Best Served Cold is a murder mystery taking place in Bukovie, a fictional European city, set in the 1920s against the backdrop of prohibition. As the bartender of The Nightcap, the last speakeasy in the city, you are enlisted by ambitious detective Hugo Mertens to help solve a number of murders that always trace their way back to your patrons.
Uncovering the truth behind these cases requires befriending your customers, serving them the right drinks to gain their trust and, occasionally, loosen their lips enough to have them spill their secrets. Each case introduces a new murder to solve, requiring you to find a motive, means, and potential alibi for each suspect involved.
Developer Rogueside Games have done an excellent job capturing the atmosphere of a prohibition-era speakeasy, with fantastic visual design on both the bar and the characters serving to convey the welcoming, yet just a little shady, vibe. The character portraits pop against the background and all convey plenty of personality, from the glamorous jewellery on opera singer Olivia Carmine to the dour expression of the gothic Reece Kenryd.
The jazzy melody that plays while working the bar further lends itself to the atmosphere, but I did find the music to be more of a mixed bag than the art. It adds well enough to the ambience of the bar, but is largely forgettable otherwise. I would have loved to hear a few character-specific themes or some more triumphant music upon successfully solving a case, which could have really rounded out the whole experience.
Where Best Served Cold really shines is in the excellent writing, appropriate for the genre. Each case introduces a handful of new patrons to The Nightcap, with some guests from previous cases returning alongside recurring plotlines. These character-specific storylines are largely seperate from the grisly murders taking place and help to flesh out the cast and provide more details on the world itself. I found myself invested in seeing characters such as the spoilt rich kid Killian Durand or the hardened criminal Peter Wagner develop as I learned more about them and watched them form relationships with other patrons.
Unfortunately, the excellent writing is at times hampered by the more obtrusive gameplay elements that don’t leave much of an impression. There are a variety of cocktails to serve (created with consultancy from a mixologist so you can, in fact, try them at home) which will affect how much affection you gain with a customer and how inebriated they are. Serving drinks requires playing a simple mini-game where you trace a symbol with the mouse. You’ll be serving a lot of drinks and having to stop the conversation for the same repetitive mini-game grew tiring quickly. It’s short enough that it doesn’t become infuriating, but it just doesn’t mesh with the rest of the game.
Failing to trace the symbol quickly enough will result in a failed mix, dampening your customer’s mood and dropping your relationship with them. There’s little to worry about from a gameplay perspective, as the mini-game is incredibly easy. I found it entirely possible to just flail my mouse around randomly with the game still accepting that as properly following the symbol. Failures are needed to progress the story in a few cases, as certain clues can only be uncovered from a mildly annoyed patron, but I would have preferred if they cut the mini-game entirely and let drink choices determine your customer’s mood as all it did was bring the pace of the game down.
In between shifts at the bar, you’ll return to your apartment where you can access the clue board, allowing you to lay out the various pieces of information and evidence you’ve collected from customers and make connections between them. Making connections will then provide you with new clues to present at your next shift as well as serving as motives, means, or alibis to the current case. The game does suffer from a similar problem to other detective-style visual novel games where I, the player, could make a logical connection between two pieces of evidence but the game required me to use a different piece of evidence that pointed towards the exact same line of thinking. It’s a minor frustration but one that came up at least once in each case.
Fortunately, putting those minor frustrations aside is easy. Best Served Cold is an admirable murder mystery visual novel that combines excellent characters with gripping murders. Multiple endings and a number of romantic options within the cast also serve to tie the whole experience together, making for an enjoyable package. I’m hoping Rogueside Games aren’t done with Bukovie yet, I would love to see more from this dreary, crime-riddled, yet lovable city.
You can check out Best Served Cold now on Steam!