Bar Oasis is a far more enjoyable experience if you think of it as an interactive story rather than a game.

User Rating: 6 | BAR OASIS IOS
Bar Oasis is a far more enjoyable experience if you think of it as an interactive story rather than a game. Creating virtual cocktails isn't the height of gaming excitement or sophistication, but that is just the vehicle for the plot and characters. Mixing drinks with gesture-based controls is fun, but it's the story that will keep you playing.

And that's surprising considering how mundane this tale is. You take the role of Vic, a rookie bartender at the eponymous establishment, and get to work his shifts. No saving the world or winning the war, Vic is just an ordinary guy with the same trials and tribulations we all have.

During the first few days, you'll be shown the ropes by "the boss". The man in charge is charming and charismatic, a beacon of light for Vic during his fledgling days as a bartender. He'll also take any chance he gets to skip out of work and take his motorbike for a spin. While he's out gallivanting, you'll have to make sure the bar turns a profit by serving drinks and dealing with customers. Flirty femme fatales, cagey cocktail connoisseurs and straight-up drunkards are just some of the clientele you'll encounter during Vic's rounds at the Oasis.

There are so many drinks in the game that you'd have to be an actual barkeep to remember them all by heart. For the rest of us there's a handy book that entails which drinks require which glasses, equipment and ingredients, and then you're all set to mix it up. Gestures like pouring, squeezing (for fruit) and mixing are all performed as you'd expect; tilt your device to pour (and touch the screen for the stopper before you over-pour), use a pinch gesture for the fruit squeezing and shake it all about to mix it.

The speed and accuracy (i.e. how close you are to the target quantities) of your drink crafting determines how happy the customer will be and how much they pay, but the game is pretty forgiving. It's hard to get the bottom ranking of "Sewage" unless you really botch a drink. It's more of a challenge to deal with a full bar of customers because they won't hang around if you take too long, but multi-tasking becomes second nature after you've played for a bit.

Repetitive gesture-based mechanics and low-level challenge won't be enough to tempt the average iDevice user to drop £1.19, so Bar Oasis instead relies on story and atmosphere. Lush hand-drawn art and a jazzy soundtrack help create a quiet, laid-back vibe that you might expect from a cocktail bar. And it's the perfect backdrop to Vic's love story.

Bar Oasis is a game unlike most, and the slower pace and lack of flash will undoubtedly turn off a lot of people. However, people who enjoy adventure games will probably learn to like it if they're willing to give it a chance. It doesn't have the challenge of logic-taxing puzzles or pixel-hunt exploration, but it has a story and character presented in an attractive, artsy package.