Review of Cat Cafe Manager: It's the best thing ever

The experience of

Cat Cafe Manager is really amazing. I've been following this kitten-themed simulation since Roost Games first revealed it in 2020, and I've been reading the dev blogs religiously ever since. I'm happy to report that I haven't been let down.

Like in Stardew Valley, you begin as a city dweller moving to the country to start over, except this time you're renovating your grandmother Nain's dilapidated cat café rather than a farm. However, there are no buildings to be seen when you first get to Cataurwal—just an empty field. Your adventure starts when you encounter Bonner, an elderly fisherman with "chafed knuckles and smiling eyes," at that point.

As soon as you launch the menu, the game is quite appealing. A calm image with a tabby cat sitting in a window and its tail swinging as a steaming hot cup of coffee is shown in the foreground welcomes you. You might easily mistake this for any low-key, relaxed beats YouTube broadcast, which accurately describes the type of soothing experience you may expect. In the smallest possible ways, the loading bar even adds even more personality by flashing cute messages while you wait, such as "spinning yarn" and "gathering magic toads."

The whole game is filled with this endearing focus on relaxation and attention to detail. How seriously you take it will all depend on how you grow your company, adopt additional kitties, and meet new clients. Although the dev blogs point out, Roost Games worked very hard to strike a balance between entertaining gameplay and a tranquil ambiance, and that's certainly visible in every adorable and cozy small nook of the game, there's enough complexity to consider this as a sensible business sim.

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The ensemble of fantastic, distinctive individuals makes for a basic yet really endearing narrative. Even though Bonner is unquestionably my favorite, I think everyone of them has a certain allure of their own, whether it is the sour punk with a hidden like for cooking or the upbeat, hopeful witch who is now going through some family issues. As the characters come back to your café, you become friends with them and assist them with choices. In exchange, they give you presents of new, unique cat lures and lovely furnishings. Each character has their own difficulties and hobbies.

Though it may be a bit basic at times, the character interaction is lively, endearing, and sometimes poignant, and the interconnected stories of the Caterwaul residents really bring the world of Cat Cafe Manager to life. Furthermore, they have amazing designs; in fact, each and every one of the game's illustrations is charming and exudes a happy, Steven Universe meets Studio Ghibli atmosphere. I will do all in my power to defend the kitties and all of the characters that I like.

I'll stop raving about the characters and atmosphere now. How is the gameplay? I think it's just beautiful, however. The game's three primary regions are the location of your cafe, the town where you may buy for supplies for your business and pets at places like Gruff Decorations and the Pet Emporium, and the enigmatic shrine (more on that later). Although the spaces are compact and straightforward, they are well designed and very user-friendly.

You spend much of the game wandering about your cafe, interacting with and serving customers, taking care of your utilities, wiping up spills, and generally keeping your operation running. You may use the construction mode to quickly develop your café and add new furnishings as you accumulate more resources. Although it may sometimes seem a bit clunky, the construction mode is simple to use and straightforward, although I did occasionally run into a few glitches when arranging things around people and staff throughout the day.

You may gradually acquire a vast array of furniture, walls, floors, and utilities. All of these items can be placed on an isometric, top-down snap grid that makes it simple to coordinate your pieces. Even if your initial selections and resources are quite restricted, it will still be very enjoyable to earn additional things and see your café transform into something that really fits your interests.

When it comes to cats, you have three alternatives to choose from at first, but as you advance, you may use a range of lures to attract stray animals and then go out and touch them to gain their confidence. You'll eventually be able to access additional lures, some of which are special and designed to attract uncommon, cat-shaped critters. I get giddy with anticipation every time I lay eyes on a new kind of bait, wondering what adorable little creature may land on my doorstep next.

Although you can only have a certain amount of cats at a time, you shouldn't just adopt every cat that passes by and use up all of your space right once. I made that mistake during my first playtime and quickly realized how foolish I was. Rather, consider adopting each cat as you would a real one; this way, you'll avoid having a lot of zoomy cats running around your cafe, causing chaos, yelling about food, and leaving little messes all over the floor. Make sure your cafe has enough litter boxes, food, and toys to keep them happy before you bring them in, or at the very least, make sure you have enough money to buy these items as soon as the kitty arrives.

Remember that the local community board is always posting ads for adoptable cats, so if you find yourself with an excess of cuddly toys or come across another homeless kitten, you can find new homes for your current companions and exchange even more supplies for happiness for the Caterwaul community.

