Best Served Cold - A Jazzy Murder Mystery with Room for Improvement

From the same indie team behind Warparty, Hidden Through Time, and Guns, Gore & Cannoli, Best Served Cold takes a stab at a murder mystery visual novel set in a jazzy, underground speakeasy. You take on the role of a bartender with a troubled past and team up with a detective to solve a series of mysteries in the fictional city of Bukovie, where war looms, crime runs rampant, and prohibition is in full swing.

Pour, listen, connect the dots, and solve - that’s the core gameplay which, despite the game’s strong narrative, you may find lacking in depth by the time the last case lands on your bar top.

Story

You run an illegal speakeasy known as The Nightcap, where your days are spent mixing drinks, chatting with customers, and gathering clues to uncover five intricate cases the police need your help with. Each case is a puzzle, and you have 16 days to crack them, although the first few days mainly serve as character introductions and plot set-up.

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Best Served Cold's story is a triumph

The story itself is a triumph, with the game’s real strength lying in the relationships you form over the course of each investigation. As you get to know them, you’ll see characters evolve, get to understand more about their ambitions, losses, and dreams, providing satisfying resolutions to stories that almost feel Hemingway-esque. While your actions do influence the overall narrative, it’s only the final case that has a real impact on the outcome - I ended up with three different endings across my playthroughs.

There are romance options on offer, but they certainly are a side note rather than a core part of the experience. Flirting with customers is fun for a while, but once the last case is solved, that’s where it ends. I couldn’t help but wish there was more to the romantic subplot, perhaps an epilogue where you see what happens to your character after the main story wraps up. 

The lo-fi jazz soundtrack adds to the atmosphere, though there’s potential for more variety or a more dynamic approach that responds to the changing tones of the story or the emotional state of the characters. Just throwing out an idea here, but adding a bit of interactivity, like letting you choose the soundtrack to match the mood of a conversation, could have added an extra layer of immersion. For this reason, I ended up listening to a mix of jazz lo-fi on YouTube in my second (or, more accurately, third - more on that later) playthrough.

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Best Served Cold

As for gameplay length, Best Served Cold doesn't overstay its welcome. Each case takes about 60-90 minutes to complete, provided you take the time to read every clue and engage with the characters thoroughly.

Gameplay

At its core, Best Served Cold revolves around conversation. You’ll serve drinks, manage your customers’ moods and levels of intoxication, and gradually build relationships to unlock vital clues, which turns out to be easier said than done. 

The relationships you form with the regulars at your speakeasy are key, as your rapport carries over from case to case. As you get to know them, you’ll add notes to their profiles - be it their favourite drink, their hobbies, or little details about their lives. It’s a nice touch that encourages you to continue interacting with characters even when they aren’t directly involved in the current investigation, and makes it easier to gather information later on.

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Best Served Cold

Serving drinks involves a simple mini-game, but this mechanic quickly becomes repetitive. Each drink has two properties: alcohol percentage and ‘’drink smoothness’’, which determines how many dialogue options you get with the customer. While you can skip the mini-game after the initial mix, it lacks any real challenge. A more engaging mixing mechanic, or simply the option to skip it entirely after selecting a drink, would have made the experience much smoother.

When you’re not serving drinks, you’ll be reviewing the clues you’ve gathered and piecing them together on a clue board to solve the case. As clues fall into place, it's up to you to figure out the motive and weapon to identify the right suspect, or a defence to clear an innocent person’s name. If you miss something, the wrong person might walk free, subtly impacting the broader narrative.

Clue presentation can sometimes be tedious over time. You can only present one clue at a time to your detective partner, which forces you to go back and forth too much when there’s multiple clues to discuss. While this approach works for interactions with customers, a “grouped” presentation of clues to the detectives (one of whom is a private investigator), who don’t have a limited number of dialogue options, would make this process feel less of a chore. 

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Best Served Cold

Additionally, there’s a frustrating bug I encountered in my early playthrough. After submitting evidence, the game failed to progress, leaving me stuck and forcing me to restart. Since I hadn’t manually saved my progress, and all my quick saves led to the same issue, I was forced to rush through the early stages of the game again. A system that allows players to restart from a specific case would have been a welcome addition.

Conclusion

While the game certainly isn’t marketed as mixing-first, I found it hard to overlook the lack of depth and repetition in what appears to be its secondary hook, but thankfully, the story and characterisation more than make up for these shortcomings.

This review may have taken more of a negative side, but these comments are made in good faith as I actually enjoyed the game and would simply love to see certain elements expanded should there be a future entry. Overall, Best Served Cold is still a solid murder mystery with a compelling story, and a worthwhile pick for those who enjoy immersive storytelling and don’t mind a lot of reading.