Released by Whitethorn Digital and Insatiable Cycle, We should talk is a brand new game that brings one of the most unique gameplay mechanics into play. We should talk is a game where your only goal is to talk. You do not have to move around or interact with anything but your sole purpose is to socialize at your local club and chat with different known and unknown people. This is our review of the Steam version of We should talk in which we put on our social chatterbox hat and chat with some people at our local bar.
We should is a game about interacting with people and having general conversations with them during your night out at your local bar. You have some people at the bar to interact with in real life while you have your girlfriend Samantha back at home waiting for you to come back. We should talk is a game where your sentences play an important role and each sentence is a game-changer. You will meet different people at the club ranging from your ex to weird strangers or the flirty bartender. Samantha keeps in touch via the cell phone and you chat with her over your phone while the rest of the people are at the club and you meet with them and chat with them.
The gameplay is really simple; you do not even have to move around to chat with people. All you need to do is use the game’s unique narrative choice mechanic to use different options for parts of a sentence, formulate a complete sentence, and choose it. Based on your response, the game will calculate a fitting response, and the character you are interacting with will respond accordingly. This leads to different outcomes, choices, and endings. Overall, We should talk have 9 different endings and all of them are unique in their own. From the best to the worst, your conversation choices will determine how your night ends for you.
Even the smallest change in the sentence changes how people react with you. For example, while interacting with the bartender, you can refer to your girlfriend as she, Sam, or My Girlfriend. Each word implies a different meaning and people actually perceive them differently. While speaking with your girlfriend about your ex, you can refer to your ex as ex, Dante, or an old friend. The same case as the last one, your choice will change how Sam reacts to your statements and thus the game moves forward accordingly. This continues until you achieve the ending according to your choice of words.
Each session will range from 15 minutes to 25 minutes depending on how much you interact with different people in the bar but so far, during my multiple playthroughs, the person I spoke with would just quit speaking after some time, and then I would just see the result in the ending. The main game ultimately revolves around your relationship with Samantha. Samantha shares her thoughts about you spending too much time on the bar and you have to listen to her or ditch her during the game. You speak with her via texting on her mobile phone. Each interface is pretty cool and the whole chat in the game works pretty much like a mobile chat. Unlike most games where dialogue is hidden down in the screen, here dialogue is in the center because it is the most vital component of the gameplay.
The choices matter a lot in the game. For example, with the right choice of words, you can even ditch Sam entirely by breaking up with her and for me, this was the worst ending in the game as the choice of words is really harsh and it sounds extremely one-sided and selfish. This is however what I actually liked about the game because you can be a truly loyal partner or you can be an absolute asshat to your partner and dump her. No matter how you interact with the people in the club, you do not get to see what really happens until the very end of the game. Once your night is over, a small ending video plays that tells you exactly what did your choices alter in your life.
We should talk is also launching at a great time since most of the world is locked down in their houses and are avoiding all social contacts. We should talk offers a unique way to interact with virtual people in a club without any real-world repercussions. Made a mistake? No problem, just restart the game and try a different approach. While the options may not be varied too much in the game, it is still a good time pass. I enjoyed the overhaul vibe of the game as the upbeat music ensures that you do not get bored in the game. The character design is decent and there are no gameplay bugs in the game as well.
Final Verdict:
We should talk is a unique game. There are no gunfights, there is no racing, there is no violence. There is no platforming either. Instead, all you do in the game is make up some sentences and send it back to your girlfriend or chat with the strangers found at the bar. The mechanics are simple and the gameplay is even simpler. It is the perfect Zen game where you just sit back, listen to some great soundtrack and either make or break up with different people. For me, We should talk was a great playing experience. The complete playthrough might not take too long but hunting down all of its multiple endings is surely fun as you try different approaches with each character to either flirt with them or ditch them. With the colorful vibes of the club to its upbeat soundtrack to its simple gameplay mechanics, We should talk is an excellent pick-up-and-play game for quick gaming sessions however I would have really liked if there were more people in the club to interact with to extend the gameplay sessions a little longer. You should definitely try it out.
Final Score: 8.5/10
