the character writing literally altered my brain chemistry. obsessed. and not just bc i'm obsessed w murder mysteries and 1920s aesthetic. it's also bc i'm gay as hell and i think this was made in a lab for me.
the character writing literally altered my brain chemistry. obsessed. and not just bc i'm obsessed w murder mysteries and 1920s aesthetic. it's also bc i'm gay as hell and i think this was made in a lab for me.
The game is great, but it doesn't limit the frame rate by default. After playing for a few hours, my GPU overheated from running at 1200 fps, causing my PC to reboot. I eventually enabled V-sync to cap the frame rate to my monitor's refresh rate. Hopefully, this gets addressed in future updates.
stay away.
very meh.
in addition: the creator is a crazy zealous progressive. they tried to be subtle, but this terrible game shows it a lot.
minor spoiler to prove it:
the first murderer is the wet dream scenario of a zealous progressive. the creator pulled 0 punches and had little subtlety. its a white, straight male... who has conservative values... murders a woman because he tried to court her, she rejected him and publicly embarassed him... he was too scared (its implied) of her to murder her face on so he stabbed her from behind with a poison syringe to watch her suffer
there are many more proofs but thats the easiest.
this game looks like it might be building up to something interesting for about 45 min. and it turns to be not even interesting.
Another "Detective" game with exactly the same problem as "Murder by Numbers". Look - I am not inherently against people writing plots based on fashionable Postmodernist progressive stack theory, but it is blatantly NOT going to be a particularly compelling mystery game if you can immediately eliminate every single minority group from the guilty suspects list and this coincidentally inevitably happens to be up to three out of the four options or the guilty one is evidently the suspect with the most straw-man right wing portrayal.
This happens repeatedly while you drag yourself through boxes and boxes of dialogue of badly written female solidarity propaganda by a Gen-Z writer who evidently has never read the work of bell hooks, Greer or Camille Paglia nor any "feminist" more intellectually rigorous than Taylor Swift.
This is supposed to be a deductive reasoning genre, not an exercise in the Frankfurt School of Jurisprudence.
Pretty interesting game. I am not good with detective games at all, but this one was entertaining. I think it dragged on a bit long for me, and I didn’t solve a single case (hence why I’m not a detective), but it was still enticing.
Probably one of the most immersive and character driven mystery games I've ever played. Also I just fell in love with Peter Wagner oh my god. As someone who loves to figure out a good mystery, having five cases to solve in a single game was great! Usually, there's just one. This gives room to get to know the patrons of the Nightcap in Bukovie over the course of time, which lends the player a certain attachment to them. The only thing I would really change to make this experience better is that I wish there was a longer epilogue after Case 4. The bartender entertains many threads throughout the game about what they're like, what they might do after all this chaos is over, even potentially following threads of romance with certain patrons if their affection is high enough (shamelessly side eyeing our favorite little babygirl loan collector). It would have been nice to have one final conversation with that romanceable or close friendship character after the case is over, maybe after the conversation with Mertens about whether the player wants to keep being a detective or not. I found the ending of Case 4 solid, but the ending of the actual full game as a bit too abrupt. It would have been nice to see little epilogue cards of what the other characters are doing now in a credits roll too, not just the bartender. I just got really attached to everyone which is a testament to the stellar character writing and worldbuilding of this game. It's one of the best I've ever played. :))
As a fan of Coffee Talk, the general game composition interested me - mixing drinks, talking to customers and learning their stories. I was then further lured in by the 1920's and Russian inspired world and setting, which one could loosely liken to Papers Please or Beholder. With multiple murder mysteries touching on the setting's politics, betrayals between characters you'd gotten to know, discovery of hidden motives and common human fallacies, I am completely hooked on this game. While giving me a sense of comforting familiarity due to possible inspirations drawn from aforementioned games, Best Served Cold is a creative and unique game that is well worth a play through. I saw another review recommend difficulty modes, I think this would be an amazing addition as well as perhaps an additional game mode. Amazing work on this game, excited to see what more can happen with it, but very enjoyable as is :)
To summarize without spoil, Dont buy it. The plot take an "interesting" turn i dont think many people would enjoy it.
