Publishers Playism and Coconut Island Games and developer Route 59 Games have just announced that the long awaited cinematic cel-shaded visual novel Necrobarista will be launching soon for PC via Steam.
Set in Melbourne’s hipster coffee culture, Necrobarista is a visual novel submerged in the backdrop of the taboo practice of necromancy and themes of letting go. The game revolves around the Terminal, a café that serves as a portal between the lands of the living and the dead. This means that any patron of the hole-in-the-wall café can either be from the land of the living or the dead. However, the rules of the afterlife dictate that ghosts can only spend a specific time in the corporeal realm before passing on. The responsibility of enforcing this rule, and everything else, is Maddy: a budding necromancer who has just taken ownership of The Terminal. Here she will meet the most colorful of characters such as “mechanics-obsessed teen Ashley, infamous Australian outlaw Ned Kelly, exasperated necromancer Chay,” and many more, each with their own mysterious pasts and dark secrets that link them together.
Route 59 has said that it aims to move above and beyond what is expected from visual novels which are usually just walls of texts. Necrobarista gives players multiple ways and perspectives to discover its rich storyline, whether it's through first-person exploration or cinematic dialogue sequences. Necrobarista employs a cinematic aesthetic for the majority of the game, with scenes of conversation switching to and from multiple perspectives. A brief release date trailer also showcases snippets of the game’s scenery.
Necrobarista has been delayed multiple times, adding more and more anticipation to its already considerable hype. Its latest delay was credited due to last minute polishes plus adding language support for French, Canadian French, Italian, German, Spanish, Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), Japanese, Korean, Russian, Turkish, Arabic, Brazilian Portuguese, and Dutch.
Necrobarista will launch for PC via Steam on July 22. PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch versions are also set to follow in 2021.
