Drink Human Beans
Developer: Last Dissent
Publisher: Last Dissent
Released on: PC
You can argue that the best horror stories are those set in familiar locations. One of my favourite horror games is Dead Space, but its scares are somewhat neutered by it being set on a futuristic mining ship millions of miles from Earth. In fact, the closest the EA/Visceral game comes to making my skin crawl is whenever the protagonist, Isaac Clarke, encounters one of those demented members of the Unitology religion. Now those guys are proper creepy, because you can imagine them really existing, today, living next door, or standing behind you in the supermarket checkout queue, complete with a supercilious smile.
While far-flung and abstract, Dead Space does at least embrace dystopia, and there’s a strong vein of futuristic tension in Drink Human Beans, too. Your role and the game’s plot are vague. Are you taking part in a sentient job application, the AI testing you for your suitability? Or are you trapped in some macabre reality, where tech dominates your existence, taunting your every waking moment, and restricting your movement to its own whims and purposes? Or is it a simulation, the computer learning from your humanity for some nefarious or benevolent (LOL) motive?
You awake in your bedroom, but are locked in by the apartment’s AI until your designated sleep time expires. Direct human contact is non-existent, with conversations taking place through a portal called Secur. You manipulate everything via your mobile phone. Machines talk to you as if you’re their best pal. Once out of your room, the rest of the apartment is spartan, all sharp edges and bereft of personality. Performing chores earns you stars, which you spend at the coffee machine. Not that it’s easy to get a drink, as you’ll find out, with the quest for coffee beans taking you outside of your angular home.
And this is where Drink Human Beans is at its most chilling. Once the apartment deigns to let you out, it’s time to explore the soulless corridors. A dull hum accompanies your walks, and there’s little light. Certainly no sunlight. So, stuck indoors, with no human contact and a reliance on remote services? It wouldn’t surprise me if Drink Human Beans’ developer came up with its core ideas and scenario during the darkest days of the Coronavirus pandemic.
Slowly, the player feels their way around the environment, the similar corridors not aiding navigation. An unnervingly friendly robot stalks them. A neighbour wants a chat – via the app, naturally. Mini games crop up periodically, as does a security guard, anxious to gauge your sanity and truthfulness, or maybe testing you for the job? In all honesty, after playing Drink Human Beans for almost 10 hours straight, I’m still not sure.
The uncertainty is a part of the problem with the game, which loops around each day before concluding with a final segment as a StarCup employee and a rating from the AI on your performance. There’s nothing substantially wrong with the concept, and the effect that different dialogue trees can have, even though I got the distinct feeling that I was constantly being funnelled towards the one ‘correct’ choice. Drink Human Beans does offer alternate endings, but unfortunately, I didn’t find the gameplay compelling enough for me to want to continually explore them, despite a disturbing scene in which your friendly neighbour meets a less-than-pleasant end.
Nevertheless, Drink Human Beans presents a worryingly close-to-the-bone view of humankind’s future, trapped in tower blocks, our lives dominated by our sole interaction with AI-infested buildings and machines. It’s barely possible to navigate the world without your mobile phone, and horrid corporate speak dominates your apartment, a situation that’s relatively easy to imagine given AI’s current place as the hot tech and hot topic of conversation.
On that note, developer Last Dissent has been quite open about using AI to generate certain aspects of Drink Human Beans, and some users have predictably taken umbrage. Personally, I’m not a fan; yet this intriguing mix of a quest for coffee and a dark future dominated by our computer ‘friends’ should at least get a semi-pass for using the technology ironically. It’s just a shame that some of its brilliantly stark imagery is not augmented with more intuitive and, well, fun gameplay. But then again, maybe that’s the point, too, the mundanity of existence and elongated serving of exotic-sounding but synthetically bland beverages.
Gosh. My head hurts. Where’s my medication? Computer, lights out.
