Calico

Peacefull

Gameplay Genre: Cooking/Adventure Story Genre: Small town revitalization, kind of Story/Gameplay Ratio: 1:3 **Gameplay** Ideas: 7/10 | Pretty solid progression of abilities, with many different options for what to do around the map. Execution: 3/10 | Buggy, laggy, glitchy, and janky. Trying to get anywhere is insanely annoying before you unlock flight (the only mechanic in the game that feels good, by the way). The movement is weird and not very responsive, making normal gameplay annoying and cooking needlessly difficult. A big map plus no mode of travel fast enough to cross it quickly (again, until flight) means a lot of the game is travel time. A lack of quest markers makes it hard to see when new quests are ready. I could go on. Overall, playable but doesn't feel *finished*, let alone polished. **Story** Ideas: 6/10 | Some interesting, silly concepts behind the story, but overall directionless. Execution: 5/10 | Mediocre. Doesn't really do any development or progression, kind of just feels like a series of checkboxes. **Characters** Ideas: 8/10 | One of the few things this game actually does well in is its character design. Adorable, silly, fun concepts behind all the characters, with recognizable but not too simple ideas. Execution: 5/10 | Character dialogue is passable, but often feels rather flat and simple. Character stories are nigh nonexistent, with precious little actually meaningful storytelling. **Visuals & Sounds** Ideas: 8/10 | Adorable art style, no notes- points docked for the rather boring music and sound design concepts. Execution: 2/10 | Music is choppy and repetitive. There is one texture overlaid on nearly every building and surface, recolored for each different thing. It's shiny. Why is the sand shiny? Why does the path look the same as the building? Colors are muddy and the faux-2d cel shading only makes it look worse, especially with the outlines. Lighting is just bad throughout. The way it handles being inside a building is weird. By far the worst offense is the animations- they are uneven, off-putting, unrealistic, and feel so *very* weird. Cohesiveness: 8/10 | I mean, it's consistent, but it's cohesive in the way a box of buttons is. Yeah, they all belong there, but nothing's really holding them *together*. Personal Favor: 4/10 | I really, really wanted to like this game, and the silliness of it is a lot of fun, but it's just so difficult to *play* the damn thing. **OVERALL RATING:** 4/10

Really cozy and low battery game. If you need a game where you literally bake and find animals while doing the most basic and simple quest possible to relax. This is the game for you. Only problem is that is a little buggy. I have a problem where even if I found all the animals and people the games doesn't show me.

It's cute but doesn't have a lot of depth. The main questline consists of going from place to place opening up roads and side quests are slightly varied but still mostly going from A to B then back again. Characters don't have enough dialogue to really delve into them despite meeting and befriending them one of the main draws. That said, the artstyle is nice and customizing the cafe with animals is good too. I really liked the soundtrack as well, it added alot of atmosphere. Overall if you think it looks cute, go for it.

I really enjoyed this cheery little game! You've inherited your aunt's old cat cafe, and your job is to get it up and running again while helping out the townspeople with their problems. You get to customize your character and cafe (inside and outside) however you like, though you have to earn the items you want, either by helping characters or earning money through selling baked goods. Time does pass from day to night, and there are a few quests that are time sensitive, i.e. a character wants to take their partner on a date to your cafe in two days and would like you to have some flower decor in your shop since their partner loves flowers. But most of the quests are more finding things, passing along messages, making baked goods to sell in your shop, etc. (And you can also buy a potion to stop time if you are feeling rushed.) If you do decide to play this game, I would strongly recommend you get the Calico Neat Things DLC with it. It expands the quests in the game quite a bit, adding fun surprises and a little treasure hunt in, and without it I think the game would be too short and a little lackluster. Also, there are some good walkthroughs available if you are a perfectionist and want to make sure you find ALL the animals and complete ALL the quests. The one minor warning I have is that this game is meant to be played on a controller - the game itself tells you this when you start playing. I do not have a controller, only a keyboard and mouse. I was able to enjoy and complete the game just fine, BUT there were sections where I could tell having a controller would probably have made the movements you had to do way easier. The main place this occurs is in your kitchen where you are making baked goods for your shop. You magically get shrunk down and have to run around trying to acquire all the ingredients to put into your cauldron, and this was the main area where it could be a little frustrating to navigate via keyboard/mouse. There's a timer running while you try to complete the recipe. No worries, you can successfully finish the recipe even if you don't beat the timer, but without a controller... you ain't gonna beat the timer.

This is a very cute and straightforward indie game by a small dev group. Artwork is so cute, and the different biomes are fun. I echo what others have said, that the world feels kind of empty (I know there is a DLC but that might even not be enough). I think the devs have a great concept and worldbuilding, and spent a lot of time creating fun mini-games for baking and unique character designs. I'd love to see a remaster of this game with features like being able to build out your cafe, serve customers, etc. Overall, with all things considered, this is a great, cute, fun game that reminds me of the vibe and playstyle of some of the PC games from the early and mid-2000s for young folks. Nostalgic feeling. I love all the silly easter eggs in this game as well as being tiny when baking foods. :)