Cat Cafe Manager

Overview

Cat Cafe Manager is a 2D management sim developed by Roost Games and Published by Freedom Games. It was released for PC and Nintendo Switch on April 14, 2022.

Story

Cat Cafe Manager follows the story of a character created by the player as they move back to the small town of Caterwaul Way, where they inherit the cat cafe previously owned by their grandmother. Upon arriving, the player meets a mysterious black cat that warns them about Hawkable Acquistions, a company that plans to destroy the local cat shrine to make way for a new building. The player is tasked with restoring the shrine in order to prevent Hawkable Acquistions from tearing it down.

Gameplay

The game's core mechanic is running a cat cafe by pleasing six types of customers. Each type has different needs that range from food orders, how the cafe is decorated, and types of cats in the cafe. The player character has a handful of different stats, such as how well they cook or take orders, which can determine how well they are able to please customers and can be increased the more they complete tasks. Each customer type rewards the player with a unique resource depending how well they are serviced that can be spent to replenish ingredients for food, increase the size of the cafe, or purchase furniture.

Stray cats can be adopted to work in the cafe as well. The player feeds and pets them to increase their friendship level with them, and once it is maxed out, the cat will join the cafe. Each cat as its own set of skills and stats based on what type of customer it is best at pleasing.

In order to complete the game's main goal of restoring the village's cat shrine, the player must earn "Delight" from pleasing customers, which is then spent on restoring the shrine's four statues. Each statue has its own skill tree attached it, which gives the player access to new foods, items, and a higher limit on customers allowed into the cafe at once as it is upgraded.

The game also features five characters that are regulars at the cafe that each represent one of the six types of customers. Each one of these regulars can be called to the cafe where a friendship level will increase based on how well their needs are meet. As the friendship level increases, the number of resources gained from each customer will increase, as well as making it more difficult to please them in the future.