Coffee Noir - Business Detective Game Reviews

10h game that worth it if you like the graphic novel story type. It is not entirely a detective game (other than combining clues) and clearly not a business management game. It is a graphic novel story based on a business detective story and it is a good one.

This game isn't quite what I was expecting. I expected noir, and there was that. And also coffee, which there was. But ultimately this felt like a crash course in business management and negotiation. I'm not a big economics/marketing person, and in a lot of the negotiations I had no idea what the characters were actually talking about (BATNAs and marketing techniques and such), but my lack of knowledge did not majorly impact my ability to play the game. It's an interesting story, but a few things bugged me. There were some grammar and spelling mistakes. It doesn't affect the overall comprehension, but it might bother people who are bothered by things like that. The voice acting works well, but for the more visually oriented it's something to look at. The connections between clues are not particularly intuitive in cases, but maybe that's just my inability to reason them out. You can use some of your profit to reveal the connections and I had to do that more than a few times. Near the end of chapters when you have multiple contracts you aren't actually able to fulfill all tasks, even when you have workers with spare time. There aren't enough contract slots. It would also be nice if tasks could be team efforts, where one employee contributes a few hours, another contributes a few more, and then it gets done and no one has to work overtime. Overall, it's a pretty good game. I'd recommend it to business majors to get familiar with different concepts, and anyone else who likes management games with a bit of story.

I really wanted to like this game. I am a huge fan of both detective and management games (and coffee) so this game felt like it was perfect for me. The art is great, I love the style and the music. That being said, I was never able to truly be interested in the mystery, I would end up skiping a lot of dialogue or zoning out and missing key details. Maybe its because you are told a lot of things so early for the management bit that I started getting overwhelmed, or it was the pacing or the way clues took so long to hit. I don't know, but it wasn't for me, I will admit it could have been a personal problem and anyone else can enjoy it just fine. And lastly, the gameplay was a huge miss for me, there was so much information at the start that I thought it would be this super complicated ordeal but it was waaay too easy, its basically just "check you have enough coffee, if not get more" and put the employes to work on their respective areas. Even in chapter 2 I never even got close to needing a loan. It could be that later in the game it becomes harder but the chapters are pretty long so having 2 really easy chapters just took me out. The negotiation bit was interesting, but it did feel a little more like a trial and error thing. Its been a long time since I left a game unfinished, but it got to a point where it started to feel more like homework, and I ended up WANTING to do my work instead. Maybe one day I'll come back and change my mind, but as of now, its a no for me...

It's a mix of turn based managing coffee production and detective story. There's a demo that I suggest you try if you think this might be your game. I played on easy. Most important thing first (what I want to see in any review, and won't bother to read if I can't spot it): Options! https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3064303023 https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3064303183 Be warned, spoiler protected comments in this review are real actual story spoilers. I had to put them in because they greatly influenced my opinion. But only look at them if you really want to know why I am annoyed with the devs. (Or you like spoilers - I do. Maybe I should have looked for them before buying this.) Gameplay: At first you're led through a detailed tutorial touching everything you need to know about the tasks to attend. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3062223779 You get bits of story in cartoon format. Tasks are: You go to meetings with potential buyers, go through a dialogue with multiple replies to choose from, which can make them like you more or less. After you offer a contract, you get more dialogue with multiple options to choose from that influence the discount you end up settling on. You can just leave and try again, or even reload a previous (manually saved) state in the conversation. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3063433629 You set up production of up to three different types of coffee (with options to upgrade the warehouse, and a bit at a time per chapter; the coffee production). You assign up to 5 employees (you start with 3) to do the jobs of producing, delivery, finding information about and setting up a meeting with potential buyers, upgrading your production or marketing, and training. You can assign one employee to more than one task, but not more than one employee to the same task. You go to the sales screen and send off the coffee to be delivered. When you got new clues (not every turn), you go to the investigation board and sort through the clues, check what new facts you have for the characters you know about, and get to connect clues. You can also arrange for some advertisement. There's no benefit to being fast. You might as well use all the weeks you got per chapter to rack up cash. (Though that can get a bit repetitive.) https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3063381272 Pro: - Interesting story. - Interesting setting. - Excellent Voice audio. - Clear interface. - You can save at any time and try again, wether in the middle of a conversation, or reloading after a production accident and hitting End of Turn again, or loading a save before you tried connections on the investigation board. Or reload after you bought an auto-connect, to then do it manually and save the cash. - You got a to-do list with required and optional goals. - You can read up on all clues and information on characters and story bits any time you like (except in the middle of a conversation). https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3064355926 Neutral: - There are 3 different ways to motivate your employees, which you can use 3 times per employee. After that I guess they'll just eventually leave if you can't keep them happy. - It jumps between following the story and sorting clues, and the management simulation. I can't say I like being jostled from one to the other and back. I think two separate games, one more fleshed out coffee production (without the negotiations) and the other the story with all the cartoons and chat would suit me better. (But then I'd probably just stick to the management simulation.) - On its own the coffee producing/selling is a bit too barebones. Most work goes into the conversations, the rest is assigning staff, and then clicking the same stuff each turn. Con: - Quick Time Event during an auction (late in the game), gah! Terrible! - AND a Quick Time Event in the last scene, ruining it with the urge to yell at whoever thought adding QTE was a good idea. - [spoiler] Stupid story ending. And there is only one ending. [/spoiler] - Some text is a bit small. - You can't skip dialogue you've already read. - It doesn't remember for you which connections you already tried on the investigation board. (Why are there only 3 tries per turn, when you can just reload anyway?) - You're forced to overwork your staff. No choice in whether you hire more staff to have them be happier, or decide to overwork a few employees. (I guess less profitable contracts with less to do would work.) Why Thumbs down: [spoiler] Right until the very end[/spoiler] I was going to give it a thumbs up. But [spoiler] after getting to the end, I am just annoyed. I was going to say "I don't regret buying this at 75% off." but now I do regret it. No happy, "Oh this was nice." feeling, just a "bleh", with a knot in my chest. [/spoiler] Heavy spoiler detail: [spoiler] The viewpoint character shouldn't get freaking killed at the end! [/spoiler] I looked at the demo a while ago, and had been waiting for a discount that fits my small wallet. I guess people for whom those 3.49 euro (at 75% off) are a mere cup of coffee (rather than half a week's supply, brewed at home in a coffee machine for 1l pots) could afford a lesser or no discount and wouldn't be disappointed. (Unless you react the way I do to the spoily bit.)

