A charming new cozy cafe management sim with a twist on creature collecting has just arrived on Steam and Switch this week. In Critter Cafe, you'll embark on rescue missions to find and bring home adorable critters to your cafe. As you bond with your new companions, you'll level them up and unlock special perks to help improve your cafe and make it even more enjoyable for your patrons.
Critter Cafe has garnered a lot of excitement from the cozy and casual communities leading up to its release, and while we’re pleased to be bringing you a detailed review of it, we have a lot of thoughts, so let’s jump in!
The Story…
This segment is going to be a short one, and while I feel inclined to apologize for it, Critter Cafe is more or less a cafe management game. Its intent clearly wasn’t to have a detailed story with layers of character development or background as to why these little critters have suddenly been abandoned and need help. In fact, the entire plot is a bit vague and the only reason we’ve set off on these adventures at all is because some mysterious person has been sending us letters and objects of importance that will aid us in rescuing said creatures. They simply tell us where to look and the rest is up to us.
Now, I don’t view this as a problem. It’s not the first time a shop-sim has given us just a taste of lore and left us to enjoy our cozy decorating and management aspects of the game. I often don’t complain when this is the case as if the gameplay is done well, then a story isn’t needed, but more on that a bit later on.
Running the Cafe…
One of the main tasks you’ll be given is to, you guessed it, run your cafe. When you first arrive you’re given a few things to decorate with to spruce the place up and make it cozy. Then, you’ll be taught how to serve coffee and lattes, cut cake, and serve meals from the deli. The customers are incredibly patient and the days are short, so if you’re dreading the idea of long coffee services where you’re running around scared of losing your patrons, don’t be. In fact, most days you only have time to serve six to seven customers as the service ends quickly. That being said, your day is broken up into two portions, so you can theoretically perform two services should you choose.
Before you start each service, you’ll have the option to choose which critter you’d like to accompany you, and depending on how many customers you serve during it, you’ll increase your bond and shop rating. The more people you manage to get to in a day, the more experience both will gain, and I often found that doing two services, rather than two bookings, or even one service and a booking, yielded far higher amounts of experience in both categories. As your shop climbs higher up the ranks, you’ll also unlock more slots to host more creatures in your cafe. This might sound fun, but there were often times they would intentionally trip me up or block me into a small space, slowing down the overall service. I suppose it’s okay, they are pretty cute but be prepared to play pet dodging simulator as well.
The other option within the cafe is hosting parties, or as they’re called in the game, bookings. These have a variety of themes for the guests, ranging from lunch dates, arts and crafts parties, and even karaoke or gaming nights. You’ll pick the decorations per what they’ve requested, select the theme, and choose a critter to join them. A good thing to bear in mind is that picking the right options for your bookings will result in higher experience gain for your shop and creature companions. So, if they’re asking for something with an extra fluffy tail, make sure you deliver.
The Critters and how to find them…
Okay, you know how the shop works, but how do you acquire these so-called floofy companions that are going to make your cafe a cozy place to be? Well, as I mentioned briefly above, an odd stranger is going to be sending you letters and curious items along with them. They’ll tell you to head out into the world - more on that further down - to find mysterious portals. Once you step through them you’ll be greeted by a world filled with puzzles you’ll have to cleverly outsmart so that you might save a critter in need.
The puzzles themselves are simple in nature but will require you to use a bit of brain power to get past the more challenging ones later in the game. I wouldn’t deem any of them as particularly hard, but I can say that I felt these puzzle realms were decently thought out and cohesive. Your special tools will upgrade over time and you’ll need to change the way you look at each puzzle as you get further into the game. I appreciate that there was enough variety in these realms to keep your mind active.
Critter Bonding & Perks…
Once you manage your way through the puzzle realms and secure a few cute friends to call your own, you’ll be introduced to a new area in the game called ‘the habitat’. This is an area that you can decorate and customize for your furry or feathery friends and each with its own biomes and habitat decorations. The entire space is shared though, so even if your critter prefers the cold, you might stumble across them chilling on the beach enjoying a sunny day for a change. It was a cleverly cohesive way to offer players an extra-large piece of land to beautify and an interactive space where you can play with, bathe, and care for your critters.
One thing to note is that you can choose to run around with and interact with your companions individually, wherever they might be in the world, or use the little bell at the front to select from and choose which companion you want to summon to interact with. Believe me, it saves you a lot of time and energy when there’s just one little furry friend who needs a good grooming and you can’t find wherever their hiding spot is. So, whichever you prefer, know there’s an option for both.
Regardless of how much you pet and play with your critters, the only thing that actually levels them up and helps you bond with them is using them during a service or booking in the cafe. Once you’ve managed to level them up, you’ll unlock new coat skins and a unique perk. These vary from granting bonus experience for themselves, bonus experience for the cafe, and even faster bonding time with you. Each creature will only be allowed one perk, but you can use multiple critters during daily tasks to maximize potential, so be careful to check what perks you’re stacking for each event.
The only other thing that boosts experience gains is treats given to critters within the habitat. As you level up you’ll be granted certain items, a common one being treats. While one of these will just grant a flat stamina point if your friend is out of energy, the others relate to bonus experience during their next service or booking. This is especially helpful if you're looking to quickly boost your bonding levels and maximize the number of critters you level up each day.
The world outside your shop…
When it comes to things to do that don’t involve rescuing or caring for cute critters and cafe services, well, there isn’t much. The only other option is to explore one of the three zones that unlock as you play the game. Each area has a unique biome and oodles of NPCs to wave at as you sprint by, and honestly, they’re pretty well-decorated. Each offered a nice aesthetic that spiced up the game a bit and reminded us that we ‘sort of’ exist outside our small shop and critter care.
Some motivation lies in exploring the zones as you’ll find a variety of item and clothing blueprints in each area. The first time one would unlock I’d spend a good fifteen minutes chasing them all down, and I still had a few left towards the end of the game, so count on some to be well hidden. Other than that though, these zones' sole purpose is to be where you go to find portals and unlock new critters.
Upgrades & Customization…
I mentioned unlocking upgrades as you level up your shop and critters, plus blueprints scattered around the world, but what do these actually do? Well, put simply, they allow you to beautify your cafe and critter habitats. Each has a different theme to it, from simple wood and stone tables and chairs to gold leaf couches and grandfather clocks, and even items for your critters to make them more comfortable, such as cat climbing trees and cozy beds to snuggle up in. This is the bread and butter of what customizes your cafe to be yours.
My particular favorite feature was the decent-sized color palette that allowed pure creative freedom. If you want a grossly pink coffee shop or an icy cold white one, you can have it. Jokes aside, I played around for a good hour with designing my little shop and habitats and it’s probably one of the better features of the game. If you love setting up classic, cozy, or cool environments, you’ll likely enjoy what Critter Cafe offers in this department. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not Sims 4, let’s be reasonable, but for an indie cafe shop sim game it’s at least above average.
The Graphics & Audio…
What first drew me to Critter Cafe, even before its release, was its adorable art style. From the round, chibi-inspired creatures to the anime-esque NPC characters, the game caters perfectly to those who appreciate a vibrant, charming aesthetic. All-around, a well-designed game in the graphics and art department.
The audio was also on par, having some lovely background music and ambiance, but I’ll gripe a bit that the critters’ sounds did tend to lean on the edge of cute yet slightly annoying after you’d heard it a few dozen times during services or when playing with them. Other than that though, I didn’t have any complaints in terms of audio.
Our Critique & Overall Rating…
Now that we’ve run through the multiple aspects of the game itself, let’s talk about our thoughts around it all, as I do have a few.
On the positive side, I adored the concept of the game. Going out and rescuing the critters from a puzzle realm and returning to our cafe with a new fuzzy, fluffy, or feathery friend, was fun. Getting to deck out their habitats with trees, trinkets, and even entire small buildings, was another aspect that I found myself enjoying. Additionally, managing the cafe in the beginning was a lot of fun, especially with the option to take breaks or simply complete bookings, rather than feeling pressured to constantly run the restaurant. That being said, I have a big complaint regarding the overall experience, and that was the pace.
At the start of a new day, I’d open the restaurant once, and serve all of six, maybe seven customers, before it ended. Then, usually, a new critter would appear due to leveling up. Anytime a new critter appears I’d take the second portion of my day to go pick up my new friend from whatever portal they were stuck through. That would then end the day, and so I’d go visit the new critter, care for them so that I could use them in my shop, and then rinse and repeat in that near exact fashion, every day. Eventually, I got so tired of doing the same routine, because there were over 35 critters and a ton to go chase down, that I’d just stop going critter hunting entirely and run my cafe for a few days at a time. After just a few days I had fifteen different quests and portals open all over the three maps and as I was still attempting to raise my bonding levels with my existing ones, well let’s just say I experienced a bit of quest and critter overload and it genuinely dampened my experience.
Perhaps if there’d been fewer critters to find, or had them locked behind more challenging puzzles. Maybe if they’d just left me to tend my restaurant and enjoy my critter friends before opening up the quests, then it would’ve been a more balanced experience. I felt so torn between always having to go save a new creature, and getting to actually enjoy my time as a cafe owner.
The other gripe is that even though I overall enjoyed the cafe service parts, the minigames did as minigames always do and got repetitive to the point of being tedious. In the end, I was doing bookings all day because the service minigames had been beaten to death in my mind and I just didn’t want to do them anymore. It would’ve been better if they’d allowed you to serve more people by having zero minigames and just needing to run back and forth between customers, rather than only getting a few orders in, but having the tediousness of always doing active games to fulfill orders.
One suggestion would be to have certain critters that eliminate the need to complete the tasks related to the cafe altogether. This would allow you to get to more customers and ultimately have a bigger overall impact on your game, rather than just some bonus experience or bonding. I absolutely would’ve felt motivated to go and get that critter and max them out, that’s for sure.
My only last bit of critique to add is that the information to find the portals around the world was sometimes so vague that I was convinced they didn’t exist. Particularly in the snowy biome I’d been given a clue to go find a portal by the igloos. I pulled up my map as every adventurer does and was greeted with no small icons of igloos and no helpful marker showing me where to go either. I’m all for a good scavenger hunt, but I tend to be good at them. I fear for those who are quicker to frustrate if they don’t enjoy going around in circles for a few minutes.
In Conclusion…
All-in-all, I feel incredibly neutral about Critter Cafe, and that’s why I’ve awarded in our neutral rating. I want to love it because of its cute atmospheres and environments, plus the charming, even if a tad annoying, chirps of our critter friends, but I felt hindered by a lack of original gameplay by a few hours in and frustrated by repetitive minigames that felt more like a side thought than a mechanic that should’ve existed late in the game. There were enough areas that I enjoyed not to give it a negative overall score, but also enough lacking that I couldn’t see myself going and playing it again until they fixed up a few things, so for now, I’ll let you decide if it’s a game you’ll find more, or perhaps less, enjoyable than I did.
A kind thanks to their team for providing a review code for us to check the game out, we’re excited to see how it moves forward into the future. Please feel free to share your own thoughts or ask any questions in the comments section, we’ll be glad to review and respond to them.
Note: We were provided a review code for the purpose of playing and reviewing the game, but we were not paid or promoted for this review.
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