Review: Cat Cafe Manager is purrfectly suited to any cozy game library

I’m a big lover of time management games, which is funny since I hate time limits. I’m, also, an old cat lady at heart. So, when you combine two of my favorite things together, you’re always going to get me interested.

Even if this game wasn’t in a Humble Bundle deal, I still would have put this in my shopping cart. Between the cute cartoony-style graphics and the multiple cats you can adopt, this was always going to be my kryptonite.

Gameplay and Controls

The story for Cat Cafe Manager is basic, but it doesn’t have to be great since it isn’t what drives gameplay. So, it’s perfectly fine that it’s not heavily story-driven. Once you’ve made your character, you’re dropped into their shoes. Those shoes happen to be standing in a barren lot with a strange fisherman standing in the open.

It turns out that when you moved from Caterwaul as a child, your grandmother stayed behind to tend to her cafe. This is presented to us in such a way as to illuminate that we didn’t know about Grandma’s cafe until after her death. Not only has she entrusted this cafe to you, but apparently it has been razed to the ground. There’s no reason as to why the cafe was blipped out of existence. All we know is that we have a blank canvas to work from.

There is some background mention of a company called ‘Hawkable’ who seems to be trying to shove their way in on a realestate front, but it’s something you learn about by upgrading friendships, which I will go more into later. 

The game does a lot of infodumping right at the beginning and it’s pretty easy to feel a little overwhelmed. It definitely gives the idea that gameplay will need to be more technical than it actually is. Let me tell you that you can pretty much safely ignore this upfront and just refer to the guide as needed. 

Gameplay is very, very simple, it’s really just the customer types that require all the information. Though, I will say, bear in mind that when you hire staff, you can pick and choose their tasks. For instance, they can cook and deal with customers and you can assign one to cook and one to serve in the server toggles. This is important to know because I wasted a lot off upgrade points in getting my servers high in both cooking and serving. That’s my bad for skimming. Otherwise, I haven’t had any issues.

For customers, you have 6 basic types. They have different food requirements and they pay in different forms. So, you technically have 6 forms of payment. And, just like with the servers where you can choose what they focus on, you can pick and choose which customers show up. So, if you need a certain resource, it’s very easy to farm what you need!

The types are:

• Fishermen who pay with fish, which you’ll use mostly in the pet emporium for toys, food, and most importantly, lures. You need these lures to get more cats.
• Artists who pay in jewels which is what the furniture shop prefers. 
• Witches who pay with nectar which is mostly spent on recipes and ingredients needed to keep the shop stocked for orders.
• Vagabonds pay with fabrics which can be used on tables and chairs in the furniture shop.
• Businesspeople pay in gold which you’ll need to get luxury furniture. 
• Punks pay in materials which are useful for building out the size of your cafe.

You’re not just serving customers and building up your store though. There are 6 people that you can build friendships with and many different types of cats to adopt for your cafe. They each represent the types of customers that frequent your establishment and when you level them up, you get perks as well as opening up more in the Cat Shrine.

Speaking of, there’s an area on the map that’s in the clearing of a forest. There are four cat topiaries that stand guard and this is where you do all your upgrading. You can pay for these upgrades through customer’s ‘delight’. They amass as you properly take care of patrons and only go toward upgrades.

Surprisingly, it’s pretty quick to get leveled up. You generally get all the things you need up to max level before certain levels of friendships are required to open up more options.

Art and Sound

The style is cartoony and whimsical. I found it very charming and felt like the cast was diverse. Most avatars are just randomized, but the few that you can build friendships with all had thoughtful designs and personalities that matched their typing.

While it’s standard for upgrade games to have a lot of variance in how to decorate, I thought the themes were cute and varied enough that you’re able to personalize your cat cafe to your liking. Personally, I was elated to finally open up the Harvest furniture. 

As far as music goes, it’s fairly good. None of the tracks are going to be eventual earworms, but they were good enough to be spared from being muted for several hours in. Once the repetitive nature of gameplay picked up, I switched to my personal playlist so I wouldn’t notice so much of the grind. 

Coziness and Cons

What makes this game cozy may also be an eventual con. While the game does unload quite a bit in the beginning for the tutorial, it’s a pretty basic concept of taking, making, and then delivering orders. Once you get some staff, you can basically assign quadrants and limit what you need to be doing.

For me, I made everyone else servers and stuck to being the main cook. This means that I’m basically just floating around in my kitchen the entire day. Of course, you could assign a cook and be one of the ones running around the main floor, but the problem still persists that this can become stagnant.

What happens here is that the game basically becomes a grinding scenario where you’re just going through the days to upgrade at the shrine. 

If you don’t like the feeling of some grind, you’ll probably dislike this game in the long run. 

Cat Cafe Manager Verdict

I had tons of fun with Cat Cafe Manager and while I could simplify gameplay at points, the challenge always ramped up enough that I never felt like I was just spinning my wheels. As friendships level up, requirements increase. So, you still have quite a bit to juggle even if you play it the way that I do by just manning the kitchens.

If you want to try out Cat Cafe Manager, you can get it on Steam or Nintendo Switch for $19.99. If time management isn’t your thing, you might have more fun with the platforming adventure game we recently reviewed, Here Comes Niko!