Mixed Spirits: Bartender

Bought on release and such a nice game to relax with <3 I love how much the range of ingredients expands as you level up, there's so much flexibility depending on whether you want to focus on how your drinks look, making them accurate to real life cocktails or just messing around to fulfil requests in the weirdest ways possible. The only bugs I encountered were minor and got fixed in the very first patch. While I do praise the flexibility, I do wonder if there could be a mode or something that encourages you to mix drinks in a more realistic way in terms of amount of spirits, bases, tonics etc. I like that you build to taste but I think it could be a fun option to also have to balance what alcohols and mixers you can use. Because currently, you can build a large drink that's all gins and spirits without a mixer in sight and it's a little weird for the immersion. I also feel like the tipping system is counter-intuitive to the Classic game mode as it forces you to trade experimenting and slow-paced gameplay for trying to make a drink as fast as possible for the monetary bonus, which ultimately isn't too significant anyway. You can of course ignore it but it seems odd that it's a time-based mechanic in what's marketed as the slow and chill difficulty. I haven't finished the story but from what I have read I'm enjoying it. I think it's pretty sweet but doesn't impose on the gameplay, you can just choose to skip through if it's not your vibe. Only complaint I have is that the dialogue tree doesn't really suit you having multiple options to choose. A lot of times you choose one thing to say and the response is clearly written for the other option. Overall I definitely recommend this game for a relaxed shopkeeper experience, it feels decently balanced and the vibes are super cozy. Looking forward to playing this in the autumn and winter months :)