A charming visual novel about a coffee shop that stands on the border between our world and the afterlife.
In the heading “In plain text” the authors express exclusively their own opinion, which may not coincide with the opinion of the editorial board (or may coincide). They are free to do it as they please and in any format convenient for them. Everything is possible here.
The Terminal coffee shop is a rather quiet and inconspicuous place in an abandoned transport depot. Melbourne, like any other big city, is full of these. For breakfast, they serve avocado toast, books are gathering dust on the shelves, and the barista sarcastically calls anyone who orders anything but espresso hipsters. In general, a typical institution “for friends” – about such, as a rule, you either learn from friends, or stumble upon them by pure chance.
The Terminal differs from dozens of similar places in just a couple of details. First, right in the center of the two-story building of the coffee shop, there is a silvery-white tree with roots in the basement. Second: “Terminal” is located on the border between the world of the living and the world of the dead. Or, as the barista herself likes to say, “on the way” from ordinary life to the afterlife – like a roadside diner. Dead souls come here so often that no one pays attention to it; don’t care that they have nothing to pay for a cup of coffee.
After all, the owner of Terminal is not just a barista – she is also a necromancer. And therefore, she treats unusual clients with understanding: who better than her to know that money is worldly. Moreover, the problem is not at all in money (although in them too), but in time – it is always not enough. Especially for the deceased: they have only a day to come to terms with their fate and voluntarily proceed to another world.
One of the Terminal guests, Keeshan, reacts to the news of his own death in the most believable way – a panic attack.
But, oddly enough, Necrobarista primarily attracts attention not with its plot, but with its visual design. It differs markedly from everything that we are used to seeing in novels: no flat portraits, square dialog boxes, drawn backdrops and “paper” animation. All the scenes are made in 3D – thanks to this, Necrobarista does not resemble similar projects in the genre, but rather a CG anime like Beastars or Land of the Lustrous. It is probably not for nothing that Kevin Penkin (also, by the way, an Australian) was invited to work on the soundtrack, who composed the music for Made in abyss, The Rising of the Shield Hero and recent Tower of god…
Obviously, 3D itself does nothing better, and in the case of anime, the situation is completely opposite – here, alas, Necrobarista is no exception. Some will accept the angular, sketchy models of characters and interiors as part of the idea, others will write them off on a low budget, and to others they will seem too clumsy – and all parties will be right in their own way. In any other case, I would not focus on this at all, but Route 59 managed to create the only one – at least in my memory – cinematic visual novel. With staging, directing and quite a camera job. And very good indeed.
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In Necrobarista, you never stare blankly at a wall of text. The camera never freezes at one point for a long time: it snatches out the faces of the characters in close-up, changes angles and distance. She moves, and thus subconsciously forces the player to follow what is happening on the screen. Therefore, despite the minimum of animation, everything is perceived incredibly vividly: the scenes organically merge into each other, and thanks to this dynamics, reading is not at all boring. The developers use seemingly simple “cinematic” tricks, but they do it so appropriately that you don’t even notice them – the text is literally swallowed in one breath. The ability to simply show how a character lights a cigarette or brews a cup of coffee also cleans the literary text of rubbish: there is no unnecessary exposition, descriptions and other passages about “blue curtains” in it.
All this makes Necrobarista one of the most accessible and user-friendly games in the genre. In a sense, it is closer to an animated series than a visual novel, but on the other hand, all the staging techniques work here only because they adorn an already good story.
Between the chapters of the plot, you can wander around the cafe in search of additional memories. They are also wonderfully written, but, unfortunately, they are presented in simple text.
And this story is deeper than it seems at first glance. The closer the game finishes, the more clearly you can see that behind the jokes and several layers of irony hides an unexpectedly touching story about how we deal with death and the pain of loss. All the inhabitants of “Terminal”, including those already dead, look at these things differently, and the authors have enough tact to allow the player to draw their own conclusions. If you had any chance to cheat death, would you take it? Can you live without regrets? How do you learn to let go? Necrobarista doesn’t pretend that these tricky questions have simple answers. Moreover, she emphasizes that in principle they cannot be answered: the game has only one ending, which cannot be influenced in any way. As much as you want it.
All that remains is to accept the inevitable and enjoy the one-way trip. Desirable – in the company of interesting interlocutors.
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