Cyberpunk stories are often action filled and you as player are directly in the middle, deciding the fate of mega corporations and technological progress of humanity. But in this game? Here you prepare drinks and hear stories about the world outside the bar doors. What crazy stuff goes on, what happened to some celebrity and when the next riot is supposedly happening. It is a Deus Ex story, but you don’t play JC Denton, you play a barkeeper and try to make ends meet, so you don’t get evicted from your apartment at months end.

And it is glorious. I really started to like games, or stories in general, that don’t put you in the shoes of the 1 in a million special protagonist, but in the shoes of one of the other 999.999 randoms, who have to live in that world and can’t just change the world by fighting the bad guy.

Your bar has some random people coming, but also regulars you will talk to more often and build a connection with. And each one will have a story to tell you. Now the game play is not exactly breath taking, either you do the drink right or not. Mess up too often and you don’t have enough money for the rent. Sometimes you can influence the customer a bit by deciding how much alcohol you put in their drink, but that’s it. So mostly you can consider it as a Visual Novel (if you want a cyberpunk bartender story driven game with a bit more gameplay focus, yes there is another one with that description, check out Red Strings Club). But the stories are just so interesting and fun. And following the circumstances of certain regulars was captivating for me.
Especially as you have a lot of variety in your customers: poor people down on their luck, a private law enforcement officer that didn’t just join because they wanted to stomp on citizens. Or a cybernetically enhanced dog with a Hawaii shirt. Yeah it’s not taking itself always seriously =) And it’s mostly about human stories, how they get affected by their society etc. Not about saving the world, but about how they can find a good food store now that the old one was busted for illegally selling cyberware below the counter. So a lot of world building is done through your customers stories.

Biggest drawback of this game? If you enjoy it, you also have to wait for it’s sequel N1RV Ann-A like the rest of us. Which still doesn’t have any release date. But as Silksong proved: good games take time!