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Affogato is a brilliant blend of multiple genres – one that you will soon not be able to get enough of.
“Affogato is a RPG featuring a unique ‘reverse tower defense' mechanic. Play as a sorceress managing a café in Arorua. Meet customers from all walks of life, hear their stories and travel into their minds to help them defeat their inner demons. Experience a city life that exudes magic and excitement.”
Affogato is out now on PC via Steam.
Affogato Review
Affogato is a brave venture into the cross-genre realm, mixing together management, visual novel, and tower defense. This concoction might sound ambitious, maybe even overreaching, but the game delivers with a finesse that's both surprising and delightful. With a runtime clocking around 10 hours, one might think it's a swift affair. But trust me, every minute in this universe is worth its weight in gold.
Music and Art:
Every component of a game plays a pivotal role in crafting its experience, and in Affogato, the visual and auditory elements play this role to perfection. The game explores different art styles, and each style finds its place, defining the game's myriad facets with clarity
During the reverse tower defense gameplay, you are treated with amazing background and clear stage elements accompanied by stunning bosses and card art. While partaking in the game's city life simulator, you play as a chibi-fied version of Affogato, the game's titular character.
The music, on the other hand, doesn't just accompany; it elevates. It makes you feel every action you take during battle, the coziness of the Witchery cafe, and everything in between.
Gameplay
Here's where the game truly shines and also throws its most curveballs. Split broadly into two segments – battle and town – each offering a distinct flavor.
In the battle arenas, the reverse tower defense mechanic takes center stage. At first glance, it’s a tad disorienting, especially for purists of the genre. Traditional roles are swapped: instead of defending, you're the aggressor. Cards become your arsenal, each summoning units that must weave their way through a labyrinth of “towers”. It's a challenge, yes, but also an invigorating change of pace that brings with it new strategies and approaches.
Each Card represents an arcana on a standard Tarot deck and has a certain role. For example, the Strength card can attack enemies from afar but is squishy on its own. Accompanied by the Chariot card, which cannot attack but is tanky and can buff the resistances of other units, you become a force to reckon with. You are limited by a resource called Penta, which can be earned by doing several actions on the board. It might sound complicated, but the tutorial and first few levels take their time to drill the mechanics into you.
The City phase, juxtaposed against the intensity of battle, is a breath of fresh air. Here, Affogato swaps out her witch hat for a barista's apron. As you immerse yourself in the minutiae of café operations, crafting drinks becomes less of a task and more of an art. But the town isn't just about beverages; it's the epicenter of the game's narrative. Engage with its residents, dive deep into visual novel-styled interactions, and piece together the larger story. This duality of gameplay ensures that monotony never sets in.
Story
The game opens quite abruptly and drops you straight into battle, playing as the witch Affogato who has suffered from memory loss. Drawing clear inspiration from Persona 5, the game employs a reflective flashback mechanism, throwing you back weeks – just as Affogato's cafe Witchery opens and before her memory loss situation.
This approach is indicative of Affogato narrative strategy: familiar on the surface but layered and intricate beneath. Each character you interact with in the town adds another piece to this jigsaw, building a world that's as compelling as it is mysterious. You meet a whole cast of characters, each more intriguing and interesting than the last. As you play through the story, you keep the amnesia-riddled Affogato at the back of your mind, and you get to experience how her story unfolds to that unfortunate situation.
Conclusion: 8/10
I repeat: Affogato is a blissful blend of multiple genres, each executed perfectly and in a way that complements the rest of the game. A lot of facets are reminiscent of the Persona series, but not in an unsavory way. Coffee Talk also comes to mind when discussing cafe simulators, and Affogato also gives clear freedom for you to experiment (and fail!) with the drinks that you serve.
The dual gameplay mechanics ensure there's no room for ennui. The challenges thrown by the reverse tower defense battles are balanced by the narrative-driven explorations in the town. The art and music, eclectic as they are, wrap around this experience, enhancing it.
The user interface is clear enough, but there are clear areas where the game can add more depth; like the flat-looking buttons and hitches during the cafe phase. These are trivial and do not affect the experience at all, and it's still worth the despite these.
If any part of Affogato hooked you, I highly encourage you to give it a try as it's sure to execute it well. It's akin to taking a sip of an unknown cup, noting hints of familiar, favored flavors, and ending up liking the whole beverage.
Affogato is out now on PC via Steam. This review was done on version 1.0 of the game. ClutchPoints Gaming was provided with a key by a representative of Spiral Up Games and Befun Studio.
