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Mixology Simulator, Minus Sad Alcoholism, December 9, 2022Adapted from an IFCOMP22 Review
Ok, take two parts snarky, amusing characters, 2 parts crisp custom graphical presentation, one part grind and a dash of IF. Serve over ice with umbrella, and a sense of wanting more?
Let’s start with the most tangible detail: the graphic presentation is just winning. From the Day placards with flowing beer background, to the text scrolls, the fonts and iconography, even the adorably cartoonish bar area it all just fits together for a complete graphical experience. Like a glacier cool martini with a lemon twist suspended in the hyper-chilled surface tension, the hint of its oils eddying on the icy-taut surface.
The narrative tone and character voices are all welcoming and fun, neither over- nor under-written, and all of it moving along at a snappy, snarky pace. You speed through the text rapidly, a smile tugging at your lips due to the turn of phrase or an outlandish character moment. It pulls you through as steadily and satisfyingly as a tiki drink! (Ok, I’m going to try and resist the urge to end every paragraph with a barely-relevant cocktail metaphor. I don’t want to SOUR you on… ow ow ow ow OW OW)
Triple-T has so much going for it, so why don’t I find it more engaging? Let’s start with the opening - there are fully two different intros, and they are kind of disjoint from each other. After two hours of play, one of which isn’t really justified. Neither opening is short, and both are minimally interactive. Once the table is set (bar is stocked?), our motivations and goals established, and the basic bartending mechanisms taught, we’re finally ready to go. Time to start grinding out drinks from recipe cards. As a simulator of mixology, seems about right. An endless flow of drink orders to service in the most mechanically efficient way possible, until your shift is over. You are at least insulated from having to deal with increasingly obnoxious drunks while you work.
After a gameday of serving drinks, there is some lubricating text and interactions, then you’re back at it next day. And then again. It is unclear whether your choices, either conversationally or actions taken, have any effect on the overall narrative flow. Certainly, neither seem to derail the job you have to do. The situation varies a bit, but your tasks don’t. So far, it felt like a grindy, minimally interactive kind-of-RPG where you are earning pay towards a goal. On Day 3, I achieved enough money to satisfy my goal. However, the game did not acknowledge this, and instead repeated itself for Day 4. Literally. Day 3 was an amusing day, thanks to a character’s screwup, but I guess that screwup happened again? This time jarringly without the establishing text, but otherwise word-for-word identical. And then time ran out.
At the end of two hours, I had powered through an overlong double intro, enjoyed some peppy text and graphics, grinded a LOT, and then got Groundhog-Day’d when I met my goal. The stakes were pretty low to start with – which can be cool actually! Not everything has to be save the world. In this case though, for all the entertaining wordplay the motivations just didn’t click into place. Meaning when the timer expired, the snappy presentation and writing couldn’t overcome the mechanical central mechanism and worryingly repetitive 4th Day.
Sorry, no more for me. I’m driving. (You got 3 cocktail-free paragraphs, take the win.)
Played: 10/7/22
Playtime: 2hrs, finished 4 gamedays
Artistic/Technical rankings: Sparks of Joy/Mostly Seamless
Would Play Again? Don’t think so. Too much grind and Day 4 was a worrying portent
Artistic scale: Bouncy, Mechanical, Sparks of Joy, Engaging, Transcendent
Technical scale: Unplayable, Intrusive, Notable (Bugginess), Mostly Seamless, Seamless