Coffee Talk Tokyo Review – Review
I have a long history with work sims. It could be the endorphin hits of accomplishing menial tasks, or could it be the story motivation for why we are doing the work in the first place. Either way, I am always a massive fan of the genre and if it comes with some lofi vibes, I’m all over it. So when a game series was developed with the specific goal of creating a game that feels like sipping coffee next to a fire, that’s a series for me.
I’ve played the Powerwash Simulators, House Flippers and Hardspace Shipbreakers, but it all really started with Necrobarista, a visual novel about a coffee shop at the edge of the purgatory that plays lofi beats. That whetted my appetite for more. Luckily, earlier that same year (2020) Coffee Talk was released. Brainchild of Mohammed Fahmi and the team at Toge Studios, known as Project Green Tea Latte, it blended the visual novel style with a very simple coffee brewing mini game that had you combine ingredients to create custom drink orders. How correctly you guessed the customers’ drink order from their description would play into how they would continue their own personal stories and setting them on varying paths.
Sadly Mohammed Fahmi passed away in 2022, with his last game being After Love EP (which you can find my review here.) Despite the tragedy, Toge Studios were able to keep his spirit alive with the third game in the series: Coffee Talk Tokyo. A continuation of the series but changing the setting from the rainy Seattle location to Japan. Luckily we aren’t going entirely from scratch, as we see some familiar faces in the series follow us on our coffee making adventures.
When it comes to this series, the real meat lies within the stories of our patrons. You initially begin with your phone, and the Tomadachill app, which acts as your in game facebook. Here you can read all the happenings with your friends, like posts and read comments. This builds out the world and builds the initial layer of what’s going to come to pass. You can read how the pop star Jun has been having a string of bad reviews when it comes to his new album and tour, or about the cybernetic augmentation lab being shut down. This is the ground work, so that when the pop star actually comes in to get a cup of coffee, you can already tell this is going to be a juicy story.
Throughout your time, you are drip fed these amazing personal stories, with characters that are written so well they feel alive. It’s a living breathing world, and did I mention most people are creatures of lore? Yeah. The pop star is what appears to be a siren, there are cat eared Nekomimis, Mer-people, Ice Spirits and even just straight up ghosts. It’s a fantastical world, and your job is to serve them up cups of Ginger Lattes, Milky Ways, and Chocolate Mirukus. One new feature is the expansion into iced drinks, which opens up a lot of new fancy looking drinks. You chose three ingredients and if you choose correctly and in the right order you get a fancy drink.
The loop of the game is getting pieces of character stories, then they will ask for a drink, describe what they want and it’s up to you to find the right drink. Doing so will increase or decrease your friendship level and alter how their story progresses. You can’t see everything in the game in a single session, so multiple playthroughs are needed if you are a completionist. Still, sitting and listening to Ash the British Werewolf stay at home dad discuss vacation issues, then two days later get the reverse end of the story when his wife Emi the researcher comes in, is so enthralling. It’s painting these tiny little pictures into everyone’s lives, with you providing just a hint of influence that can adjust them ever so slightly. It’s addicting, and the vibes are immaculate.
Some of my favorite vignettes were of Fuku, the guard at Death’s Door, who is helping a lost spirit Ayame to move to the afterlife, and Ayame worried that if she can’t remember how to move on, will fade away into nothing. Also Kenji the retired salary man who now faces a new phase of his life that seems without purpose. These kinds of stories dig at your heart strings with real relatable emotions and reactions, often coming off as contemplative rather than bombastic and over the top. It’s the quiet moments where people show you who they really are and that’s where Coffee Talk Tokyo lives: In the quiet moments, lost in thought but giving way to a listening ear found in a local barista. It’s warm, welcoming and a comfort to share in those moments with your new found friends.
I love this series and many more games like it, but I am also hyper aware of the niche that they fit into. Visual novels are always a hurdle, but when the gameplay is mostly second hand dealing with sometimes sensitive topics, that can be another hurdle. Coffee Talk has never steered away from such things as trans identity, work life balance, racism and existential dread. Essentially, if you were not interested in any of these types of games before, this one isn’t going to change your mind. There’s no new mechanics and it’s still a passive experience, but for my money, I am living and dying with every new endearing character. I am deciding on what ingredient goes into a Jahe Tubruk and I am waking up in the morning, before my child wakes up, making myself a nice warm cup of coffee and spending time seeing what my friends have been up to since we last talked. This brew may not be for everyone, but it’s a special blend, specifically for me.
