«In Coffe Noir the coffee is not just a hot drink but something that is approached with respect and care, something almost spiritual»

Grand Theft Vehicle IV (shortened as GTA IV or GTA 4) is an open world action-adventure video game developed by Rockstar North. The computer game, preceded by Grand Burglary Automobile: Vice City Stories, is the nine Title of the Grand Series Theft car as well as the first of it to appear on seventh generation video gaming consoles. Was released for PlayStation 3 and also Xbox 360 in Australia, Europe as well as The United States And Canada on April 29, 2008 and also Japan on October 30, 2008. The Windows variation of the game was launched in North America on December 2, 2008 and in Europe on December 3. 2 downloadable episodes were established for Xbox 360, PC as well as PlayStation 3; the very first was The Shed and Darned, released on February 17, 2009, and also the second was The Ballad of Gay Tony, who took place the marketplace on October 29, 2009. The history of the game performs at Freedom City, a make believe city based greatly in the modern city of New york city. The protagonist of the story is Niko Bellic, a veteran of Eastern Europe war, which emigrated to the United States in search From the American dream assured by his cousin, however that quickly is dragged to a criminal abyss. As in various other editions of the series, the videogame is composed of driving and also firing components in 3rd individual, and also has an open globe game that offers players a lot more control over their video gaming experience. GTA IV is the first console game in the franchise business that has a multiplayer mode online natively without mods, and also has fifteen types of game. A wonderful industrial and also vital success, Grand Burglary Auto IV damaged brands in the computer game industry with sales of around 3.6 million devices on its initial day out there, increasing even more than 500 million bucks in earnings and also 6 million From systems sold all over the world, around, throughout their first week. On June 9, 2010, Take-Two introduced that the video game had gotten to 17 million units marketed all over the world. Grand Theft Automobile IV got the acclamation of objection, especially directed to the style of the open globe and also to the narrative; Being thought about by numerous movie critics as one of the most effective computer game of perpetuity as well as turning into one of one of the most rated games of perpetuity on rating collections such as MobyGames, Metacritic and also ToptenReviews.

In the article Why the Detective Games are the best way to experience a Mystery, the Tauriq Wet writer points out that, unlike movies, novels or television series, video games are obliged to give the player all The clues and tools necessary to reach the truth, creating through an intelligent design the conditions so that it can do so. The text, which points to several very different detective titles, stops to explain how Sherlock Holmes games developed by frogwares let us explore the Mental Palace of the famous researcher to relate the tracks, allowing us to reach the wrong conclusions. This freedom to follow our own logic and flow of thoughts contrasts strongly with the way in which the BBC series Sherlock can take innovative and surprising conclusions at all times by work and grace of a script turn.

But in addition to experimenting (and solving) a mystery, the Detective Games allow us to have a totally novel approach to the world that surrounds them and all the characters involved. The greatest duration of the Games, and the need to create different puzzle types and interactive elements, push writers to develop a wide variety of suspects and to reinforce a worldbuilding that, to enhance exploration, must also capture the player s interest. Currently, there seems to be two very different currents of detective games, in addition to those that are directly based on famous researchers from literature. On the one hand, we have the setting games noir that pay the black genre through jazz music and tormented characters and, on the other, those titles that frame their mystery in a futuristic ciberpunk distopy. Obviously, both settings are touched. Both scenarios are products of corrupt societies where hope does not make sense and the good intentions of the protagonists are not enough to succeed. This overlap has led to the birth of post noir, a genus defined by retro touches embedded in a basically futuristic proposal.

My first surprise when approaching Coffee Noir is that the retrofuturism devised by doji has a certain philosophy that explains its nature. Unlike other similar titles that are simply drawn as a distopy where different elements fit, here the emergence of what they call neo-London has roots in the coffeemania a movement initiated in early 1920s for which coffee was transformed into One of the most precious products for society: We believed that this retro style could help us build the elegant and pause world we needed to show the true nature of coffee in our game, says designer Kamil Popielski. More than a drink, coffee that is grown, prepares and sells in Coffee Noir is both an element of social and economic status as a cultural and spiritual tool. And from this change, Coffe Nir builds a society in which the 1920s remain present beyond the obvious technological changes.

Coffee Noir puts us on the skin of Arthur Oliver, a private detective with a past painful who receives the commission of investigating the disappearance of Richard Kersey, a successful coffee entrepreneur who has not known anything for months. As the Rules of the noir dictate, Oliver will have its own personal reasons to be involved in the investigation. Here, the supposed victim is the widower of an ancient love of the detective and his client is none other than the daughter of the couple: That Arthur was recognizable as the black cinema detective archetype was something important for us in face to put immediately The players on the protagonist s skin, making them understand their role, says Popielski, We were afraid that the character reading and understanding of business performance were too much for players. Here, when the designer refers to the business refers to the coffee distribution company that Detective Arthur Oliver will have to handle him as a cover of his research. Because Coffee Noir is not just a detective game. The doji layout was born as a management degree and that is where we find some of its most interesting challenges.

At the beginning, Coffee Noir was going to be a pure management game, without a detective story. A product designed to help economics students simulate trading operations and negotiations, says its designer. When the idea of ​​the game changed, we already planned the economic engine of a coffee sales company and we had investigated on the subject, so we proceeded to build a world around that. That is probably the reason why coffee is in the center of everything that happens in this world. We look at other cultural phenomena that occurred in our reality and try to imagine the impact of Coffeeman in all aspects of retrofuturist society. The beginnings of Coffee Noir as a business management game become apparent when we discover the depth of their commercial mechanics. On the one hand, and on time standing, we must manage the production of each type of mixing, the costs of its storage and the problems derived from its shipment. For that we will have to hire staff that we will have to keep satisfied, formed and with a reasonable workload. Finally, and with hope both to investigate and grow our business, we can close different meetings hoping to achieve new contracts.

For a person alien to the business world, interrogations / meetings with potential customers are the most stimulating part of the proposal. The title explains different types of sales and commercial strategies and invites us to test them (or not) according to the personality of our interlocutors. To prepare these meetings we can ask our employees to investigate customers in a superficial or more thoroughly manner, which will help us, for example, to know if it is beneficial to overpay the coffee to be able to haggle afterwards or it is better to go direct to the grain and propose a closed treatment.

But despite being an essentially management game, Coffee Noir has several shortcuts for those who want to focus on history: I think trying to achieve that commitment and flexibility in our game was the most difficult part of production. For example, we have added levels of difficulty in the form of loans for those who do not want to dedicate too much time to the creation of their commercial operations. For those who want to enjoy history, but without being pending every little detail of the research, we have added a limited option to automatically connect the tracks. People who want a high score with the income of their company can take extra weeks in each chapter to refine their production, management, human resources, marketing and sale.

Research in Coffee Noir also has two very different phases, one on a stopped clock, which allows us to read the different dossiers and interconnect the tracks, and another interrogation, for which we talk about the suspects to try to see more information. To advance the story, the game uses bullets and a structure similar to that of a comic page, which is quite practical to summarize large amounts of information without investing too much in animations and dubbing actors. But while the interrogation part, because of its relationship with business negotiations, is quite satisfactory and fun, many times the tracks and the creation of the different diagrams of thoughts can be quite obtuse, especially when we do not have the option activated to highlight the keywords: To be honest this is the part of the game that has cost us the most, we have spent a lot of time working on it, says the producer and designer Anita Sarna, we have implemented an improvement in the mechanics of the Connection so that some of the clues similar or that overlap have highlighted pieces of text; We wanted to create the feeling that in an investigation the tracks may not be direct and obvious at first glance and that it can be difficult to draw appropriate conclusions. However, we have received multiple comments that the part of the connection remains quite problematic, as mentioned, so we are planning to improve this mechanics in the next patches.

Coffee Noir is a surprising game. A piece of patchwork formed by very different influences that, to our surprise, end up fitting. In the doji proposal, business and research go hand in hand. Following the trail of money has never been so literal.