You know that famous eHarmony bio video of the crazy cat lady sobbing over cats and saying, “I just really love cats, and I just want to hug all of them, but I can’t”? Well, that is 100% me through and through. Because, well, I just really love cats (and may or may not be a crazy cat person). The only difference here is that I don’t sob from just hearing the word. I just love anything and everything to do with cats. So naturally, when I saw the game Cat Cafe Manager, I was all in, screaming, “Just take my money, take it all!” (at least in my brain I was).

Cat Cafe Manager is a 2D building/management simulation indie game developed by Roost Games and published by Freedom Games. The general gist of this game is that you move to a small town to take over your Gran’s old cat café, which is in need of some real TLC. As the game progresses, you build up the café of your dreams and adopt ALL the cats! Well…OK, maybe not ALL of them—just as many as your ever-growing café allows!

Roost Games is a small indie dev studio made up of five wonderful folks from Utrecht, The Netherlands. Each of them has a wealth of experience in the game industry, and may also possibly own cats. Not sure if they all do, but I’m betting the majority of them do if they made a cat café game… But let's jump in, shall we?

GRAPHICS 7/10

If you’re looking for a cute 2D game, I think you’ll find yourself at home with Cat Cafe Manager.

The graphics are soft, cozy, and have a pastel palette that gives all the positive, wholesome vibes you’d want in a game like this. The assets themselves are extremely cute (especially the cats, but I am totally biased), and each has its own charm. They all have certain themes—such as Pub Décor, Hipster Décor, Tea Room Décor, etc.—and each is designed to match said style. However, something feels lacking when it comes to distinguishing the styles. There’s just not enough texture to the graphics as a whole. Adding in different textures and slight hue changes to the items (like sharp, bold colors/textures for a bar aesthetic and softer pastel ones for the tea room) would have helped distinguish the different styles. This is more of a personal preference on my end, however, and may have been a conscious palette choice by the developers to keep an overall softness to the game’s look. So if you dig this kinda style and are cool with everything blending in, then you’ll be happy with what you see. But some of y’all may feel similarly to me and think that it’s slightly lacking something.

SOUND QUALITY 5/10

The sound effects and music, alongside the graphics, set the environment and vibe of a game in stone. In the case of Cat Cafe Manager, a limited number of sound effects are constantly repeated, and maybe 2-3 music tracks are used for the entire game. A lot of the game, however, takes one main song and only changes the tune slightly when the player visits different stores to match the style of the character running the store. Only one track is constantly looping when managing your café. The music doesn’t blend in with itself, either: there is a hard stop in the track that clearly identifies when it restarts.

I think there are a lot of missed opportunities here when it comes to the sound quality of this game. As most of the game is focused on different styles, the developers could have benefited from including different tracks to match the different styles used in the café. Additional music tracks could have been available in the form of a jukebox or record player, and there could have been an option to unlock more music for your café through the purchase of a record from one of the merchants in town, like the other items available in this game. This would have allowed more diversity in sound and would add yet another level of customization to your café.

All in all, though, I wasn't really stoked about the sound quality in this game and thought it could have been done much better. Also, why is one of the character sound effects (the ones that I said repeat) “Coochy Coo Coo” or “Coochy Coochy” when petting or calling a cat? Like WHY? What does it even mean? Seems like a bad attempt at imitating The Sims and their weird dialog, honestly (haha).

GAMEPLAY 6/10

Anyone who is a building/management simulation fan knows that the gameplay loop is rather repetitive in general in this genre. But when you can finally afford that big item, you get that “YESSS I DID IT!” feeling—like beating the big boss in an RPG, for example. The general gameplay loop in Cat Cafe Manager starts with the player inheriting their Gran’s cat café and building it up, serving customers, adopting in/adopting out cats, hiring/managing staff, and then continues on into the next day where the building, serving, and management loop continues. You can go into town at any time and purchase different items, recipes, and cat supplies for your café from the townsfolk. However, it’s more common to just purchase items at the end of each day before moving on to the next, so eventually, obtaining these items just becomes part of the regular gameplay loop.

When you begin your journey in Cat Cafe Manager, you meet a mysterious black cat who asks for your help restoring the local cat shrine. In order to do so, you must take on different “projects”, which unlock new features for you, the café, and your cats. You are only able to take on one project at a time though, and each project has its own set of requirements in order to complete it.

