coffee talk tokyo demo v2 opinion so far

18 Sep, 2025

Coffee Talk is a game series I really love; I have already written about it previously on this blog and tried out some of the drinks in the game (I still want to follow up on that and make more, but keep procrastinating... so sorry!).

Basically, it's a Visual Novel in pixel art style, lofi music and with action elements, meaning you read dialogue as the characters move in and out of the scene of your coffee bar and you get to make them hot beverages as they tell their stories. The fun is getting to know the characters, uncovering the plot twists, seeing them interact, secret and previously unseen lines of dialogue in second playthroughs, and trying to get the drinks just right according to the customer's standards.

Coffee Talk Tokyo is the third installment of the series, and the first game fully developed without Mohammad Fahmi, the creator. He passed away in 2022 at the age of 32, halfway through the development of Coffee Talk Episode 2: Hibiscus and Butterfly. I can't even type this right now without starting to cry, but I am so happy and proud of Toge Productions for being able to finish that game and the beautiful tribute to Fahmi in it¹.

So it's definitely rough to keep this series going without his input, his creative vision, when it was his baby. I wonder how much we will have to break away from what we have known and come to expect as players to make it work. There's already more new stuff: It's no longer the coffee shop in Seattle, now it's in Tokyo, and Toge Productions has involved Chorus Worldwide in the development.

Earlier this year, they released a demo that I have played, and now since the end of August, they have released a second version of the demo. I've just played that and wanted to share my thoughts so far; not really with much of a spoiler, because I won't be talking about characters or what they said.

• The art is still great and consistent with previous entries; UI feels intuitive and hasn't changed, you still have your phone and coffee making interface. Very nice. I like that you not only get to make latte art as usual, but even have stencils now.
• The music sounds worse to me. Not in the menus or the beginning, but the later tracks. It's still the same composer (Andrew Jeremy), so I don't know why, and you can clearly hear many of the tracks sample some of the older Coffee Talk tracks, which I love. still, some sound tuneless, and weirdly like chaotic noise to me at times. Maybe this is the result of being too trapped in a specific feel of the music to capture the brand, so you do anything in that style instead of going by ear and creating something really awesome.
• I did not boot up the two previous games to seriously track this, but I feel like I get to make a lot less drinks than in the other two games. Granted, it's just a little more than one in-game day in the demo, but it feels like a lot of text and too little coffee making. I do love reading the conversations, but please let me do more beverages in between. In past games, sometimes the same character asked for two drinks in total within that day, so that is possible, too; usually when coming in, and then somewhere inbetween. Here, you have them coming in and talk for a loooong time before even ordering.
• The characters complain about the intense heat in Tokyo multiple times, but they all wear really warm, thick clothing more suitable for colder temperatures, maybe as a fall outfit. I don't mean just long-sleeved, but genuinely multiple thick layers of clothing they would absolutely not wear in the intense heat. That makes me wonder: Were the characters just designed to have cool outfits irrespective of the story? They really do mention it a lot in the demo, so I hope it is relevant for something later down the line and isn't just there for location immersion, because it's not worth it to introduce that and clash with your character design for nothing.
• The coffee shop is shown from outside in the beginning, and we see it is also called Coffee Talk, just like the one in Seattle. I wonder why a night coffee shop in Tokyo has the same shop name as the one in Seattle, and this character from Seattle (appeared in Hibiscus & Butterfly) doesn't find that weird at all, and the barista pretends she has never heard of the place in Seattle before. The previous two games made clear that there are things going on as to why the barista is the way they are, and has a story reason for why you can even start multiple runs of a story. It is even encouraged to replay and has unique dialogue options. So I wonder if we get a reasoning like that again for why this happens, and if it is related to that or not. On the other hand, the character from the previous game didn't recognize us and we didn't recognize him, so I guess it is a new barista.

Release date is set as late 2025, so I hope it will be done soon.

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Published 18 Sep, 2025

#2025 #games