// Previews // 29th Aug 2024 — 4 months ago // By Bex Prouse

Let's Café Preview

Let's Café is a cute little 2D click-and-drag game which was developed and published by Hurgle Studios. I knew this was going to be a dangerous game for me going in, as it involves serving food and drinks to adorable animals who are frequenting your establishment.

Upon starting, you’re given the option to name your café, so naturally, I named it “Over There” so the customers will want to go over there. It was all a clever marketing ploy, and it worked! The animals are flooding my café, but it’s not quite as easy as just clicking and dragging your ingredients to the 3x3 grid.

Putting recipes together for customers orders in the game.

There’s an order to how you place your food and drinks, and getting it wrong will mean that you’ll need to reset the grid and drag everything all over again. You’ll be able to find out which ingredients are in the wrong place with the help of your handy-dandy recipe book; it’s even alphabetised!

In the beginning, you’ll need to be careful. Before the shop opens, look at what you have ingredients for. If you don’t have the ingredients, you can take it off the menu. If you run out during the shift? Then go to the recipe book quickly and remove that item from the menu, stat! You don’t want to disappoint the animals do you? No? Didn’t think so.

An example of the recipes available in the game.

Don’t worry if you do run out of ingredients, though. You can purchase more at the Shop. However, the Shop will change daily, and stock won’t refresh while you’re on the clock. I ended up spending a good amount of time thinking of what would be best to include. But also, don’t do what I did, I bought everything at first, and it took me a while to realise I could sell it back to the shop if I didn’t need them.

You’ll need to organise your shelf to make sure everything is easy to find, and surprisingly, I quite liked it. You basically need to think everything through, and best of all? The customers aren’t rude. Look, I work in retail. I usually dread these kinds of games because I play videogames to escape, not go back to work. But, with this one, I found that a couple of minutes could quickly turn into several hours.

Viewing the shop and the different upgrades in the game.

With a relaxing lofi soundtrack to listen to while you play, it makes for quite a pleasant experience. However, if you get tired of the same music on repeat, I found that this pairs well with audiobooks and my Spotify playlist. Either my customers will have to join me in listening to my books, or they’ll have to listen to an emo playlist, but either way, it makes for a pleasant time.

Let’s Café is quite challenging as well. Some customers will ask for recipes that won’t be on the menu. I had to keep tabs on what they were asking for, as the customers who asked have specific storylines going on. Most of your customers don’t, but the ones with names will have some stuff happening. Unfortunately, they don’t come by that often, so it’s hard to keep prepared, especially as you don’t know what will be in the Shop each day.

Coach Onawa has a storyline based on his name and dialogue.

When you do well with a customer, they’ll give you a star rating. These stars can be gathered to buy new recipes and new upgrades. Some of the upgrades I’ve found include removing items automatically from the menu when you use up the ingredients, placing a lucky cat on the counter to get more money, and automatically putting the items you have ingredients for back on the menu. These are only a few things, but let me tell you, it made my life a lot easier.

Overall, I’ve played around four hours in total so far, and I don’t think I’m any closer to completing Let’s Café. But honestly, I just enjoy the ambience of running Over There. It’s a good way to pass the time, focus your thoughts away from your troubles, and just get lost in the vibes.

You'll see all your stats for stars and money at the end of each day.

So far, Let’s Café is in Early Access, but I’m looking forward to the full release. I’m hoping that they’ll add some more music (I just want a little bit more variety) and I know they’ll be adding more items to the store soon, judging by the coming soon sign there.

Curious? Why not try it out for yourself! Let’s Café is currently available on Steam for £8.50, and I’d say that’s definitely worth the price for the amount of hours you’ll get lost in it.