Be a coffee tycoon and private eye in the newest genre: business management noir

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Coffee Noir (somehow) blends an advanced business management sim with a hard-boiled detective novel.

(Image credit: DOJI)

The screenshots for Coffee Noir feel like they're from three different games. One looks like a moment from a visual novel where you speak to a young woman working at a bakery. Another shows a hard-boiled detective in a trench coat at a rainy, darkened train station with a comic book narration box providing some exposition. A few more show the complicated control panel of a coffee manufacturer with dials and knobs labeled "Packaging Facility" and "Roaster" and "Forklifts," pictures of ledgers, and what looks like an entire book of business negotiation strategies.

It's all one game, though—a business management sim about running a coffee company and a hard-boiled noir detective tale with both a comic book and visual novel feel. And it's set in an alt-future London.

Coffee Noir, you had me at... all of those words. Here's a hot cup of trailer:

"A unique combination of a business management game and detective novel with elegant graphics in a noir comic-book art style," reads Coffee Noir's website. "Experience an advanced business management simulation along with intriguing story set in alternative future of Neo-London."

Yes, I am interested in both running and managing a coffee company and solving a disappearance, and trying, as the site puts it, to "gain the trust of your business partners to not only win the good deals but also to get the clues essential for solving the criminal mystery." 

All of that, please. Coffee Noir is planned for a release later this year. Here are a few more screenshots:

(Image credit: DOJI)

(Image credit: DOJI)

(Image credit: DOJI)

(Image credit: DOJI)

(Image credit: DOJI)
Christopher Livingston
Christopher Livingston
Senior Editor

Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.