Bartending meets Detective Work in Best Served Cold.
Best Served Cold was developed and self-published by Rogueside, the small but ambitious studio based in Geel, Belgium. Known for their genre-hopping creativity from the whimsical Hidden Through Time, a casual puzzle adventure, to the chaotic couch co-op of Guns, Gore & Cannoli, a 2D action sidescroller, Rogueside’s latest venture into detective noir proves their knack for reinvention.
Best Served Cold is a detective visual novel set during the time of probation in an alternative historical Europe. Best Served Cold begins with a tense encounter, a detective corners you, presenting an ultimatum: help solve a murder, or watch as the police raid the speakeasy where you work. There’s no easy way out. Play along, and you might just keep The Nightcap open during this time of turmoil.
Unlike traditional narrative games, which guide you through fixed storylines, Best Served Cold demands some actual skill. You’re not following a script, so it’ll take trial and error to get to the bottom of your cases. You need to read your clients’ moods and pay attention to whether you need them to like you more or if you need to get them tipsier to reveal key information.
As the bartender, your job is simple on paper: serve drinks, keep customers happy, and listen. But in reality, it’s a high-stakes game of deception. Each patron has their own quirks, moods shift, alcohol tolerance varies, and what loosens one person’s tongue might shut another down completely. Serving badly mixed drinks can make your client’s moods plummet, and getting them too drunk will have them going home for the night.
The game gives you hints on things like a customer’s mood, how drunk they are, and how much they like you, but interpreting these cues is where the real challenge lies. You might think a drunk, happy customer would spill their secrets easily, but sometimes, the opposite is true. Push the wrong person too far, and they’ll storm out, taking their secrets with them.
Thanks to Prohibition, your ingredients are limited, forcing you to get creative. Over time, you learn what each customer loves, hates, or tolerates. Some crave strong, bitter drinks; others prefer something sweet and light that doesn’t give off a strong alcohol taste. What drinks your customers like or dislike are kept track of in your Notebook.
Serve someone their favourite, and their mood improves, making them more talkative. Serve them swill, and they might get angry, but anger can be useful. Some only reveal the truth when provoked. Just be careful: push too hard, and you might lose them for the night. Mixing drinks isn’t just about ingredients and mixing them yourself; it’s a mini-game.
Each cocktail has a unique shape that you trace with your cursor. A red arrow chases your movements; let it catch up, and the drink is ruined. The menu also shows each drink’s smoothness and strength. Your job? Balance these factors perfectly.
Drink Smoothness indicates how long a customer will stay to chat. For example, Ambush has three smoothness points, which means after a successful mix, you’ll get three extra action points to use when speaking to customers.
Drink strength is how much alcohol content is in the drink. Each customer has their own alcohol tolerance, so picking out drinks similar to their tolerance, their taste in drinks, and whether you need them tipsy for questioning is a must. For example, Maria Popa has a minimum alcohol tolerance of one and a maximum of five; anything over will leave her too drunk to be questioned.
Conversations are where you truly test your luck and skill. Each character has their unique background and personality, meaning they each appreciate choices or responses that align with that. While a witty remark will win over one customer, another would probably prefer a more subdued approach where you listen or agree to what they say.
These aren’t just random NPCs; they’re fleshed-out, morally grey people with agendas. Some are hiding guilt; others are hiding pain. Your choices determine who trusts you and who lies to you or just shuts down that line of questioning, leading to a dead end.
Best Served Cold runs in a day-night cycle, essentially. During the Day phase, you’re serving drinks and buttering up customers, and at Night, you’ll piece together the evidence gathered. You can link clues together; some will give you new leads to work with, and others will lead to dead ends that don’t help when questioning a customer.
Your biggest help during the Day Phase is your Notebook. Here you have all the information about your customers, your clue information that you can look back on, a page with helpful tips about bartending and solving cases, and finally, a section of the Notebook dedicated to the case.
In this final section, you’ll have a table with the likely suspect’s name. You’ll need to gather their motives for harming the victim, the evidence that links them to the crime scene, and their defence, which could work as an alibi for those who are innocent.
When it comes to graphics, Best Served Cold’s art style is a masterclass in mood setting. The Nightcap feels ripped from a 1920s daydream with the mahogany bar glowing under amber lighting at centre stage, arched alcoves cradling bookshelves on the back walls, which is fitting considering the speakeasy is underneath a bookshop, and plush leather couches that invite hushed conspiracies.
But what truly dazzles are the strategic bursts of vivid colouring on the characters in comparison to the darker or muted colours of the speakeasy. Even the UI leans into the era, with ledger-like menus and typewriter fonts that make every interaction feel like flipping through a detective’s Notebook.
The sound design is amazing, and it doesn’t get repetitive even without any voice acting during the main part of the game. The voice acting for the opening cutscene, however, is amazing, and it’s a pity it isn’t carried out throughout the rest of the game. The music works incredibly well with the sound effects, drawing you into the well-written world that Rogueside has created.
The sound design in Best Served Cold is exceptional, creating an immersive atmosphere that avoids repetition despite the lack of voice acting during gameplay. Ambient noises, like ice clinking and muffled chatter, are expertly placed, enhancing the speakeasy’s allure. While the absence of voiced dialogue could be seen as a drawback, the game compensates with rich soundscapes that bring its world to life.
However, the stellar voice acting in the opening cutscene leaves you wishing for more, perfectly capturing the era’s cadence and noir tone. What truly sets the sound design apart is its synergy. Like a good cocktail, the music is all about the right ingredients in the right doses: a splash of piano, the smoky jazz filling up the more easy-going times, shaking up just enough to set the scene.
Best Served Cold is a triumph of atmosphere and ingenuity, seamlessly merging the tension of noir detective work with the tactile satisfaction of mixology. Rogueside’s bold pivot from chaotic action (Guns, Gore & Cannoli) to slow-burn narrative sleuthing pays off, and this is a game that demands your attention, rewarding patience and intuition.
While the lack of persistent voice acting feels like a missed opportunity after the stellar opening cutscene, the game’s sound design and moody jazz score more than compensate, wrapping you in a world where every whispered confession and clinking glass feels deliberate.
Some may crave more branching paths or a faster pace, but Best Served Cold excels as a deliberate, character-driven experience. It’s a love letter to noir tropes with enough twists, both in storytelling and gameplay, to feel fresh. If you’re willing to lean into its rhythm of observation, experimentation, and deduction, you’ll find one of the year’s most distinctive indies.
