Demo Review: You’ve bean on my mind

You’ve bean on my mind, developed by WVV Games, is a short visual novel with interactive minigames. Try to maneuver through life with your crush on a worker at your dad’s coffee shop, and your parents’ expectations for your love life, in this demo made in only 14 days for the Valentine’s VN Jam!

You’ve bean on my mind is a demo and, as such, covers only a fraction of the game. It’s also important to note that this demo was made in only two weeks and the developer is planning on extending the game and making changes based on user feedback. 

When you first load the game up, you’re met with a title screen that tells you pretty much all you need to know in order to understand how to play the game. You’ll need the space bar to advance through the text and the WASD keys to move your character around the screen during minigames.

The story of You’ve bean on my mind encompasses about half of the protagonist’s day. You’re at work, completely wrapped up in your own thoughts as you watch Clara, the girl you have a crush on. From there, you’re tasked with helping the protagonist get through their day in the least embarrassing way possible and hopefully impress Clara along the way.

I really enjoy the way choices are presented to the player. When it’s time to make a decision, the player takes control of a smaller avatar using the WASD keys. Once you’re standing on the spot you want, you can press the space bar to finalize the decision.

There are also a few minigames where you need to fight blood cells to prevent yourself from blushing in front of your crush. The further you get in the game, the harder the fights get. While there are only two minigames in the short demo, there’s still a problem that is pretty glaring. 

There are absolutely no other functional controls aside from the space bar, WASD, and the Esc key, the latter of which exits the game completely. When you lose a minigame, you’re taken directly to the title screen. There is no option to save or reload your file. This wouldn’t be so bad if there were a skip function present.

When starting the game up again, you have to wait until the entire line of dialogue is played before you can hit the space bar to advance the story. There’s no way to speed through the text, making it a tedious effort to play the game multiple times.  On top of that, there are no setting options to lower the music, which sometimes felt like it was overpowering certain characters’ voices. As I said earlier, the game was made in only two weeks, and what the developers managed to accomplish in that short time is actually pretty impressive. The pixelated art style is very well done. There’s a cute coffee bean border with a display in the middle for the characters and space below for the textbox and minigames. The game has a very nostalgic aesthetic overall because of this. 

Another nice touch is the addition of full voice acting. Each line of dialogue is voiced, and I’d say that the characters are all cast well. Overall, the game is worth taking a look at if you have some time to spare. You’ve bean on my mind has a lot of charm, and I look forward to seeing what the developers come up with in the future. 

You can download You’ve bean on my mind yourself for free on itch.io.