Sips and Sonnets review

• Reviews by Greg Costikyan
• Published:

Heartfelt visual novel serves up a sweet tea-making and poetry experience steeped in melancholy

In Sips and Sonnets, you play as Ms. Meadows, a retired, geriatric former journalist who now runs a tea shop in a small English town. It’s a visual novel, with many of the usual tropes of the form: branching dialog, multiple endings, and the ability to skip through previous lines of dialog to the next decision point. While cozy in nature, there are moments of melancholy and even fear: Ms. Meadows is under medication and in decline – what a drag it is to get old, as it were. Although quite short and quite linear, each of the characters with whom she engages has an interesting story; and the narrative as a whole has enough unexpected twists to retain the player’s interest, and sympathy.

The basic gameplay is about as simple as it gets: Large-sized portraits of the characters appear in the foreground, and you click through dialog until a choice of what to say appears, then select your response. Additionally, there are three minigames, none of them challenging. One is, naturally, a tea-making minigame; one a poetry-writing exercise; and the third is measuring out your daily dose of medication.

Each day, you open your tea shop. After a time, one of four NPCs appears, with whom you have a chat. Inevitably, at some point in the conversation, you make tea. There are eight different teas in jars on a shelf, as well as a “tea manual” that describes the characteristics of each, along with a recommended steeping time. Initially, the requests are specific (e.g., make me green tea), but later on a character will say something like “I’m feeling a bit nauseous” or “I want something with a floral flavor,” and you’ll need to refer to the manual to see which variety makes sense given the request.

You’ll also have to learn not always to use the recommended steeping time, when a character says something like “Make it very strong.” “Time” here does not mean a literal timer; instead you make small talk with your visitor, selecting a line of dialog and seeing their response. With each choice, one of five leaf symbols at the bottom of the screen fills in with color, indicating time has passed. When you’re ready to serve, you simply click on a tea cup to offer the tea. One filled-in leaf indicates weak tea, and five, very strong tea. Fulfilling a request with complete accuracy often triggers an achievement.

At the back of the tea shop are a series of tchotchkes you collected throughout your peregrinations around the world. Occasionally a visitor will ask you about them, with the screen changing to bring them to the fore. You choose which one to talk about, then choose what to say. These are things like your collection of Arabic literature, and how you feel about different authors; or gourds from which you drank yerba mate while in South America. Each item, and each decision about how to talk about it, provides a different dialog, and some insight into the protagonist’s past.

Ms. Meadows is an appealing character; not only has she had an impressive career over the course of her life, she is almost relentlessly nice to her daily visitors, and helps them in making useful life decisions. And yet there is definitely a note of melancholy as you realize she doesn’t have long to go, and in some ways is already fading, as evidenced by her sometimes faulty memory and the nightly, nurse-administered medication she requires.

Sips and Sonnets

Genre:	Drama
Presentation:	2D or 2.5D, Slideshow
Theme:	Psychological
Perspective:	First-Person
Graphic Style:	Illustrated realism
Gameplay:	Visual novel, Deduction
Control:	Point-and-click
Game Length:	Short (1-5 hours)
Difficulty:	Low

Ms. Meadows has four visitors; Ollie, an old friend and a co-worker as a journalist back in the day; a young runner who hopes to represent Britain in the Olympics; a scientist attending a local conference who is worried about landing funding for his next venture abroad (and bonds with Ms. Meadows about their mutual visits to India); and a young girl who reminds Ms. Meadows of her youthful friend, Esmée. All but Ollie have problems to solve, with which she assists.

At the end of each day, you transition to a staircase leading upward, the wall behind it containing framed memorabilia from your past, including photos of friends, your most important scoop as a journalist, and other items of meaning to you. Each is worth investigating to explore the backstory, but occasionally some glow on later visits, meaning you have to look at this item again before progressing. Each provides you more of the protagonist’s backstory. A clickable “up” arrow atop the staircase only appears when the game permits you to progress.

In your bedroom, a nurse appears to administer your daily medication. This leads to the second minigame, in which you assume the nurse’s role and must click repeatedly on the syringe to draw the appropriate dose into a needle. I did overdose Ms. Meadows at one point, but the only issue was a kind of negative achievement, chastising me for being a bad person. You can also converse with the nurse, but she’s a hard cookie – perhaps she doesn’t want to get emotionally entangled with an elderly patient who is probably not long for this world.

At the end of the day, you engage in the poetry-writing minigame; most of the text is filled in, but there are a handful of snippets to the left from which you can select to fill in the blanks. Some the game will reject if you select one that doesn’t fit, but only a few, and at the end you get a sort of “attaboy” (e.g., “rhymes” or “emotional” to reward your selections). This doesn’t seem to have any impact on game flow, but it’s a nice if bittersweet way to reflect on your visitors and a lifetime of experience.

The hand-painted pastel visuals are attractive enough, and while there are only a few locations, the animation is a bit more extensive than expected in a visual novel. In addition to the usual image swaps to convey character emotions, there are animated lips during conversation.

Dialog is fully voiced, except during tea-steeping episodes, and players may remember the actor for Ms. Meadows from her work on Baldur’s Gate 3 and Silent Hill: Downpour (Bethan Dixon Bate), and her former work colleague Ollie from Disco Elysium (Lenval Brown). Both are excellent in their roles. The other voices are well cast too, conveying a believable sense of character and emotion, but those two do stand out. There are only a handful of audio stings, moving from one area or minigame to another, and nothing in the way of ambient audio. The music is unobtrusive, melodic, and gentle, befitting the game’s theme.

Final Verdict

Sips and Sonnets is a short game, four hours at most, but the characters are appealing, which gives it an emotional punch. The lack of much gameplay or any real challenge means that it is not going to be everyone’s cup of tea, but I found that I sympathized with the protagonist, and was interested to explore her connections with other characters, and her courage in the face of geriatric decline. Unlike many visual novels, there’s not a lot of replay value here, with no alternate endings to explore. In a way, the game’s narrative strikes me as the interactive equivalent of an O. Henry story: a brief set-up, a longer narrative section in the middle, and then a quick, powerful sting at the end. This game has something of the same appeal: It’s short, it’s enjoyable, and the ending provides insight into its protagonist and a feeling of sadness for what she’s lost.

Greg played Sips and Sonnets on PC using a review code provided by the game's publisher.