Best Served Cold Review: Where Everybody Knows Your Name

My opinion of Best Served Cold, by Rogueside, is as mixed as the fancy sloshes of ice cubes and lime, drenched in paint-stripping whisky, or tomato-infused vodka concoctions poured into a vessel to make a patron spill their guts. The storytelling is exquisite, but familiarity breeds contempt.

A detective-based visual novel with The Red Strings Club mixology, you play a bartender baited into becoming an amateur sleuth to solve a crime on behalf of a local cop. A blonde is murdered outside an illegal speakeasy in Bukovie, and the suspect is one of the patrons at the newly established Night Cap – your place of employment.

The investigator assigned to the case gives you two weeks to solve the crime; otherwise, he’s turning you in for working at an illegal business. How does one interrogate these suspects? By getting them pissed. A note on the terminology: that means sloshed, rat-arsed, obliterated, or collectively known as ‘drunk’.

Best Served Cold Review

In fear of waking up the next day with a furry tequila tongue, the customers in Best Served Cold will spill the beans by consuming cocktails. Choosing their favourite drink will improve their mood, and getting the right blend of alcohol content will determine how much juice you can squeeze out of them until they return home to make a post-sesh Pot Noodle.

Bartenders know their fluids, so all you need is a few prompts like bitter tastes, gnats piss due to work in the morning, or no citrus fruits because that’s for pansies. Drinks award action points – the number of significant questions you can ask, plus state the alcohol content. Remember, if they get too drunk, they’ll leave without answering your questions.

Time is key in Best Served Cold; you only get two weeks. Once you’re out of action points, there’s no going back, so at the close of business, you can check in with the detective, Hugo, and share intel without fear of using an action point. When the night ends, you retire to your home and use a shifty corkboard to connect clues which reveal motives and defences for these suspects.

Clueless

There are no spoken words, so Best Served Cold is text-heavy. The writing is exemplary, and despite the drudgery of going through the motions every day, there’s the opportunity to dissect each character. Giving them their favourite tipple and then asking about a clue you’ve formulated on your board might unlock something new, like an alibi. The latter is key as you must present your culprit at the end of the two weeks, and if they have an alibi, they’re effectively innocent.

One of the key problems with devising clues is having to experiment with the drinks first. If you go overboard, they’ll leave and might not always return the next day. This happened at the beginning, and I managed to get key evidence for three suspects, but one of the suspects needed a few more entries. They were guilty, but there was zero evidence to convict them.

What becomes quote testing is the conclusion to your two weeks: the case is closed, and a new chapter opens with a new bartender, but with… say, 80% of the characters from the first chapter. You already know them, but the new bartender doesn’t. You now have to get yourself reacquainted with them and learn their favourite drink as it changes each chapter.

Tip, Pour, Drink, Never Again

The way Best Served Cold presents itself is pretty formulaic. I spent hours on the first chapter, believing that to be the game. In some respects, the structure is, but you have to repeat it repeatedly. There’s a murder at the beginning, and then you have to interrogate everyone and find out what their new poison is. The one advantage to this is any rapport you’ve built from Chapter One carries over to the next.

While there are restrictions on how many pivotal questions you get to ask, you have unlimited attempts with the ‘murder board’ to formulate your deduktions. Again, Best Served Cold can be a mixed bag as it may be clear with the direction of your line of questioning, and other times, you may find yourself linking each clue as if you would interact with an inventory in a point and click.

The art style and character growth are a real standout here. Characters are consistent and have enough depth where you can second guess quite often (definitely a good thing in a detective caper – we don’t want it to get stagnant). I found myself taking my time with questions and getting under the skin of those who populated the Night Cap, though my biggest reservation was repeatedly repeating it.

Best Served Cold Review Summary

Best Served Cold is a solid detective-based visual novel with excellent character development and beats. The clues can be a mixed bag, as identified, and there is a point where repeatedly pouring drinks to experiment without any major leads can become monotonous. Nevertheless, a believable alternate Europe, except for Chapter Zero throwing a curveball, is decent.