And with spoil. The detective who outsourced his detective work to you, will arrest you at the end of the first chapter. "the law is the law", it is to a point of amusement, you dont have any ground to talk about law while you selectively enforce the law and bend it to your benefit. Textbook definition of blackmail.
Regardless, player is as a faceless bartender who do not even deserve a name. No hard feeling about the arrest, you will play a new faceless bartender in the next chapter. Just throw away the first one, like used plastic bag. And next chapter? No interest to find out, i am not in a habit of being blackmailed, not to mention twice (yes the detective will blackmail you to do his work again in the next chapter), or more? quite a few chapters left, and it is beyond me to grasp the vast wisdom of the developer nor their fondness of blackmail.
After a not so sound sleep, i cooled down a little. Perhaps i didnt give the game enough credit. There is no doubt, the game has quality. Nice drawing, nice soundtrack, nice writing even. And the characters, have character, not faceless (bartender not included) NPCs indifference from one and another. It is a rare quality these days.
But still, i really don't appreciate to be blackmailed by a "detective" who think he is on the right side of the law. He clearly violated Hobbs Act, and should plead guilty accordingly. Of course, game world, game laws, but it does not make his blackmail more comfortable.
I really like this game, although I'm not sure I'm good at it! Still on the first case and about a week into questioning and I feel like I'm going in circles. I'll look online and see if there's a strategy guide because I'm apparently not the smoothest talker! Really love the vibe, the graphics, the flow of play. This is the perfect cozy mystery I've been waiting for.
Reviewing after solving the first two cases - I'm really enjoying the game! It's got a solid detective mechanic and the characters are fun to interact with, which makes the occasionally grindy element of grilling everyone on every piece of info until you find the next clue more enjoyable than tedious.
The aesthetic is excellent and cohesive and I love the ambient music.
Can't wait to finish up the last few cases - unfortunately there's only so many hours in the day...
the character writing literally altered my brain chemistry. obsessed. and not just bc i'm obsessed w murder mysteries and 1920s aesthetic. it's also bc i'm gay as hell and i think this was made in a lab for me.
the character writing literally altered my brain chemistry. obsessed. and not just bc i'm obsessed w murder mysteries and 1920s aesthetic. it's also bc i'm gay as hell and i think this was made in a lab for me.
The game is great, but it doesn't limit the frame rate by default. After playing for a few hours, my GPU overheated from running at 1200 fps, causing my PC to reboot. I eventually enabled V-sync to cap the frame rate to my monitor's refresh rate. Hopefully, this gets addressed in future updates.
stay away.
very meh.
in addition: the creator is a crazy zealous progressive. they tried to be subtle, but this terrible game shows it a lot.
minor spoiler to prove it:
the first murderer is the wet dream scenario of a zealous progressive. the creator pulled 0 punches and had little subtlety. its a white, straight male... who has conservative values... murders a woman because he tried to court her, she rejected him and publicly embarassed him... he was too scared (its implied) of her to murder her face on so he stabbed her from behind with a poison syringe to watch her suffer
there are many more proofs but thats the easiest.
this game looks like it might be building up to something interesting for about 45 min. and it turns to be not even interesting.
Another "Detective" game with exactly the same problem as "Murder by Numbers". Look - I am not inherently against people writing plots based on fashionable Postmodernist progressive stack theory, but it is blatantly NOT going to be a particularly compelling mystery game if you can immediately eliminate every single minority group from the guilty suspects list and this coincidentally inevitably happens to be up to three out of the four options or the guilty one is evidently the suspect with the most straw-man right wing portrayal.
This happens repeatedly while you drag yourself through boxes and boxes of dialogue of badly written female solidarity propaganda by a Gen-Z writer who evidently has never read the work of bell hooks, Greer or Camille Paglia nor any "feminist" more intellectually rigorous than Taylor Swift.
This is supposed to be a deductive reasoning genre, not an exercise in the Frankfurt School of Jurisprudence.
