Best Served Cold: Mystery, Drink, and… Where’s the Translation? By Sullivan Martinelli

“Best Served Cold” is a visual novel-style game that combines investigation, mystery, and a slick noir ambiance, set in 1920s Europe filled with secretive bars and jazz music. It’s off to a good start — but there’s a potential turnoff: it doesn’t have a Portuguese translation yet. The game is all about dialogue, teeming with conversations, clues, and choices that shape the investigation. As you mix drinks for clients and lift their spirits with the right concoction, you chat it up and uncover the assassin’s identity in the area. A mini-game lets you craft cocktails, contributing to the bar’s atmosphere, but the main focus is on understanding the characters, piecing together the puzzle, and figuring out who the “Bukovie Killer” is. However, here’s the hitch: if English isn’t your strong suit, playing becomes quite complex. You can’t just “vibe”; there’s a lot of text, brimming with details, and characters only make sense if you grasp every word said.

In the game “Best Served Cold,” you run a secret bar called “The Nightcap” hidden beneath a bookstore in a fictional 1920s European city called Bukovie, where Prohibition is strictly enforced but underground bars still exist. Your place becomes a meeting spot for some fishy characters straight out of a jazz detective story. After a woman gets found dead outside another hidden bar, the cops ask for your help because of your sketchy past as a bartender. Your job now? Serve drinks, chat up patrons, and figure out who’s the Bukovie Killer. The art and music are awesome – they really set that noir vibe with art deco style and soft jazz tunes. Mixing cocktails and talking to customers is easy but effective, breaking dialogue tension and building suspense between clues. Characters are well-developed too, each one has a great personality, drama, attitude, and secrets – just waiting for you to discover them over a drink or two of Pirate’s Joy or Cold Winter, drinks available in the game. “Best Served Cold” is a visual novel that mixes investigation, mystery, and a 1920s European noir setting with lots of dialogue and choices guiding the investigation and mini-game for making drinks to set the bar mood. However, it’s only available in English, which makes it hard for those who aren’t fluent in English to play.

The magic swiftly disappears when you notice that most folks parrot the same lines day in and day out. Then, just as you’re hoping for a twist, the game guides you step by scripted step towards the next event. Mixing drinks seemed promising, but it’s just a simple mouse-drawing minigame – way too easy, almost like it was made on Adobe Flash. Serving drinks to influence customers’ moods sounds cool, but it loses its charm when everyone orders exactly what they want, and there’s no challenge in choosing their favorite drink. It’s like playing an RPG where being nice is the best move all the time. And that clue board at the end of the day? You were expecting a Sherlock moment, but it turned out to be more confusing – basically, just a mess of Post-it notes and tangled red wires.

If you’re a fan of English and games that involve more chatting and detective work than action, “Best Served Cold” might be worth checking out, but its lack of Portuguese translation makes playing it tricky for many Brazilians or those who aren’t great with English — which is a big drawback for a game so focused on its plot and dialogue. It’s unfortunate because the game has potential and a cool style, but without subtitles in Portuguese, it leaves some players wanting more. Sullz Player rates it 3/5: good concept, stylish game, but language issues keep many out.