Affogato is an Anime Reverse Tower Defense” game, and it was the entire description of the game that got me interested in it. An “Anime Reverse Tower Defense” game”? What does that entail? How do you pull a whole game out of that and still have a reason for it? Luckily Affogato does a pretty good job at explaining what it is and how it works.
Game Name: Affogato
Platform(s): PC
Publisher(s): Spiral Up Games
Developer(s): Befun Studio
Release Date: August 17, 2023
Price: $16.99
Affogato takes place as your character, who goes by the name of Affogato (I’m not lying), is a witch. A witch, in this premise, means someone who has made a pact with a demon to gain magical abilities. You will get to see the dynamic between Affogato and Mephisto, the demon who has entered into the pact with you. You even get to work in a coffee shop to make money to make a living. Sadly being a witch doesn’t mean you don’t have to pay rent.
The Good
Right from the get-go, Affogato oozes personality in every frame of art you see and music you can hear. This game has a ton of inspiration from Persona in terms of its aesthetics and logos. Luckily it isn’t a copy-and-paste type of inspiration but trying to make the game unique and have a special text font for it to work. I love the art and how everything looks. You have a different style for wandering around the city, playing the tower defense game, and doing the cutscenes and visual novel-style elements of its storytelling. It puts its best foot forward and quickly grabs you into its world.
The core gameplay can be quite intensive, being a reverse tower defense game. It requires you to choose a deck from cards you have obtained in the game, each card has a different unit that serves a different function. One card can be an attacker that can cause severe damage per hit. One card can be a passive buff card that may not deal any damage, but after being around enough enemies, it utilizes special abilities. There is a variety of strategies you can accomplish in this game. I preferred having two attack units and one healing card to work around most situations.
The puzzles can be quite intensive the further in the game you go, which makes it a bit of a mind stressor. Luckily there is another aspect to the game that can help take your mind off the harder aspects of the gameplay, and that is the coffee shop. You get to make the coffee in a coffee minigame. You can create a variety of recipes according to the desire and taste of the people who want coffee. Not only are there basic ingredients like cream, milk, and ice, but there are also special seasonings you can experiment with. Before I went to college for my current career path, I saved myself money for college being a barista at a smoothie joint, so having the ability to customize drinks took me back.
You can get a variety of unlockable content in this game. One of my favorite ones was outfits you would accumulate doing different tasks around town. Story missions will give you some outfits to accomplish the detective work necessary to get close to those who are possessed by demons in the world. One of my big motivators for finishing story missions was to see what outfit I would get next. Plus, I loved seeing the artwork of Affogato change with each outfit she wore. High recommend this game for the artwork alone.
The Bad
Tower Defense games can get pretty intensive, and Affogato is no different. Unluckily you may need to grind soul shards to make the most use of your decks. There are characters and demons you can find in the overworld to grind, but that doesn’t always help in the grand scheme of things. Some puzzles are just too difficult that they may need you to cheese them by going in circles around different areas to get your strategy down pat. This can be quite taxing and frustrating. Later chapters in the game also tend to make it more and more difficult with fewer resources and options available to you. This makes having certain utility cards feel useless when you just need to have the strongest two cards take points every time to beat the game. I wish I had more opportunities in the game to use some of the special utility cards but knew it would be pointless.
Normal Tower Defense games usually require you to create a lot of different towers to stop a big oncoming threat; for the reverse tower defense game, it seems making the biggest threat with the least amount of resources is the natural extension, but it doesn’t feel as fun as being able to create your army of units to team up and take down the big bad. The first two chapters of Affogato are great for getting yourself into the game and why it was made. It offered a variety of exploration options, strategy options, and reasons to try out the coffee minigame to get your fancy going. However, once the second chapter is closed, the game starts limiting your exploration in terms of the overworld as it focuses a lot more on the overarching story. Now the story and the characters are all fantastic, but I wish I had more time to play with the world of the game. Hype focusing on the story isn’t a bad thing per se, but when the game pushes you to explore and gives you plenty of time to test out the mechanics of the game, it feels bad when you no longer get incentivized to explore the sandbox the game offers you.
The Verdict
Affogato wears its inspirations on its sleeve. It has so many references to media and the anime world. It is a fun and unique idea of a game and has some really enjoyable artwork and story ideas. Even though it does have a big spike in its difficulty, I would say it is worth exploring the story mode if you are a fan of anime stories and fun concepts. The artwork of big scenes is also a worthwhile reason to play this game. It’s also priced on the lower end of things at $16.99, so you don’t have to break the bank on it. If you are looking at playing Affogato for the reverse tower defense gameplay alone, though, I would say you should skip it. Oh, before I leave, I also want to mention that the game also plays well on the ROG Ally, and it is a great handheld game if you have one of those or a Steam Deck. Being able to pick it up and play and grind a few soul stones and then put it back down was a feature I appreciated greatly.
Affogato is available on Steam for PC.
Review Disclosure Statement: Affogato was provided to us by Spiral Up Games for review purposes. For more information on how we review video games and other media/technology, please review our Review Guideline/Scoring Policy for more info.
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Summary
Affogato has a lot of great mechanics for exploration tied into its own coffee brew. There may be some difficulty spikes and a game that ties itself down after opening up, but overall it’s a great time.
Pros
- Reverse Tower Defense is unique and engaging as an idea
- Coffee Minigame was really fun
- The artwork and music are fantastic
Cons
- Difficulty spikes make it frustrating
- The game loses its incentive to explore half way in
