Thank you Rogueside for providing us with a review code!

Best Served Cold takes place in a town called Bukovie during the prohibition.  Your character is a bartender in a speakeasy.  It doesn’t take long before a detective twists your arm into helping them gather clues for a recent murder that happened at another speakeasy that was swiftly shut down afterward.  One of the patrons is the murderer and you’ll have to deduce who it is.  The detective, Hugo, knows that your character has a criminal past and threatens to close down the speakeasy and arrest you if you fail to cooperate.  

When talking to Hugo you have an unlimited number of action points to ask him questions or get his thoughts on clues that you have collected.  The rest of the patrons start off with a couple of action points which can be extended if you serve them a drink that is within their tolerance level.  If you mix them a beverage that makes them drunk, they will promptly leave without any further discussion.  

Each customer has a favorite drink that will increase their relationship with you when served. Mixing the drinks involves a minigame where you have to trace a constellation-like image while being pursued.  As long as your cursor isn’t overtaken, the drink will be mixed properly.  Most patrons are in a better mood when served alcohol.  However, if you mess up their drink they’ll be put into a foul mood.  Sometimes, you’ll have to do this on purpose to gather intel that they don’t want to readily share. Sadly, other morsels of information will require the customer to be buzzed in order to loosen their lips.

As you talk to people, you’ll unlock clues that can be used as discussion topics with other customers.  After you end the day and go back to your apartment you can piece together the clues to make new clues or establish the motive, method, or defense of the crime you’re investigating.  There are typically multiple suspects, and you have to determine their innocence or guilt within the timespan of a couple of weeks per case.  In total, there are five cases to solve and the beverages change between each case so you’ll have to find new drinks for your regular patrons to enjoy.  Thankfully, the game keeps track of their opinions of the cocktails you have mixed for them.  

Each customer has a backstory, and they will often ask your opinion on tackling situations that they are dealing with.  Many of the issues are related to romance and there are multiple same-sex couples (or one-sided attractions).  If your relationship levels are high enough you can pursue relationships with many of the characters regardless of their gender.  For story reasons you get to play as multiple bartenders and I don’t recall the gender being mentioned for either of them.  I assumed they were both guys but was proven wrong on one of them.  

One of your regulars is a priest who is overwhelmed with the confessions of townsfolk.  He often comes in after drinking wine from the church first.  Though there are many similarities to Catholicism, the religious folk in this title worship a goddess.  

The language is very crass with all kinds of curse words used including the F-bomb.  Violence is both described in the character dialogue and shown in black and white animated sequences.    Lastly, you’ll find that some characters are discriminated against by their ethnic backgrounds or past mistakes.  

Best Served Cold is playable on the Steam Deck with the disclaimer that the text may be small in some areas.  I ran into a menu glitch that required me to save and exit the game to resolve.  Outside of that glitch, it ran well for me.

I enjoyed the murder mystery visual novel-like gameplay that Best Served Cold offers.  There are multiple endings available, and it took me nineteen hours to see my first one.  I was pretty happy with the ending I got so I don’t anticipate doing another playthrough. I earned twenty-three out of the twenty-five available Steam achievements.  That’s good enough for my non-perfectionist standards.  If you enjoy murder mysteries and don’t mind the moral issues, Best Served Cold is worth looking into.