Sips and Sonnets (PC)

With old age can come more freedom. The children have left the nest, retirement means you don’t need to work anymore, and you can now spend more time with leisure activities or even start a home business with less concern about its profitability. With old age can also come more limitations. Your body has worn down, your memory isn’t as sharp as it used to be, and while you may have more time to do the things that interest you, you may not have the energy for it. There’s a bittersweet nature to it all, but tea can be bitter and still be satisfying, Sips and Sonnets a game nominally about tea and poetry but truly about the range of emotions one can experience when you reach your sunset years.

 

In this visual novel, you are Matilda Meadows, a former journalist who now runs a cozy little tea shop in a small town in England. We check in on Ms. Meadows at a simple but exciting point in her life as she’s eager to reconnect with her dear friend Esme, but as she waits for the reunion, she gets some time to interact with people who drop by the tea shop. Overall the cast is fairly small but all well voiced, everything save the occasional internal monologue and some idle chatter while the tea is brewing voiced. It is fairly easy to grow attached to the cast thanks to their natural and amicable performances. While there are some voice actors with great credentials many will likely give praise to for appearing in this humble game like Lenval Brown who worked on Disco Elysium, Taher Othman’s performance as a lively ethologist deserves particular highlighting for bringing his unique personality to life and making the doctor into a pretty likeable character. While the game is normally pretty lighthearted, conversations often just an opportunity for people whose paths have happened to cross to get to know each other better or for Matilda to give advice, there are more emotional moments down the line as you head towards one of the game’s multiple endings. Dialogue choices are your main way of guiding the outcome of Sips and Sonnets, and while the game does lean towards happier outcomes and pleasant interactions, it is also not afraid to switch over to a more melancholy examination of the toll of senescence.

Part of this comes down to the way you interact with characters in general. When someone like the earlier mentioned scientist drops by the tea shop, Ms. Meadows latches not onto his given name to remember him by, but the term Doctor. She can remember her past with complete clarity, her visiting friend Ollie referred to by name and even after getting customers a drink you can often regale them with some anecdote or history lessons based on which knickknack you select from Matilda’s globe-trotting past. However, at times during conversations, it will fall on you to recall a detail that could have been easily forgotten, simulating that waning memory that can come with old age. You might not even be made aware you made an error, some people too polite to correct you, it sometimes unclear how much Ms. Meadows is even cognizant of any mistakes she makes. You won’t need to whip out a notebook to mark down what feel like important details though, because Sips and Sonnets is written so well you can easily pay attention to what’s being discussed.

 

Rather than prattling on or discussing meaningless minutiae, conversations in Sips and Sonnets can feel focused and natural. For example, that doctor will tell you about his primate studies, the anecdotes not at all dry partly because he’s an eccentric and energetic sort, but also because the dialogue is paced well so a story being told has a good rhythm and pace. New interesting details keep you attentive, and while there is authentic information about the history of tea, tea flavors, and cultures to glean at times, the true facts and fictional anecdotes are able to hold your interest in equal measure. You do come to anticipate seeing familiar faces again, partly because you often send them off with advice and want to hear the outcome of it, but also because a visitor can be delightful in simple ways even down to the nice soundtrack playing behind your chats.

Sips and Sonnets only takes a few hours to complete, giving time for little arcs for most involved characters, but much as you have the nice visitors you look forward to seeing, we once more reach the other end of the scale with a nightly visit from a nurse who administers Matilda her medicine. The nurse is a serious sort, hard to engage with in meaningful conversation and sometimes dour when you can get her speaking. Perhaps without this nightly negative visitor the game would feel like it is too wholesome to address its more serious themes on top of its lighthearted ones, the player needing to acknowledge some rougher realities on top of enjoying the kinder and gentler times of Ms. Meadows’s life.