In the game, various kinds of clients pay with different kinds of resources, such as wood, diamonds, fabric, fish, and more, rather than one common global money. If there's anything special you require, you may target a certain kind of consumer by using the advertising option in your menu. For instance, wood is a resource that punks supply if you wish to increase the size of your café. As such, you should use the board to promote to punks and make sure you have lots of food, comfortable furniture, and appealing pets.

Even if I'm warning you now, you should never stop marketing to witches. The most helpful resource in the game is undoubtedly the nectar they pay you, which is required to buy recipes and supplies. Because ingredients are so pricey, you often run out of them. Though first a little daunting, managing all these many resources gives the game a real feeling of complexity and difficulty. I can spend hours of entertainment figuring out how to balance resources to keep my customers satisfied, my cabinets filled, and my animals' bellies full.

One of your key objectives is to please your customers, in addition to enjoying the time you spend managing your resources, spending time with your kitties, and customizing your café. Satisfy their desires to raise their level of contentment in order to create joy, which is used to improve the shrine.

It can be challenging to satisfy every customer's needs, particularly as you go along and they start to have more expectations. For example, businessmen may want the most luxurious chairs in the world, or witches may want an endless supply of toilets. Nevertheless, there is always something to strive for in order to satisfy everyone. Don't worry, however; even if you get more money when your clients are completely satisfied, there is never a failure condition. Therefore, it's quite okay if, one day, for some strange reason, you decide to spend the whole day starring at your kitties and not serving a single client; the next morning, business as usual will resume.

In Cat Cafe Manager, there are mild RPG aspects that offer a palpable feeling of growth in addition to the usual game mechanics of growing your cafe, collecting resources, and attracting customers and cats. That shrine enters the picture here as well. Following your first day at the café, you make the unexpectedly similar-looking Grimalkin, a talking cat who was your grandmother's buddy. He takes you to an unkempt shrine that you may improve by completing tasks that are part of a skill tree. These projects open up a number of features, such as more seats and kitty spaces, new furniture sets, and the option to recruit staff members via the community board to assist you in running your cafe.

You must have some joy if you are to complete these endeavors. Certain projects are also contingent upon achieving certain degrees of friendship with your regulars, which you may do by giving them a call and encouraging frequent visits to your café.

Each of you, your animals, and your employees has unique abilities and characteristics. You may improve your abilities in cleaning, cooking, serving, taming pets, and other areas as you advance in level. You can also choose features on a regular basis. These characteristics might include working more quickly at certain times of the day, mastering a particular talent, and more. Your cats work on the same principle; however, their abilities rely on the kinds of clients they form bonds with. Their qualities include a variety of useful things, such as reducing the amount of food they need, increasing your resource earnings, and even deterring your clients from ever leaving garbage. Yes, it was well worth it to make the deal with the extraterrestrial cat.

At first, juggling all of these components might seem a bit difficult and laborious, but as you get into a rhythm and have access to personnel who can automate some tasks, the gameplay becomes more fluid and soothing. The gameplay of Cat Cafe Manager gains a delightful complexity from the RPG components and resource management, which deftly expand upon the foundations laid by earlier business simulators while maintaining accessibility for gamers unfamiliar with the genre.

From a technical aspect, the game functions well most of the time; the only obvious lag is during the first load period. After that, everything loads quickly and responds quickly. I did have some performance problems and sporadic frame drops, particularly during peak hours when I had a large number of customers and after I had completely expanded and stocked my café. But, they weren't a significant enough issue for me to find them to interfere with my pleasure, whether in handheld or docked form. I have sometimes found it difficult to focus on interaction hitboxes like clearing a spill or accepting an order, and in order to resolve this issue, I've had to repeatedly move away and reposition myself.

Though I think the main song loop is a little too short and monotonous, the original soundtrack and sound effects are adorable and heartwarming, and they really give you that evening coffee shop atmosphere. There's only so much you can listen to this if you play it as much as I have, at which point you'll probably become impatient and mute it to listen to something else. Of course, that may just be me. Before I evaluated the game, no one requested me to finish it almost three times.

Cat Cafe Manager is a cute and straightforward little game that, despite its easygoing appeal, conceals a surprising amount of complexity in the shape of complex business simulation techniques. This has fast become a comfort game for me since I have a chronic health problem. There's nothing better than cuddling up with a cup of tea and playing Cat Cafe Manager to drive away the blues on especially difficult days.