For a good amount of media members that aren’t local, whether it’s PAX West or PAX East, the event is pretty much over on the last day. While I was already packed and ready to go, there was one more game I had to play, and I had to do it for the culture.
Those of you who have known me long enough know that if there’s something inherently Filipino, it has my attention, and my PAX East experience was more or less bookended with a fair share of Pinoy flavor. When I arrived in Boston on Wednesday last week, Dreamworks unveiled The Forgotten Island, the first Filipino-centered animated film with a Hollywood budget. So to cap off my PAX East, I played High Times from Yangyang Mobile, a Manila-based indie.
At its core, High Times is a visual novel where all you really have to do is make donuts for your customers. It definitely has vibes similar to Coffee Talk, but the main difference is Coffee Talk is really all about you playing your role as a café barista while listening to everything your clientele has to tell you. In High Times, your customers expect you to make them feel better with the donuts you serve them.
No, I didn’t unlock oob when I was playing the demo.
Before playing my first seven days in the game, I made my characters. There wasn’t an exhaustive list of customizations, but I did my best to make him look like Goro Majima from the Like a Dragon games, because I don’t think you can have a better donuteer than Majima-san. His mannerisms also make him the most metro guy possible for a story like this, so I thought it would vibe. Luckily, one of the cosmetics was an eyepatch, so we totally nailed the Majima look.
The first customer you serve is a total dudebro who just broke up with his girlfriend. You listen to his sob story, and it’s time to make his donut. This first one is simple because you only have the ingredients for one kind of donut — vanilla. From here, you roll the dough, cut it into an O-shape, deep-fry it until it’s golden brown, lay it down, and spread the vanilla glaze on it. The customer has the donut, thanks you for his newfound happiness, and that’s it. You end the day scrolling on your phone and calculating profits.
The comic book-style of the way characters are introduced in this game really add a much-needed dynamic in an otherwise by-the-book visual novel.
I just did this over the next few days, and I won’t lie — while it was nice meeting all the zany characters in the game and digging the way each one got introduced, I was a bit fed up that all I was doing was making vanilla donuts. It got to a point where I unlocked sprinkles, but making the same donut over and over wasn’t fun. It was more enjoyable to tell “your mom” jokes to Connor Collins, somebody I wasn’t sure was a best friend or an ex, and that’s what you have to deal with here. There are several characters you come across in the game who are former romances, and seeing the dialog choices tickled my fancy for clever writing.
Speaking of clever, the puns and parodies in the game are downright hilarious. There’s a customer in the game who thinks she’s at “Starducks” and makes the most overly complicated coffee order, you can buy stuff on “Hamazon,” scroll “Facenook,” joke around about porno and have conversations about “LonelyFans”–I came away impressed, but considering the Philippines is one of the most social media-savvy countries in the world, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Heck, the game is called High Times because the “mood café” you work in is called “The Hotbox,” and everything you consume in there changes your mood. See where it’s getting at? Haha… drugs.
Hell yeah I chose that dialog choice.
Anyway, it wasn’t until I started to cap off my time with the game that things on the donut front started to open up. I ended my playtime with the game having a whole donut molder, in addition to having blueberry and chocolate cream options to go with vanilla. This is where I decided to get a little crazy–after all, it’s a demo. When the situation called for sprinkles, instead of covering every inch of the donut, I only covered four spots. After serving it, even though there’s no fail state, your customers express their disgust, which affects how much money comes in that day. You can actually lose money, and while I’m not sure what the exact repercussions are, the developer on-site told me that the game has multiple endings.
In addition to multiple endings, he even told me that High Times‘ main story can take over 40 hours to complete if you listen to the voice acting through without skipping through it too quickly. I don’t know if this is a game I’ll want to binge, but I’ll definitely have my eye out for it when it comes to PC and Switch this May. Expect a review and, perhaps, a developer interview during that time. We owe them that much after gifting us with some yummy dried mango that were a joy to eat on the plane ride home.
At its core, High Times is a visual novel where all you really have to do is make donuts for your customers. It definitely has vibes similar to Coffee Talk, but the main difference is Coffee Talk is really all about you playing your role as a café barista while listening to everything your clientele has to tell you. In High Times, your customers expect you to make them feel better with the donuts you serve them.