 

Outside of making dialogue choices that sometimes serve as advice and sometimes test how well you were paying attention, Sips and Sonnets also designs some brief gameplay moments around the things mentioned in its title. Your tea shop visitors request a drink, sometimes directly, other times asking for tea with specific qualities. You have a reference book that is a bit too generous with its keywords so finding the right tea isn’t hard, and neither is brewing it, it mostly waiting and engaging in small talk until the right time is reached to serve it. Similarly, the sonnets do not involve a deep system. At the end of the day you pick a general theme to encapsulate your day’s events before being presented a mostly complete set of lines, the player able to drop a few words in but with little wiggle room in terms of their choices. The sonnet ends up comprised of what you compose in bits across the story and it isn’t so direct to just be recounting the adventure, the sonnets and tea making feeling like things done for no greater reason than enjoying a short little activity. It is certainly the area with the most room for expansion, although if you are going through to hunt the slightly different story paths down, they end up being the slow points since you can otherwise skip past dialogue you’ve already seen. Saving can be done most any time to help as well with pursuing new story junctions, but Sips and Sonnets is mostly a tale that works well a first time through with a second effort to see the major breaks rather than a visual novel you’ll scour for different branches.

THE VERDICT: Sips and Sonnets is a visual novel that pulls you in with solid writing and voice acting, conversations well paced to remain consistently interesting before you even factor in the dialogue choices and other elements that help you determine the outcome of such interactions. The themes are able to enter the picture without harming the wholesome image, the discussion of the toll of old age fitting in naturally and even connecting to your role in guiding the story thanks to some clever choices on representing gradual lapses in memory. The tea making and sonnet writing are fairly basic, just pleasant diversions mostly, but the story handles its personal tale well, able to portray a more serious message as well as letting you enjoy some sweet and pleasant moments.

 

And so, I give Sips and Sonnets for PC…

A GOOD rating. It is a bit of a shame the tea serving is so straightforward, the reference book more interesting for the tea facts its shares rather than being a vital tool for figuring out orders since requests leave little room for misunderstandings. The sonnets also feel like some more of the construction could be put in your hands, general theming at least giving you more control but the word placement after feels a bit undercooked as an idea. However, Sips and Sonnets doesn’t dwell on these simple interactions, because its main strength is the humble tale of Ms. Meadows interacting with a few people who put the joys and sorrows of old age into focus without being overly twee or obnoxiously morose. You can see Ms. Meadows delight in meeting new people, pursuing her curiosity and sharing a lifetime of experience, but she also at times may have an aside about how she wishes she could run like she did in her youth or you’ll be the one asked to remember some small but meaningful detail and feel that little struggle to keep your thoughts straight. The dialogue isn’t just written for its purpose of guiding a game plot to alternate outcomes, it pulls you in and makes you wish to know these people better, which can also put that memory issue more into the spotlight. When you can’t even remember something you were genuinely interested in, it can be a disheartening feeling, and Sips and Sonnets didn’t have to get in your face to evoke that feeling and make you empathize with the tolls of senescence. Being able to see Ms. Meadows’s inner thoughts also helps shake off some stereotypes about old age as well, Matilda sharing wisdom of a sort but not some wise old mentor who only exists to better others. We see her struggles as well as her kindness, we get a full picture of her not just in old age, but as the woman she once was, the contrast between the past and the present another idea we are meant to consider without the story needing to dwell on it to add it to our fuller picture of Ms. Meadows.

 

Perhaps having the sonnets and tea brewing be rather hands off helps Sips and Sonnets maintains its focus as a visual novel well. Rather than fussing over getting the drinks right or puzzling out a meaningful poem, you dabble in them before you get to consider the reflections of Ms. Meadows on her life as well as cultivate the new bonds she forms even in her sunset years. You get to enjoy interacting with the small cast but also ponder how to reach out to the frigid nurse. The plot doesn’t have too many different paths to travel but it also helps the messaging stay on target and keeps the mood right, the player served plenty of joy as well as moments of hardship. It’s that precious balance of finding the good even as life starts to take away things from you that makes Sips and Sonnets feel like it’s a short but well realized picture of old age, and so long as the premise sounds like it might click with you, it’s certainly got the talent to serve you up a lovely and heartfelt experience.