On a surface level, the gameplay in Cat Cafe Manager is rather simple and easy to fall into as it has a relatively easy UI to follow. However, though it may be a decent enough loop to comprehend and play, the gameplay has quite a few issues and bugs. Realistically, this game should have been released in Early Access instead of launching as a complete game. The gameplay and UI have a ridiculous number of bugs and quality-of-life blockades that really get in the way of enjoying the game at its full potential. The gameplay and story also have massive pacing and balancing issues. As I played this game, I struggled with balancing currency types and meeting the satisfaction rating of each customer type in order to get a good score and receive more currency. Some customer types didn’t give me enough currency for the demand I needed to meet. For example, I constantly had to cater to Witches and Businesspeople because Witches were the only characters who provided the currency I needed to purchase food and recipes, and Businesspeople gave me gold that was coupled with other currency types I needed to purchase good furniture and items. Other customer types were not as important, but still required during gameplay. I will dive into this a bit more in the next section.

CHARACTERS 5/10

There are six customer types in Cat Cafe Manager and each pay in their own form of currency, which is used to purchase different items from different stores in town. These customer types are pretty stereotypical, and each has different needs and requirements to obtain top scores for their visit. I’ll break down the customer types for clarity:

Witches - You can’t have cats without witches. Witches pay for your goods in “Nectar”, which is the currency used to purchase new recipes and everyday ingredients.

Artists - These creative souls pay in “Jewels”, which are used to purchase the majority of your furniture/café items.

Fisherfolk - These lovely fishing enthusiasts pay in…well, “Fish” (which you probably guessed already, haha). Fish is the currency used to purchase cat-related supplies and items (never would have guessed that one).

Businesspeople - I mean, I don’t think it takes a genius to figure this one out either (haha). Their currency is “Gold”, which is a secondary form of currency used for the “fancier” or “richer” items.

Punks - I was curious about what currency these folks would have—and I still don’t quite know if I understand why—but they pay in “Materials”. It’s pretty obvious that this currency would be used to expand your café, but the Punks? I still do not understand (haha).

Vagabonds - These gentle souls are the “hippies” of the game who pay in “Fabrics”. They are by far the easiest to please as they are happy with the simple things in life. “Fabrics” are used primarily for chairs and tables, which are key items for expanding your café’s capacity.

Each of these customer types also has a “regular” customer (except for the Vagabond for some reason?), who is one of the main characters in the game who helps tell the town’s story. You can raise your friendship level with each of these regulars by inviting them to your café, which is a requirement for completing projects. Each of these characters has their own personal hurdles that they are facing and their own connections to the town, which you discover more of as you increase your friendship level with them.

Something to note with both customers and regulars: how much currency you receive is determined by how happy they are with their experience. Small things—like what you have the ability to create, the items you have, and the types of cats you have in your café—heavily determine your score. There are some much-needed improvements to the gameplay, however, to help your performance score with these characters. For example, the game provides you with a way to add or remove items from your menu, but it really makes zero difference to the customers. And regardless of whether something is on the menu or not, customers will still ask for items if they want them, and their scores will drop if you can’t make what they ask. Even if you can somehow make what a customer is asking for, if it is not on the menu already, then it’s a strike against your score because the game still doesn’t allow you to make the item. So, how both the customers’ and the regulars’ happiness with their experience is determined can be extremely frustrating—especially when you are trying to pimp out your café to meet their needs and still failing because of a game mechanic that just makes things worse.

I can’t end the character section without mentioning the best part of the game, and you guessed it, it’s THE CATS! Legit, you could just add a cat to anything and I would just give a thumbs up and nod of approval, but since this game is focused on cats, I figure I should write a bit more than that. I really enjoyed the different personality traits and how they affect the cat’s skill points. Each type of cat starts with a trait, and as you level them up from the experience they get by being cuddly and entertaining, they get the ability to gain even more. Not every level-up will provide a new trait, but it still allows you to allocate one skill point to the cat’s current skills. The higher the level of the cat, the more delight points you will get from the person who eventually adopts the cat. You still have to be smart about how you level up your cats, however, as different adoption requests require different traits/skills.

STORY 4/10

A good story is a soul-sucking key for a lot of games. Typically, most building/management sims don’t include a super deep or immersive story; or rather, few have been successful in doing so. Cat Cafe Manager is more of the same when it comes to its story, whereby they attempt to include some sort of story, but struggle to execute it with proper pacing through its gameplay and characters. As mentioned above, the regulars are the only real way to obtain any information or lore about the town and the current happenings within it. You also have the mysterious black cat at the shrine who gives some insight into the history of the town, but this still doesn’t really tell you much of anything. So in terms of storytelling, there really aren't many ways to get it.

