Pixel Cafe Review (PS5)

In a strange phenomenon, inexplicable to me at least, a lot of mobile games seem to become inspiration to console games. We see that recipes that work on touch screens in short doses, are somehow making their way on the big screens, to be controlled with sticks and buttons during much longer game sessions.

In some cases, entire games are ported from one platform to another without too much thought. But why? Can a time management, or basic tycoon/sim be as entertaining on the big screen as it is in the palm of your hands?         

I took Pixel Café to a test run to find out. The game is based on a tried and tested recipe for time management, where you, as a diligent and very well-respected worker of the food industry, have to prepare meals and beverages for more or less patient customers. It sounds simple, but because of the set-up and the ever-increasing number of items to be served things always strut on the chaotic side of things.

In the middle of this all we find Pixel, a young lady forced to move back with her grandmother. She will start her career from the bottom up and at the same time she will also evolve her personal relationships with the people surrounding her. Although it should be a balanced mix between the narrative and challenging gameplay, often it feels that the first is just filler to push you moving forward in ever harder levels.

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Pixel Café follows a calendar-based structure, with weeks made up of service days, a bonus service night and a day of rest to follow the story, unlock various bonuses or personalize the living space in which you will not really spend time. And I mean it.

It is very nice that with the hard-earned money you can redecorate your room by choosing from several options, each with different price tags, but what is the point if you will be spending 90% of your time behind the counter, juggling orders?     

Although it starts out simply, just like any other game in the genre, after the first couple of levels you already feel like you are playing catch up. You will try to upgrade the equipment, and it will help somewhat to stay on top of the orders that became more and more complicated, but it is enough to commit 1 simple mistake that can cascade into a failed level.

You can get 1 start that allows you to complete a level, gather up some money and invest it in better equipment and come back to go for the three-star rating. But again, this will be more of a personal motivator for those of us who suffer or enjoy a bit of ADHD. In the big scheme, as long as you passed a level you are good to go, especially since you will stay in one place only for a month.

At the beginning of the next one you will move on to another location, with a different boss, different foods and beverages, and you will have to start over upgrading the equipment and learning the orders. This design choice moves along the story and allows the introduction of new characters, but also amplifies the feeling that you are behind the curve.

As soon as you managed to scrape together enough to upgrade the coffee maker or the hot plate, in order to make your life a tiny bit easier, you are forced to move on and start from the beginning the very same process.

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The biggest challenge is to correctly time the preparation of various items in order to serve the clients as fast as possible. The theme changes from coffee to bar to fast food stand, but the basic recipe remains the same: orders that become more and more complex, that you have to fulfill as fast as possible. The customers also have a limited amount of patience expressed by a gauge that decreases constantly.

By serving items from their order the gauge climbs a bit, before starting to descend again. This gives another tactical layer where you can choose to serve fully one customer or to send out items from each customer, balancing their level of satisfaction.

And just when you feel you nailed this down, the game introduces several serving stages for each location. As a result, you will have to split your time and attention between two or three tabletops, each with their own customers, appliances and dishes that take various amounts of time to finish.

In total you will have to go through all this process in ten different locations, the game being split into seven parts. This adds up to around eight hours of play, but if you are looking to score three stars on each level, the number can be higher. The bonus levels will give you cold sweats and challenge your ambition to get the best rating possible.

The pixelated visual style is endearing, some of the scenes stand out, while others feel a bit more banal. Each location is full of details, but you will hardly have time to notice them because of the frantic pace. The soundtrack changes as well with every new countertop you jump behind, building various vibes in the generally tense atmosphere of the game.

The challenges would be much more manageable if the controls had been more precise, but they are all over the place. Next to the control scheme that is anything but friendly, the selection sometimes snaps back to the last ingredient you sued, other times it snaps back to the very first ingredient on the tray or remains hovering on the plate. Many times, you waste precious seconds battling the control scheme.

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The Good

The Bad

Conclusion