Critter Café review

Your first hour or so with Critter Café is a dopamine drip-feed of coziness. After creating a look for your chibi-style avatar, you are whisked away to a folksy coffee shop, given to you from a friend named Jessica. Sure, with cartons laying around and frayed curtains, the place looks a bit worn. But there are no Tom Nook-style economics found in Sumo Newcastle’s latest effort.

Instead of using currency to purchase replacements, in-game progress unlocks access to new items. As such, you can immediately switch out those worn-out tables and chairs for new ones. And when you tire of the color scheme used in your café, you can freely substitute new ones or even completely revamp your coffee shop, adding cosmetic items like rugs, plants, and even arcade cabinets. The autonomy associated with interior decoration makes Critter Café feel promising.

Referencing Classics, Without Understanding Their Allure

Soon, you will get to venture outside of your café to investigate areas where progress is inhibited by a series of sokoban-style box pushing puzzles. Get past these headscratchers and you will be able to recruit 35 different critters across the game’s twelve-hour campaign. After a bit of Tamagotchi-esque washing, brushing, and fetching, these Pokémon-looking creatures will follow you back to work.

But after that first hour, your life descends into a monotonous bore. At the café, patrons will sit down and place orders, resulting in Diner Dash-like mini-games where you make latte art, slice cake, pour coffee, and memorize orders. But even with a marginally escalating difficulty, this quartet of QTEs soon grows tedious. Lattes are the worst offender, with a rhythm game-style drudgery that made me wince every time a customer ordered one.

Just as disheartening, the critters themselves are largely superfluous. Beyond feeding them items to increase your experience point payouts, there are few opportunities for bonding. Mostly, you will just unlock different skins for them which are shown in a recurring cutscene where they perform for café customers. Oddly, you can place different playthings for your critters around the café, but they won’t interact with them. Beyond being an attraction for hosted parties, they don’t have much of a role in the game.

The Coffee Grind

Several hours after starting Critter Café, there is the unsettling notion that you have witnessed almost everything on offer. Subsequent shifts at the café recycle the same monotonous mini-games. Although exploration adds tools like a hammer, boomerang, and wings, the brainteasers can feel like speedbumps, slowing your speed through the game rather than offering any real sense of accomplishment. But Critter Café’s biggest misstep is the lonesomeness of its lead character. Beyond the occasional mailed letter that nudges the skeletal plot along, you will not connect with any NPCs. With customers at the coffee shop only giving orders and no attachment when cultivating with your critters, running your business can feel downright lonely.

Games like Stardew Valley, Story of Seasons, and Rune Factory are fun because there is always a goal that you are chasing, whether it is maximizing your ROI with a crop of eggplants or romancing one of the locals. Although Critter Café’s character art is impressive, there is no sense of urgency. Even worse, the title’s components feel disjointed and little effort was made to unify the game’s various components.

Conclusion

Before long, the satisfaction of unlocking new equipment and additional creatures will no longer give gratification. This is the gamified version of a life crisis, where you have to consider if continuing onward will bring any fulfillment. Take it from someone who stuck it out, get out while you can. There are far better ways to spend your time.

Critter Café was played on PC with review code provided by the publisher.