“No amount of physical contact could match the healing powers of a well-made cocktail.”
    – David Sedaris

Fans of mystery visual novels, good news! There’s a new speakeasy on the block waiting to serve up some ice cold murder mysteries with a cocktail on the side. Mixing VA-11 Hall-A’s bartending with the deductive elements of Ace Attorney, Best Served Cold comes out swinging into an underrepresented but highly appreciated genre.

I’ll be honest: visual novels are not usually my thing. Despite being an avid reader and writer, the act of playing a book has never really appealed to me. I don’t fault anyone who likes them, I just acknowledge that I prefer a book. Add in a mystery to solve, though, and you have my attention. Even then, I’ve only actually played Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, half of the sequel, and The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog. There was something in the pitch and style of Best Served Cold that appealed to me, though, and it won me over hard and fast.

The Last Speakeasy

In an alternative history Eastern Europe, prohibition has hit the city of Bukovie. Beneath a quiet bookstore, the city’s last surviving speakeasy, The Nightcap, operates after the shop closes for the night. You are its bartender. It’s not a hard job. All you have to do is get your customers a little happy and a little more drunk, and they’ll pour their hearts out to you. Which is great, since the only thing keeping your speakeasy open is that you’re the last place that can help the police catch a killer.

The Nightcap may be an underground secret, but it’s far from exclusive. Vincent Floare, the owner, welcomes anyone who’s not a narc. (Okay, some narcs allowed for anti-crime reasons.) You’ll serve everyone from the Old Rich to the Nouveau Riche to the not-at-all rich. After all, everyone likes good drinks and conversation. There just happen to be some folks at the bar who also like murder. Your time to solve the crime is limited, but with enough booze and (perhaps misplaced) trust, you can convince the suspects to share their deepest secrets, or at least reveal enough to pin the crime on them.

A Mystery Afoot

Best Served Cold starts with Chapter 0, but it doesn’t skimp on the story or characters just because it’s the tutorial. There’s a serial killer on the loose, and it’s likely they’re one of your customers. A detective gives you a notebook to track the details of the lives of the clientele and says, “You have two weeks to find the killer, or we shut you down for operating illegally.” From there, you’re mostly left to your own devices.

When it comes to visual novels, the writing is obviously one of the most important elements. It has to be clean and clear with strong word choices. The characters have to be unique individuals. Many times in indie games, I see writing and editing fall to the side, with typos or poor grammar slipping through. Best Served Cold is not one of these. The writing charmed me immediately with a mention of “strigoi” in the first discussion. A single strong word that drags you into the setting. “Vampire” could be set anywhere, but “strigoi” plants the reader directly in Eastern Europe. This single word choice reassured me that I was going into a game where the writers knew what they were doing.

A Good Drink’s About a Balance

Every customer has three main elements to keep track of. 1) Their mood. People in a bad mood may not be willing to talk as freely. 2) Their drunkenness. Everyone has different tolerances, and hitting the sweet spot can make them chatty. 3) Friendliness, or perhaps trust. The more people like you, the more they’re willing to share. They also have drink preferences, including favorites and their own interpersonal connections, both of which you can exploit.

As the bartender, you have to balance these elements to get your customers to open up to you and start collecting clues. Saying the wrong thing in a conversation may make them not like you as much or turn their mood sour. Too much alcohol for their tolerance, and they’ll tap out for the night before you can talk. Give someone their favorite drinks and they’ll like you more, but they may not get drunk enough to blab. You have to get a little tactical to get all the answers you’re looking for. For each customer, you can only bring up two topics per night. However, as they say, alcohol loosens lips. Give them a drink, and you get more opportunities.

Mix it Up

The drink mixing is pretty easy, but highly important to earn the time and trust you need to narrow down the killer. Once you’ve picked the customer’s drink, you’re given a small starmap of sorts shaped like the drink’s theme. Your job is to trace the path around the map. Sounds easy enough, but you can’t waste time. Shortly after you start, a red line begins to chase you. If it catches up, you’ve messed up the drink and your ability to interrogate the customer. Hopefully they’ll come back tomorrow so you can try again.

After you’ve done everything you can or want to for the day, it’s time to think about the things you’ve learned. With a classic pinboard and some handy red string, you make connections between the clues you’ve uncovered. If there’s something there, a new clue will be born. There’s nothing stopping you from trying all potential combinations just to be sure you’re not missing anything.

Final Thoughts

I always worry about mystery stories before diving in. I’ve experienced some stinkers in my time. My preference is for ones that you can solve before being handed all the answers, but they also need decent red herrings. I like to be surprised, but also be able to look back and see the things I missed on first glance. When it comes to mystery games, I want to feel smart for figuring it out, not have my hand held to the solution, but not be too complicated to solve. Best Served Cold’s Chapter 0 nailed all of this.

As I learned more about the four suspects, two were quickly written off, while two others lingered as possibilities. One was pointed to more at the beginning, but as you learned more about them both, the suspicion moved. The true culprit was difficult to get the truth out of, leaving a feeling of satisfaction when turning in the completed notebook. I’m both hopeful and confident that the other four chapters will prove to be just as enjoyable.

Special thanks to Rogueside for supplying us with a copy of Best Served Cold for this review.