Necrobarista serves up a steaming cup of urban fantasy in August
A cuppa to die for
I'd imagine that being cold and dead makes a hot cup of coffee sound like a fantastic idea, which is probably the force driving spirits to Necrobarista's magical Melbourne coffee-shop. Developed by Route 59 Games and out on August 9th, it's a modern-day visual novel tale of magic and myth set in a necromancer-run cafe frequented by the recently deceased and living alike. It's all rather Neil Gaiman, give or take a little Aussie devil-may-care attitude, and wrapped up in some lovely anime-styled 3D art. Below, a new trailer that I'm not ashamed to admit has me excited to play it.
As the attentive and coffee-fuelled may remember, Necrobarista was originally due to launch in October of 2017, as covered here by Kate Gray. Clearly, a good brew is not to be rushed, and the trailer below has me entirely enraptured. Necrobarista has you playing as Maddy Xiao, a young necromancer whose teacher was also a coffee expert. She runs The Terminal, a hipster coffee shop. There's more to the game than just looking nice, and it's not just character portraits talking to you. There's branching dialogues and you can collect an inventory of key words to be used later as topics.
Beyond chatting, you'll apparently also be able to walk around mystical Melbourne in first-person, seeing the sights both otherworldly and mundane, poking around for further details. Route 59 describe it as a suspense story, with movie and anime inspirations, so expect drama and peril, on top of people having died on the way to your store. I'm curious whether there'll be any VA11-HALL-A styled coffee brewing systems to deliver the perfect drink to get a customer to open up, but we won't be waiting much longer to find out how it works. In the meantime, you can see the game's intro here.
Necrobarista launches on August 9th, and you can find it here on Steam, and you can read more about it and its characters on its official page here.