Pixel Cafe

Pixel Cafe is an interesting game to review. On the one hand, its a very competent Diner Dash style game, with actual challenge and meat on its bone that was fun to complete. On the other, the narrative is a very polarizing...meta commentary? I guess? People picking up this game are going to either find the game-play compelling or the story compelling, but I really doubt it will ever be both. Regarding the game play, I liked the various work stations that switched things up. One of the big things that makes me bounce off these kinds of games are how brain-dead moment to moment game play can feel, but the rate at which the work got more complex was a good pace and I felt rewarded in learning combos, pre-staging meals and keeping the combo meter going just one more to get that high score. There are also some mini-games that can come up and delay your work such as the coffee machine breaking or the lights going out which adds another thing to juggle. I think the game play does a really good job of highlighting what working in food service is like, right down to extra or incorrect dishes being left behind (hopefully for you to eat after the shift). There are also elements of the game-play that feed in to the narrative in a thoughtful way that I do commend it for. All that said, there are some weird gripes with game-play I had all throughout. I played on controller as recommended and found my cursor slipping all around the place unless I used the D-pad (which I think made it harder then intended, but I managed) Also there are weird rules with how the cursor moves from one action to the next. If you’re making coffee and filling a to-go tray you have to make a cup before you can pick up a pre-staged cup which creates this loop of trying to juggle the machine needlessly. Or if you’re making a sandwich and put down the wrong ingredient, you can’t put it back without throwing it out and if you try to work around the wrong ingredient, your cursor will default land on it every time which can result in a train-wreck of a sandwich and loss of time. I’ve seen a few people mention the coffee machine breaking mini game which I didn’t think was TOO bad, just dull. I liked the lights one more because I’d try to finish an order in the dark before moving to turn it back on which was fun. My only gripe with these mini-games is that they do not keep your combo meter going, especially with the spray mini game which can come up two or three times ruining my combo in a way that is out of my control. Same with customers walking ALL THE WAY from the left side of the bar to order from the right (but I guess that is typical customers) People also mention the game dragging, and I tend to agree. I think it had one cafe too many for what what the game was going for, and the fork at the road in the game felt disjointed and unresolved at the end. The story on the other hand...I don’t know what to make of it. Pixel reads as a young, angry person that spends a lot of time inside of her own head and at times it got so in depth that the narrative started to feel like a cry for help. It was a bit cringy to be honest and I found myself wanting to skip through a lot of the scenes. I hope making this game was therapeutic to the writer in some way as they seem to hold a lot of resentment for the world, its people and their family in a way that never feels fully resolved. Its not all bad though, There were good messages in the story like with Captain and a lot of cautionary tales of what working on the service industry is like, which I think will be good for a younger audience to internalize as they step into a job market for the first time. The end of the game is where things feel their worst. [spoiler]The way the setting dips more and more away from contemporary into fantasy without much justification opens the door for the more ambiguous and empty ending the game offers. The foreshadowed memory problems Pixel has never seems to be explained or fully resolved and other plot hooks, such as grandma’s coffee are left open to interpretation. Thats kind of the core of the game’s ending, everything amounts to a big nothingburger by the end and all I’m really glad for is that she does indeed open her own cafe at the end.[/spoiler] Tl;dr: Play the demo. If you like the game-play, buy the game because there are a lot of levels and its a great call-back to older diner-dash style games. Great to pick up and put down without issue. Don’t expect much from the story that is advertised. It will either really stick with you or you’ll bounce right off.