Affogato

Affogato sounded really cool on the surface, but it has the key problem that it's trying to do three different things in a game that essentially has room for any two of them. This game is: -A coffeeshop simulator mostly focused around a minigame in which the player makes the coffee and experiments with ingredients to get the exact right fit for each customer -A visual novel about a witch bonded with a demon trying to get by in the modern world while helping people solve psychological problems with tarot-inspired magic -A reverse tower-defense game where a customizable team of magical warriors attack a demon possessing a human host by selecting party members and paths through the maze before purging the evil influence through a boss monster of sorts Now I want to be clear, all three of these elements are pretty decent - but at any given point the game disallows the player from choosing which to engage with. So for me, I was hoping to get a reverse-TD game set in the minds of coffeeshop patrons in which a story is told through gameplay. But for about 80% of my playtime as of writing, I was instead mixing coffee and failing relationship sim visual novel interactions. Largely the…

The story is okayish, but the combat part is weird, awkward, and not fun. The ability to control your units in particular is really lacking, they move along a path and you can't tell them what to do, just change the path. There's also apparently no NG+ or endgame free roam, which is a big bummer too. Altogether, an inventive and poorly executed game.

Game is actually really fun, and actually making some of the coffee recipes IRL is a good idea. The type of gameplay might not be everyone's cup of coffee, but the character design is actually really cool and everything mixes well with the jazzy soundtrack.

---{ Graphics }--- ☐ You forget what reality is ☐ Beautiful ☑ Good ☐ Decent ☐ Bad ☐ Don‘t look too long at it ☐ MS-DOS ---{ Gameplay }--- ☐ Very good ☑ Good ☐ It's just gameplay ☐ Mehh ☐ Watch paint dry instead ☐ Just don't ---{ Audio }--- ☐ Eargasm ☐ Very good ☑ Good ☐ Not too bad ☐ Bad ☐ I'm now deaf ---{ Dialogue }--- ☐ Deserves an Oscar ☑ Great ☐ Decent ☐ Underwhelming ☐ Horrible ☐ 404 Dialogue not found ---{ Audience }--- ☐ Kids ☑ Teens ☑ Adults ☐ Grandma ---{ PC Requirements }--- ☐ Check if you can run paint ☑ Potato ☐ Decent ☐ Fast ☐ Rich boi ☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer ---{ Difficulty }--- ☐ Just press 'W' ☐ Easy ☑ Easy to learn / Hard to master ☐ Significant brain usage ☐ Difficult ☐ Dark Souls ---{ Grind }--- ☑ Nothing to grind ☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks/outcomes ☐ Isn't necessary to progress ☐ Average grind level ☐ Too much grind ☐ You'll need a second life for grinding ---{ Story }--- ☐ No Story ☐ Some lore ☐ Average ☑ Good ☐ Lovely ☐ It'll replace your life ---{ Game Time }--- ☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee ☑ Short ☐ Average ☐ Long ☐ To infinity and beyo…

Enjoyable game but wish there was more. Essentially the gameplay is slice of life/coffee sim half and reverse tower defence/puzzle half, imagine like Persona. The 2d character art is fantastic, the chibis are decent, the in-game animated art is a little stiff, and the world is kinda small. Essentially, expect small indie, not large dev. Gameplay wise it's not very long, which is honestly not a bad thing trying to avoid to be stale, however the half/half gameplay doesn't make as much sense to me since the Persona formula is ideal to avoid burnout on a longer scale (40+ hour rpgs). By the time I was starting to really know the characters meaningfully, game was already in its last chapter. Imagine the last chapter is like... the 3rd boss shadow in Persona 3, or essentially after Chie/Yukiko you've more or less gotten your full team and unlocks. It felt short, and again that's fine for indie, but I certainly wish it was either more focused on the story (pure VN) or more focused on the gameplay (more puzzle) or a bigger game to better compensate both.

Pretty fun game, VA's did a great j*b