Lately, there have been a handful of cozy games moving past the farming sim and leaning towards hospitality and the food service industry. One of those games is Critter Café by Sumo Digital. In this indie title, not only do you get to run your own café, but you’ll also embark on a quest to save some critters. But will this game be able to stand out from its competition?

Critter Café immediately gets the ball rolling by taking you to the café after you create your character. From there, you start decorating your café and serving customers. The moment your café grows in reputation, you get packages from “a friend” who’s asking you to enter various portals around Golden Leaf Isle and rescue a variety of critters. Soon, word gets out that your café also features these magical animals that you’ve saved, and customers are keen to meet them.

There are two types of gameplay ideas that Critter Café has to offer – café management and dungeoneering. In the café, you have a choice to either partake in booking requests or serve customers. The booking mechanic has you picking which event you want to host and ensuring that the furniture, activities, and critter profile match the request. It’s pretty simple, especially when you’ve saved more critters. You don’t have to redecorate your entire café to do these bookings as it’s done automatically through cut scenes. If you choose to serve customers, you will be enjoying restaurant service gameplay that’s different from games like Diner Dash or Rolling Hills: Make Sushi, Make Friends. Instead, you’ll be subjected to mini-games when preparing food. Whether it’s making sure the coffee is brewed just right, the cake is cut evenly, or being able to memorize your customer’s orders—it adds a bit of pressure and somewhat exposes you to what actual café servers go through in their career. As your café’s reputation levels increase, these mini-game challenges get more difficult.

Critter Café takes place in Golden Leaf Isle. It’s a huge place, where each area you visit has a lot of things to see and aspects that make them unique and stand out. It’s just a shame you can’t interact with the world. What do you mean I can’t ride the Ferris wheel or talk with the locals? The various places this game has to offer have the potential for interactivity between the critter rescue and the café operation, but that seems to be non-existent. Also, due to the sheer size of the various places, there is a chance you may get lost. While there are signs around, as well as access to a map, there is no fast travel system. So expect to run around constantly without being able to fully immerse yourself in the world. It would be cool to do some side activities when exploring.

This whole game is well detailed and the art style is pretty cute for cozy game standards. The critters are very adorable and stand out to the likes of Palworld and Pokémon. The game’s human characters don’t do much other than just be set-dressing in various locations. When you approach them, they just make this humming gibberish sound but don’t offer anything like thoughts or excitement about the café or anything. In addition, raising your friendship levels with your critters can only be done through café activities, meaning there is no incentive to return to the habitat and care for them unless you want to customize their appearance. There’s a missed opportunity to do more with the care mechanic, with games like Pokémon Sun and Moon having your Pokémon benefit from you feeding and petting them constantly. It feels like no connection is being built, either with the humans or the critters.

In the end, this magical place that looks lively on the surface kind of feels bland and dry, and you’re just stuck in this endless repetition of tasks that you can’t seem to get a break from. Critter Café does try to make up for its lack of immersion with blueprint collecting and the free café and character customisation, but it’s not enough, especially if the world is as big as this.