Pretty interesting game. I am not good with detective games at all, but this one was entertaining. I think it dragged on a bit long for me, and I didn’t solve a single case (hence why I’m not a detective), but it was still enticing.
Probably one of the most immersive and character driven mystery games I've ever played. Also I just fell in love with Peter Wagner oh my god. As someone who loves to figure out a good mystery, having five cases to solve in a single game was great! Usually, there's just one. This gives room to get to know the patrons of the Nightcap in Bukovie over the course of time, which lends the player a certain attachment to them. The only thing I would really change to make this experience better is that I wish there was a longer epilogue after Case 4. The bartender entertains many threads throughout the game about what they're like, what they might do after all this chaos is over, even potentially following threads of romance with certain patrons if their affection is high enough (shamelessly side eyeing our favorite little babygirl loan collector). It would have been nice to have one final conversation with that romanceable or close friendship character after the case is over, maybe after the conversation with Mertens about whether the player wants to keep being a detective or not. I found the ending of Case 4 solid, but the ending of the actual full game as a bit too abrupt. It would have been nice to see little epilogue cards of what the other characters are doing now in a credits roll too, not just the bartender. I just got really attached to everyone which is a testament to the stellar character writing and worldbuilding of this game. It's one of the best I've ever played. :))
As a fan of Coffee Talk, the general game composition interested me - mixing drinks, talking to customers and learning their stories. I was then further lured in by the 1920's and Russian inspired world and setting, which one could loosely liken to Papers Please or Beholder. With multiple murder mysteries touching on the setting's politics, betrayals between characters you'd gotten to know, discovery of hidden motives and common human fallacies, I am completely hooked on this game. While giving me a sense of comforting familiarity due to possible inspirations drawn from aforementioned games, Best Served Cold is a creative and unique game that is well worth a play through. I saw another review recommend difficulty modes, I think this would be an amazing addition as well as perhaps an additional game mode. Amazing work on this game, excited to see what more can happen with it, but very enjoyable as is :)
To summarize without spoil, Dont buy it. The plot take an "interesting" turn i dont think many people would enjoy it.
And with spoil. The detective who outsourced his detective work to you, will arrest you at the end of the first chapter. "the law is the law", it is to a point of amusement, you dont have any ground to talk about law while you selectively enforce the law and bend it to your benefit. Textbook definition of blackmail.
Regardless, player is as a faceless bartender who do not even deserve a name. No hard feeling about the arrest, you will play a new faceless bartender in the next chapter. Just throw away the first one, like used plastic bag. And next chapter? No interest to find out, i am not in a habit of being blackmailed, not to mention twice (yes the detective will blackmail you to do his work again in the next chapter), or more? quite a few chapters left, and it is beyond me to grasp the vast wisdom of the developer nor their fondness of blackmail.
After a not so sound sleep, i cooled down a little. Perhaps i didnt give the game enough credit. There is no doubt, the game has quality. Nice drawing, nice soundtrack, nice writing even. And the characters, have character, not faceless (bartender not included) NPCs indifference from one and another. It is a rare quality these days.
But still, i really don't appreciate to be blackmailed by a "detective" who think he is on the right side of the law. He clearly violated Hobbs Act, and should plead guilty accordingly. Of course, game world, game laws, but it does not make his blackmail more comfortable.
I really like this game, although I'm not sure I'm good at it! Still on the first case and about a week into questioning and I feel like I'm going in circles. I'll look online and see if there's a strategy guide because I'm apparently not the smoothest talker! Really love the vibe, the graphics, the flow of play. This is the perfect cozy mystery I've been waiting for.
Reviewing after solving the first two cases - I'm really enjoying the game! It's got a solid detective mechanic and the characters are fun to interact with, which makes the occasionally grindy element of grilling everyone on every piece of info until you find the next clue more enjoyable than tedious.
The aesthetic is excellent and cohesive and I love the ambient music.
Can't wait to finish up the last few cases - unfortunately there's only so many hours in the day...