Fun game to play while chilling with a cup of coffee. Gotta love the office's music and the whole retrofuture theme of Neo-London works wonders in this unexpected combination of business tycoon and noir fiction novel. Other than a few typos here and there, the rest is spot on. By the way, you have access to a whole 220 pages manual with real negotiation techniques which makes the game really educational if you're into it.

Well, it may not be my usual type of game but I've decided to give it a go and: - Gameplay mechanics are clear and are nicely described in the tutorial - Story is interesting from the beginning and it makes You want to go on further - Game's overall feeling blends with the music very well - Didn't encounter any bugs or crashes. The game looks polished. I must say that I'm pleasantly surprised :) That's enough for now, time to go back to building my coffee empire :D

Try it out on sale, otherwise beware. I can imagine some people will like it a lot, so first with the good: + It's a visual novel-ish and management game mix. That in itself is good, at least in my book. + It tries to come up with a unique setting. + Has a very nice art style. The bad: - The English version is riddled with grammatical, lexical and spelling issues (only an annoyance for those who notice such things, but these are the sort of mistakes that would be flagged on an elementary school kid's homework). - The voice acting is average leaning toward bad. At times I wasn't sure if I'm listening to an actor or something artificially generated. - And finally, the management side: it almost looks like the UI was designed first, and a management game was built to fit it. Got your 3rd contract signed? Cool. But now you can't service all your contracts, because all of them require 6 actions, and your ui only has room for 5. And the game doesn't mention that in advance either. That was the moment when I called it quits.

I really wanted to like this. I played the demo at its release and was pleasantly surprised! At that time, the mechanics were fun, and the negotiations were my absolute favorite. The game had remained on my wishlist until release day, and I bought it day 1. Unfortunately, the game has become a bit of a grind; turns out when you have too much of the same thing, it gets tiring quickly. The demo was too short for me to realize that until it's too late. Grinding for money is the lesser of my two main issues. It's not really enjoyable doing it over and over, even if there's little to do. The core of my frustration, though, would be the clues mechanic. A lot of these are trial and error — sometimes i'd have to connect points I find redundant (we knew these things already), or that many clues are so similar in theme that it infuriates me when the right combination is something that is exactly the same, just a different option. Why are there multiple clues that basically mean the same thing? Paying to solve it only adds to the grind (and boredom) and I feel like i'm cheating as well. There's no situation in which it feels rewarding. This single-handedly stopped my playthrough. I haven't picked it up because I still need to solve several connections and I am running out of cash trying to solve it. I'm a seasoned tycoon manager and visual novel player, so earning money isn't an issue, but god, to earn it only to spend it so I can solve frustrating clue combinations just does not feel great. There's no urge to build my coffee empire like I build my cities in Cities: Skylines. It's just making money to solve needlessly hard kinks in order to progress the story. Not even its great mystery can save it at that point. I really wanted to love this game, It's one of my most anticipated titles. The fact that I just can't get myself to keep playing is a testament to how some bad mechanics can interrupt the entire cycle of gameplay.

So game is quite interesting as for 2 hour i'll be not refunding it. Story looks entertaining, You can get in shoes of manager of your own business while you uncover who is behind murder. What needs to be highlighted is great voce actors for characters ! So in summary its Recomendation from me.

The idea was good, the delivery is kind of disappointing. The music and artwork are the strongest points of the production. It looks very pleasant and it's nice to have in the background. Gameplay is problematic. Tasks are easy (I played on normal), negotiations not always make sense, but it's not bad. The worse were the clues, the whole detective system is quite bad. A lot of text and updates that are repetitive. The clues supposed to have the logic in connecting them, but it took me a while to understand, that some clues are going to be obviously connected to stuff that we already knew. I didn't feel like it's a challenge, more like a blind guess. Some mechanics aren't clear, if we fix all the deals with high price, we run out of the space to support. I had to find the answer how to deal with it on forum, because the game's UX didn't provide me information how to deal at such situation. Also the story - it has potential, but ended up boring. I didn't care for any of the characters. There are lots of them, but disappearing so quickly that I didn't have time to really get all the names and see the difference between people. Ending is rushed into some cut scenes, but the explanation is actually in the clues and updates, as text, after you finish the game. Also the game alone is quite short. The current price feels a bit high compares to the end result, but I'm happy to support small projects like that.