There’s something deeply romantic about the idea of speakeasies. On the one hand, there’s a conscious understanding that they served as the fronts for mob empires through the 1920s, and that they were the fuel for engines built on suffering. On the other hand, when paired with the naive glamour of the same era - the short hair, shorter skirts, and knowledge that life would never be better than it was in that moment - the idea of people shyly shushing one another over the click of illicit glasses is an almost cosy one. There’s a soft glow around it and perhaps around the idea that their problems are so much more innocent than the ones we now enjoy.

It’s this cosy innocence that’s part of what makes Best Served Cold such a delight. Everything in the game takes on this nostalgic haze for an era that never existed and a vision of the past that never was. You feel yourself getting lost in the idea of what was, the stories that could have been, and the faint hints of conversations you never were and never will be part of.

The speakeasy in this game is predicated on atmosphere, but ultimately, it’s that focus on atmosphere that permeates the game itself.

Also, some of these cocktails look fantastic.

Best Served Cold is a visual novel with mystery elements set in a fictional speakeasy. You play as the bartender, serving drinks and chatting with customers, while trying to get to the bottom of a particular mystery. Getting them just the right level of drunk is critical to extract that one, last clue that makes it clear who the culprit is.

Best Served Cold advertises itself as a murder mystery, and while this is true, this is not the heart of what it is. The solution to the mystery itself is generally clear within a few days of investigating it, and the time the game provides for solving them is so ample as to be a bit absurd. This is not a game that is setting out to challenge your skills of deduction.

Instead, Best Served Cold is very much a visual novel, with the murders being solved serving as a series of vignettes through which the player can engage with the characters in the story. That there is a mystery to solve plays almost second fiddle to the game of learning more about the characters, their wants, their needs, and their dreams. The player is encouraged to learn each character’s favourite drink, to befriend them, to listen to them, ostensibly to solve a murder, but more often than not to offer advice, to set them up with someone else at the bar, or just to hear their particular story.

Players solve the mystery by discussing clues with the various speakeasy patrons. Should the patron like the player enough or be drunk enough, they may share some insight that moves the investigation forward. Collect enough clues, and the answer to the mystery becomes clear.

Hugo Mertens is the living embodiment of the idea that all cops are bastards.

That solving the mystery relies on showing clues to the speakeasy’s patrons is both the game’s strength and its weakness. This is, again, a game that relies on its story and the strength of its characters to hold the player’s interest. The strength of that writing shows through in spades, with the characters feeling alive and compelling every moment they’re on the screen. It’s a delight to learn more about them and to watch their reactions to the various bits of information being hurled at them.

However, that only certain characters can move the mystery forward also makes progressing in the mystery frustrating. The cast of characters in the speakeasy in any given night varies, meaning that a clue that clearly needs to be shown to a specific character might not be shown to that character for several days. While the time limit is substantial enough that this isn’t an issue with completing the game, when you as a player already know how the mystery will resolve and want to just get to said resolution, there is a frustration in opening the bar over and over to not see that one specific character sitting there. When paired with a lack of conversation options once the initial options have been exhausted, there come points where the game is less a game and more a process of repeating the same drink-making mini-game over and over to accrue relationship points for a purpose unknown to anyone but the devs.

Okay, look, I'm not wealthy, but I'm not going to deny you are 100% percent a tool to me, since I'm just here to solve a mystery.

With that said, there is an undeniable charm to Best Served Cold. Its music is a delight, and it is genuinely wonderful to sit in this speakeasy and enjoy its ambience. While the story itself may plod along at a pace that can be frustrating to get through, the story is arguably not the point. The point is the people, the stories they tell, and the world they do their best to live in. The deeply varied cast of characters presents a broad picture of a world that does not exist, yet still somehow feels like, somewhere in the dimly lit past, it might.

The atmosphere is there, and ultimately, that’s all there ever needed to be.

Developer: Rogueside
Genre: Visual Novel
Year: 2025
Country: Belgium
Language: English
Time to Complete: 15-20 hours
Playthrough: https://youtu.be/lVLRKXQpEXQ