The thing I’ve always found odd about so-called “cozy” and “wholesome” games is how intense they can often be. Sure, on the surface you’re just arranging boxes or running a cat café, but you’re constantly being judged and under a timer and facing a budget and striving to achieve something. For a genre that you’d think would be laidback and relaxed, the games rarely are.
Which is what makes Critter Café such a rarity. It’s a cozy, wholesome game about running a café and collecting weird creatures, and it’s got to be the most chill game imaginable. There are no real timers, no pressing objectives, nothing that could cause you stress in any way. It’s wonderful.
I mean, maybe this says more about me than it does about the genre. But as someone who feels the implicit pressure in cozy games about getting everything just so, Critter Café is a welcome change of pace.
You notice this right off the bat when you have to design your character and your café. While you may not have everything you could possibly want, the game doesn’t place many restrictions on you. You can place as much decor and furniture as you could possibly want, and you never once have to worry about a budget. Similarly, once the café opens for business, customers are remarkably laidback about their orders: there’s no timer, there’s no real penalty for screwing up an order, and you never have to worry about bringing in money because the café is always bustling.
Just about the only place where you face any real challenge is when it comes to collecting the titular critters – and even here, we’re using “challenge” in the loosest sense of the word. You have a few fairly simple environmental puzzles to solve, and at the end of them you just have to walk up to the creature and it’s yours. As long as you make sure to go to your creature habitat every so often to brush them, clean them, or throw a ball around with them – and even then, the game hardly pressures you to do any of that – you’re pretty much set.
I know that a lot of people like their games to be challenging, and I can respect that – but I also respect Critter Café for taking the exact opposite approach. It’s quite possibly the most relaxed – and relaxing – game I’ve ever placed, and I loved every second of my time with it.
Sumo Digital provided us with a Critter Café PC code for review purposes.
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