secret game club presents...
va-11 hall A: cyberpunk bartending action
words by lulu loveless
june 2025
Not quite as good as Cats (the greatest musical of our generation) but a damn close second.
VA-11 presents the fantasy of living in a dead end job, you rarely explore the world outside of the bar in question, and much of the plot/worldbuilding happens offscreen, making it feel more like a peek through the crack in the window of the larger universe the game presents rather than an explanation. Bartender then is then, the perfect fantasy dead end job, since it no other job could realistically show this much with this little, nothing reveals more about a person and the world they come from than what they’re drinking and why they’re drinking.
In terms of narrative it occasionally feels more like a stream of consciousness than a video game, if not from the characters than from the writer himself venting their frustrations, every dumb idea they thought of for a cyberpunk universe. My Cats comparison is not just for an absurd title, but rather a direct comparison of the storytelling techniques, VA-11 treats it’s characters like cabaret performers, one comes in and tells you their gimmick, another one comes out. The name is not entirely symbolic then, every character here is accomplished in some way, if not on a fiscal level (CEO’s, streamers, pop stars etc.) then on a personal level (Dorothy), even Gil and Dana are both larger than life personalities with extravagant pasts, and then there’s Jill, our Grizabella, our everywoman, stuck a miserable servant waiting for her chance at heaven.
I’ll stop talking about the narrative so you can experience it yourself, but it’s easy to imagine how even in a dangerous with an even more fascistic and dangerous police force than our own, ghosts, and mega Christmas, it’s not hard to imagine how, this too can be seen as escapism, after all, working in a fantasy dead end job is better than working a regular part time job, in the same way that someone might prefer to live in a zombie apocalypse, if only they could do anything else… but games aren’t escapism, they’re reflections, and Va-11 Hall A is a mirror looking in on itself. It’s relaxing low stakes gameplay narrative your reward from your real stakes job, we recommend playing over a cool Rum Sidecar (XYZ, for my fellow Persona 3 fans).
our score:
