Critter Café combines café management and puzzle solving into a delightful combination. You have lots of critters to rescue and a café to decorate as you wish. The game does stumble over itself in some areas such as café operations, becoming less relaxing overtime. Give the game a chance and it will grow on you, delivering a soothing experience that heals your heart.
Victor Tan
Critter Café
When the hustle of city life becomes too much, you take over a café in a rural area. As you take care of your customers, you soon learn of small creatures hidden inside another realm. These critters are rightfully suspicious but warm up to you quickly. Explore the world and find more critters to take care of. At the same time, turn your café into the relaxing spot it was meant to be with the help of the critters.
Critter Café combines creature care, café management, and puzzle solving together in a soothing combination. It is nice to relax without the pressures of business management while letting your critters run free. Running your café isn’t perfect and rescuing critters becomes an unusually complex affair. But when it comes to relaxing and applying your personal touch, Critter Café is perfect.
Critter Café is available on PC and Nintendo Switch for USD 19.99.
When a portal opens, that means there’s a critter to rescue.
Table of Contents show
Story – Running a Café with Critters
Your character decides to leave their city life and move to a rural café that doubles as your home. As you learn the basic operations, a letter arrives from a mysterious sender. You learn of critters in another realm that are in trouble. After rescuing your first critter, it stays in your café and warms up to you. Eventually, you learn of more critters that need help, expanding your café and travels to help them.
The story is similar to games such as Cuisneer where you take over an establishment and build it up. There is no pressure and you can do whatever you like without rent or upkeep. You can progress through the story at a pace that’s comfortable to you. It’s a 10-12 hour game but it can be longer if you want to take things slowly. Your big goal is acquiring all the critters in the game while exploring the world.
How you design your cafe has a big impact on your customers.
The lack of pressure gives you time to adapt to any new additions or develop your critters. Even after the game is over, you can run your café in peace. There are few antagonists if you can even use that word. It’s mainly rescuing critters, exploring the world, and running your café in peace. It’s not a sophisticated story but it doesn’t need to be. That’s what makes it nice and relaxing especially after a stressful day.
Gameplay – Puzzle Solving with Management
Running your café depends on your decoration skills and speed. You must serve customers based on your seating layout and their requests. Depending on your progress, you have new items to serve and critters that can help you. You must do everything yourself and thankfully, there are no targets when it comes to serving customers. Depending on your speed, you can serve as many or as few customers as you like.
You can arrange parties to show off your critters and make someone’s day.
The game progresses if you choose to pursue story objectives. It’s similar to Cruise Ship Manager in that you can progress as you like, taking time to adapt to the game. This lets you build your existing bond with your critters and adapt to your café’s offerings. Letting you choose your pace reinforces the cozy environment; there’s benefits to progressing but you don’t have to do it.
Rescuing critters is a simple affair; you solve puzzles in the other realm. As you rescue critters, these puzzles get progressively harder. It feels considerably less cozy as the game goes on because the puzzle length starts getting longer. This is one of the game’s biggest weaknesses, as the cozy experience runs into some self-inflicted problems.
There’s always something to do, like explore a new area.
Difficulty – Slowing Everything Down
One of the game’s biggest drawbacks is the complexity of some of the gameplay mechanics. Some are easy but others are deceptively difficult. One example is latte coffee art. It’s not inherently hard to draw but it takes much longer than other activities. This delays the customers you can serve and the effect is notable. While you aren’t desperate for sales or meeting targets, it does feel weird to spend lots of time on art.
Having more complex puzzles also doesn’t feel relaxing as it involves lots of thinking. If you get stuck, it’s frustrating to continue for a critter. While obtaining critters shouldn’t be too easy, it does feel as if the puzzles get complex for no reason. It’s not a peaceful game if you are struggling to find the timing to solve puzzles.
At some point, solving puzzles feels like a painful chore.
It feels like the calm and relaxing environment clashes with the growing difficulty, introducing frustration unnecessarily. While it isn’t game-breaking, it definitely feels like some activities weren’t fully thought out. Playing the game in short bursts can cut down on the frustration but doesn’t fix most of the problems.
Audio & Visual – Adorable Critters, Soothing Music
The game’s visuals are easy to appreciate when you can decorate your character however you like. Even the café’s interior is yours to control. That lets you add your personal touch and make your mark on the game. Changes aren’t permanent either, letting you redecorate and redesign based on your preferences. It drives home that this is your character and café. The designs are cozy and simple, fun to look at and work with.
The critter design is one of the game’s best aspects.
This is true of the critter designs as well. There are a variety of critters and they are all adorable. It’s easy to figure out what traits a critter has to identify who is good for parties. You quickly develop your favourites though every critter looks cute. Having them around your café becomes a joyful affair because you can control the experience. With a large number of critters, it’s easy to rotate them throughout the day to avoid getting bored.
The music in Critter Café is also soothing and not too loud. You never hear much of it even when exploring different realms. It’s in the background and doesn’t disrupt you by being too loud. Even the sound effects don’t disrupt your experience too much and it makes it easier to focus on the game.
- You use a variety of tools to help you solve complex puzzles.
- Coffee art is just one activity that takes too much time.
- Blueprints help you craft more items for customisation.
- Every critter start off weary, but eventually warms up to you.
Critter Café was reviewed on Steam with a code provided by the publisher from secretmode.games.
