible, difficult times they were facing. Even when they did terrible things to each other and themselves, I saw them as multifaceted, aggrieved people responding to the danger they felt, instead of as villains or heroes. That’s a testament to good character writing.
It helps that Best Served Cold is also lovely to look at. Its cutscenes are wonderfully animated and voice acted, the bar is beautifully illustrated, and the UI fits in perfectly with its setting.
Best Served Cold doesn’t revolutionise the genre, but it does tell an incredibly compelling story about class, power, and people desperately trying to find their way in a world that’s not that different from our own. It’s not perfect, but it’s valuable nonetheless.
Reviewed on PC.
WHERE TO PLAY
In an alternate history Europe, “The Nightcap” is the last speakeasy in town, and you’re pouring the drinks… while your customers spill their secrets. Mix and serve cocktails with a twist, as you become a detective while trying to save your bar.Listen to your clienteles’ stories and learn about their lives as you unravel a mystery that touches every layer of Bukovie society, from the drunken dandies splashing cash on cocktails, to the crooked cops and seedy lowlifes who try to rope you into their shady schemes.A good bartender knows the art of conversation is just as important as the ability to pour libations, so listen carefully and keep your wits about you as you delight, charm or even threaten your patrons to get the information you need. With a cast of 22 unique and engaging characters it’s up to you to choose who you can trust, who will have your back… and who will stab you in it!Over the course of five cases, you’ll have to explore every clue and question every suspect to save lives… and save your business. It’s time to flip that sign to open, turn up the jazz and welcome your first customers of the night.Bukovie may be a city in strife, with labour strikes, rationing, unrest and the shadow of war looming, but instead of cowering in fear, the citizens flock to dance halls and speakeasies. Crumbling grandeur might inspire melancholy, but that’s nothing a stiff drink won’t cure.In a world of dwindling light, your speakeasy is a bonfire in the night. Though the city may soon burn, cocktails are always…Best Served Cold.