For a good amount of media members that aren’t local, whether it’s PAX West or PAX East, the event is pretty much over on the last day. While I was already packed and ready to go, there was one more game I had to play, and I had to do it for the culture.
Those of you who have known me long enough know that if there’s something inherently Filipino, it has my attention, and my PAX East experience was more or less bookended with a fair share of Pinoy flavor. When I arrived in Boston on Wednesday last week, Dreamworks unveiled The Forgotten Island, the first Filipino-centered animated film with a Hollywood budget. So to cap off my PAX East, I played High Times from Yangyang Mobile, a Manila-based indie.
At its core, High Times is a visual novel where all you really have to do is make donuts for your customers. It definitely has vibes similar to Coffee Talk, but the main difference is Coffee Talk is really all about you playing your role as a café barista while listening to everything your clientele has to tell you. In High Times, your customers expect you to make them feel better with the donuts you serve them.
No, I didn’t unlock oob when I was playing the demo.
Before playing my first seven days in the game, I made my characters. There wasn’t an exhaustive list of customizations, but I did my best to make him look like Goro Majima from the Like a Dragon games, because I don’t think you can have a better donuteer than Majima-san. His mannerisms also make him the most metro guy possible for a story like this, so I thought it would vibe. Luckily, one of the cosmetics was an eyepatch, so we totally nailed the Majima look.
The first customer you serve is a total dudebro who just broke up with his girlfriend. You listen to his sob story, and it’s time to make his donut. This first one is simple because you only have the ingredients for one kind of donut — vanilla. From here, you roll the dough, cut it into an O-shape, deep-fry it until it’s golden brown, lay it down, and spread the vanilla glaze on it. The customer has the donut, thanks you for his newfound happiness, and that’s it. You end the day scrolling on your phone and calculating profits.
The comic book-style of the way characters are introduced in this game really add a much-needed dynamic in an otherwise by-the-book visual novel.
I just did this over the next few days, and I won’t lie — while it was nice meeting all the zany characters in the game and digging the way each one got introduced, I was a bit fed up that all I was doing was making vanilla donuts. It got to a point where I unlocked sprinkles, but making the same donut over and over wasn’t fun. It was more enjoyable to tell “your mom” jokes to Connor Collins, somebody I wasn’t sure was a best friend or an ex, and that’s what you have to deal with here. There are several characters you come across in the game who are former romances, and seeing the dialog choices tickled my fancy for clever writing.
Speaking of clever, the puns and parodies in the game are downright hilarious. There’s a customer in the game who thinks she’s at “Starducks” and makes the most overly complicated coffee order, you can buy stuff on “Hamazon,” scroll “Facenook,” joke around about porno and have conversations about “LonelyFans”–I came away impressed, but considering the Philippines is one of the most social media-savvy countries in the world, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Heck, the game is called High Times because the “mood café” you work in is called “The Hotbox,” and everything you consume in there changes your mood. See where it’s getting at? Haha… drugs.
Hell yeah I chose that dialog choice.
Anyway, it wasn’t until I started to cap off my time with the game that things on the donut front started to open up. I ended my playtime with the game having a whole donut molder, in addition to having blueberry and chocolate cream options to go with vanilla. This is where I decided to get a little crazy–after all, it’s a demo. When the situation called for sprinkles, instead of covering every inch of the donut, I only covered four spots. After serving it, even though there’s no fail state, your customers express their disgust, which affects how much money comes in that day. You can actually lose money, and while I’m not sure what the exact repercussions are, the developer on-site told me that the game has multiple endings.
In addition to multiple endings, he even told me that High Times‘ main story can take over 40 hours to complete if you listen to the voice acting through without skipping through it too quickly. I don’t know if this is a game I’ll want to binge, but I’ll definitely have my eye out for it when it comes to PC and Switch this May. Expect a review and, perhaps, a developer interview during that time. We owe them that much after gifting us with some yummy dried mango that were a joy to eat on the plane ride home.
by Danreb Victorio