The story here is pretty cookie-cutter, and way too similar to Stardew Valley, which has turned into the inspiration for too many games’ narratives (reasonably so, as it is a gem of a game). The story in Cat Cafe Manager just feels…too close to the Stardew story rather than inspired by it, making me rather disappointed in its narrative attempt. Here is a general overview of the story without spoilers: you leave the big city and then to go to a small town to inherit your Gran’s cat café. You are tasked with rebuilding the café to its former glory and growing it to new heights. You have a set amount of townsfolk, each of whom have their own personal struggles and are also somehow intertwined with the big bad corporation that just parked itself in the town of Caterwaul. So—city to small town: check; inheriting some sort of family business to manage: check; characters to build friendship levels with who each have some sort of personal dilemma: check; a big bad giant corporation coming to a small town and ruining its way of life: check… I’m pretty sure you can guess how the rest of this turns out.

The balance between gameplay and storytelling is also extremely rough. The player seems to complete the “story” and “beat the game” very early on and very simply. So much so that you still have garbo items in your café and you still haven’t even been able to make it into something epic, just passable. It makes continuing on with the game after the story is completed—with no more tasks to accomplish—rather unappealing and boring, even though there are still things you could technically do.

OVERALL 5.4/10

I truly wish I could give this game a higher score, because I really do love it and see so much potential here. I think all of my low scores for this game come down to the game just feeling super unfinished, and how it should have really been released in Early Access rather than a completed release. The number of bugs that I found—and even the type of bugs if you look at the patch notes since release—are all small, silly things that would have been caught with proper Beta testing and ongoing development. Based on my industry experience, I think the smarter plan for them would have been to release the game in EA for $14.99 USD (rather than full release at $19.99USD), continue testing and updating the build, listen to community feedback to fix core game mechanics and quality-of-life changes, and then launch the full release for $19.99 USD.

The graphics in the game are by far its strongest element, and even then, they could still benefit from some fine-tuning and the addition of details. I think the game is on the right track with the cozy vibes its chosen style gives off, but it’s still unfinished and lacking as I mentioned previously. The sound quality feels like an afterthought in development when they could have really utilized it as an asset to create a more customized vibe for each café style, not to mention the current voiceovers, which are extremely repetitive and annoying. The cherry on the top is that there is only one song on loop that doesn’t even flow into itself seamlessly. It just seems so last minute, and more like they just had to have something, so they slapped something in with minimal effort. The general gameplay is easy to jump into and understand for folks new to the genre, while still enjoyable for folks who are veterans of the genre. However, with so many things unfinished and bugs needing to be fixed, it hampers the quality of gameplay and makes the experience pretty disappointing. The game also randomly crashed multiple times during my playthrough—which seemed to happen to many other players, from what I have seen—and this was extremely frustrating when I was on my way to a successful workday in the café. There really isn’t too much in the way of characters, but the five regulars all have distinctly different personalities and are enjoyable to interact with, for the most part. I do think their dialog and personal stories could have been a lot richer and more involved in your gameplay progression though, to help create a better overall story. The different customer types are an interesting choice, each providing different currencies to expand your café. However, the different customer types could have been done without stereotyping. The balancing of their currency is also needed because, as of right now, it is really rough to manage—and not in a good way. Similar to the characters, the story is lacking in many ways and really doesn’t feel like it even exists. The attempt that was made does not feel original, but more like a rushed attempt to make a narrative that is just a carbon copy of Stardew Valley.

To wrap up this novel of a review, I think this game has the potential to become something much better over time. I still recommend adding it to your wishlist and keeping an eye on it. After some key things are ironed out and most of the bugs have been addressed, this game will be a lot fuller and provide a much better experience. I honestly would love to re-review this game in a few months or even a year from its most recent build state (1.0.396) after it has made some major progress. I know for a fact that from what I played, the scores I might give in the future could be much, much higher.

Cat Cafe Manager was released on April 14, 2022. Version 1.0.396 was launched on April 21, 2022 and is available now on PC for Steam and Nintendo Switch. Version 1.0.396 of Cat Cafe Manager was used for this review. The reviewer purchased the game at full retail price.