Necrobarista (2020)

Necrobarista while at a decently short length for a visual novel takes some time to really ramp up and showcase its strengths. When it does, it has the chance for some emotionally strong cups of coffee.

The game takes place in a Melbourne coffee house run by necromancers, The Terminal. The main conceit is that while the living is served here, the dead have a chance to spend 24 hours here before moving onto the world beyond. There are a handful of characters that the game focuses on as well as some extra side content, with free-walk sequences that allow extra bits of writing to be discovered.

The game's writing starts out iffy at best. Very much attending to its anime roots, it falls into some stereotypes while holding a much more potent tale of what we leave behind after death and how we spend our time letting go. The side stories aren't quite as well integrated into the plot but tell a couple of tales of teen romance and yakuza thrillers so it'll be worth popping in and seeing how the other cafe patrons get around.

The visuals are definitely one of the biggest selling points of the game - a voiceless sequence of cinematics tell the action, with a variety of settings, animations, and lighting sequences that smoothly connect scene by scene. The faces look a little amateur but everyone animates beautifully. The music is also relaxing but catchy when it wants to be, fitting in nicely with a background anime OST.

As a technical advancement of visual novels, Necrobarista is a boldly creative step forward in how scenes build stories. While its writing has some ups and downs it ultimately tells a gorgeous tale that will pull at the heart strings just enough to make you miss these baristas.

I really enjoyed Necrobarista, which surprises me for two reasons:

1. I don't normally enjoy visual novels, they feel a bit long-winded to me. But this one's different: It's very well written, the characters have plenty of humor and heart, and it doesn't overstay its welcome (though I didn't stop to read every memory and side story).
2. I've played so many games that are literally or figuratively about death or grief that it's become a bit of a trope. But Necrobarista works for me by taking the Grim Fandango approach, presenting death as a bureaucracy... inescapable, but fraught with banal policies and short-term loopholes.

The presentation also helped: The art direction is gorgeous, the tunes are bangin'. Ashley let me draw on her robots. I had a great time.

I've had this game on my steam wish list for who knows how long purely based off the art direction and recently saw it finally released. The only thing I knew about this going in was that it's a visual novel and its distinct artstyle.

With neither high or low expectations to begin with, it feels like this VN is sorely lacking in... something. At its core, Necrobarista is just a bunch of skits put together that just vaguely manage to put out some semblance of story, if you can even call it that. While I personally wouldn't call this bad as I do enjoy mundane slice of life works, the world and setting it presents itself upon just BEGS to be further explored and expanded. It feels like a waste to have such an intriguing world and cast of characters and not do more with them. The dialogue between characters is a bit quirky but entertaining and while the game lacks voice acting, it more than makes up for it with it's 3d model animations and facial expressions. The way the dialogue reads sometimes though is a bit odd but this is more of a personal complaint than anything really. I myself just can't get down when writers include modern forms of speaking or phrases as a way to... appeal to the audience I guess? For example, I can't see the phrase "Go big or go home" in a serious or joking matter so it just feels out of place. Again though, this has no bearing on the quality of the writing, just something that personally miffs me. The soundtrack is fantastic and really compliments the atmosphere presented, though unfortunately there are very few tracks and it quickly shows. The art style is undoubtedly my favorite aspect of the game. The 3d models, animations, and facial expression all feel so uncanny but not out of place. It has a sort of charm that makes every character distinct and allows you to really see the kind of emotion that's being experienced or presented by the character more so than a set of static still images would. The unfortunate part of this is that this aspect is only used for its "Main story" segments which I would say is only half or even less than the entire game. There are side story segments you can unlock but these are only presented in walls of text that could have really benefited from 3d model animations, as some are far more interesting than what's happening in its main story. Though I would have appreciated if these were just given to you right off the bat or at specific moments rather than you having to unlock them to begin with.

I read around a bit and saw that the game had been constantly delayed and is probably a huge reason the game feels the way it does: Incomplete. Throughout the entire game, both main and side stories felt like they were continuously building up to something, or hinting at a greater thing the reader couldn't comprehend or figure out just yet, a deeper relationship between some of the characters, things like that. Unfortunately, nothing ever comes to fruition from these vague feelings. The aspects of death, necromancy, coffee, quantum hallways, everything the game sells itself on, don't really amount to anything in the end, at least not cohesively. It's quite likely alot was cut off from the game as even in the opening segment there are characters you actually barely see and only show up maybe once, or are possibly talked about in the side stories, which you can't tell as it's just all walls of text.

I won't recommend this, or discourage anyone from checking this out. Its short and still quite enjoyable if only for its soundtrack and 3d model animations, which, while I don't think will happen, I hope to see more use of in future VNs.