It's a little hard to categorize this game. It's essentially a non-interactive visual novel occasionally broken up by a mostly interactive drink-mixing mini-game. To the game's credit, it's both written very well and the mini-game is given enough depth that they can continue to mix things up (so to speak) as the plot moves along and you meet more characters. You're introduced to a selection of distinctive people as they pass through the bar - some regulars, some seen only once - and start to pick up on details about the world via the conversation topics on the clientele's minds and through an interstitial period between work days where the protagonist reads the news while she sips her "morning" coffee (the game seems to take place entirely at nighttime, because it's cyberpunk). There's a few games I might liken it to, but none of them really come that close to this particular blend of dialogue-heavy story delivery and bartending.

The plot such as it is concerns Jill, who works for the titular bar serving drinks to folks from all walks of life and with a passing resemblance to certain anime characters: you have an armored patrolwoman who vaguely resembles a Bubblegum Crisis character in her gear, a candid android prostitute with a host of illegal modifications, a lascivious hacker who hides behind filters to prevent harassment, the aggressively sexist editor of the local tabloid rag, and at least one popular idol passing through town. Characters filter into the bar, start conversations and interrupt occasionally to ask for drinks. The player is then tasked with completing their request. Usually, the clients simply state the name of the drink outright, giving you a much easier task of completing their order. Sometimes, they'll give you some vague hints or a broader category ("something sweet") with which the player can get creative in fulfilling. Some even start asking for their "usual" after appearing a few days in a row with the same order. It's worth paying attention to their conversations, as there's often hints you need to remember for later orders, in addition to a lot of information about the city, the local news and other characters. Every one of the game's 24 drinks come with exact instructions - the quantity of liquids to mix, whether it comes with ice and/or is aged first, and whether you need to mix it or blend it, the latter requiring more time in the mixer - and you're rewarded more cash at the end of the day for correct orders. It can seem a bit stressful at first, but the game lacks the strict, anxiety-causing time limits regularly found in food service games like Cook, Serve, Delicious. It's really more invested in telling you a story and giving you something interactive and occasionally puzzle-based to break up the long chains of text.

I've not got too far into the game yet due to various distractions this week, and due to the game's structure I could see this being either a handful of hours long or several dozen. Most of the game's expressive character portraits and clever dialogue feel built towards the long haul: that in order to properly reflect what it's like to be a bartender with a host of regulars, you'll see the same faces over and over as their subplots move forward or they react to events occurring elsewhere in the city. Or maybe I'm just basing all that on Cheers, since I'm not one to go out drinking too often. The game has this very low energy to it that I find myself enjoying, as a lot of it seems to involve just sitting in a cosy corner of a futuristic city preparing drinks for various cyberpunk dystopian anime, Snatcher and Blade Runner archetypes and listening to them vent problems that are both unique to the setting and universal. It's a little off-beat and limited in its gameplay, but it's got a style to it that I can't begrudge.

Rating: 4 out of 5. (So far.)