izigame.me

This game looked cute, and the thought of managing a cat cafe sounded fun. Seemed like a casual, fun game.
However, it is very lacking and a disappointment. Cuteness is all it has going for it, and then nothing else. There is not any substance to the game. Really, all this game is a animal collector pretending to have a story and cafe management.
You're not even managing the cafe all that much. The mayor mentions that you'd have to build it up but there's not really anything to build, if anything it's in weirdly fantastic shape with the way it's implied it's been shut down for a few years. Sure, you have to run around and purchase or otherwise be given different recipes, and sometimes you have to remake them when they go stale, but otherwise nothing really matters. As others have said, the baking minigame is really just annoying and kind of grating after the first few times, and I had a controller so it was an easier time, but truly, there is like no way to get a gold star on any of these given the platforming mechanics and the elevator are just too slow. Once you meet someone, they just show up to your cafe whether you're there or not, purchasing something and then leaving after a set amount of time. No budgeting to purchase ingredients, you're not able to upgrade anything about the cafe, you're stuck with 6 display items no matter how many cases you purchase. You're not even doing much of anything with the furniture or animals because there's only two quests where someone even adopts an animal and I've honestly just grabbed both from outside and handed it to them. Really, all money does is allows you to purchase cosmetics and the few recipes you don't get doing any of the fetch quests. Honestly, if this wasn't advertised as a cafe management type game it would probably be less disappointing.
I was surprised to finish the main "story" under 5 hours, and I wasn't even really rushing at all to do it. The story is really just "oh no, all these areas are blocked off, go clear them by doing endless fetch quests and talking to people" which, like. ok. This isn't really all that fun, all things considered. Lots of wasted opportunity for little minigames for quests, especially for the magic ones, but the characters just talk at you. The characters are cute. There sure is a faint whiff of worldbuilding here, and it's... eh?, the best way I can describe it. "Teehee, everything is magic" like i guess so. Kinda wish there was a bit more. Or even much actual choices besides starting furniture, dance moves, and whether or not to invest in different cat businesses, which honestly seems pointless not to since you just are drowning in money the entire time. Like, what was up with those city cats anyway? We'll never know, just city cats are bipedal and only like 6 of them speak human, but only once.
The extra time on my playthrough was me attempting to get all the achievements and then immediately realized the tedium of trying to find and pick up all the animals in the game, so I settled for recipes and quests and then quitting. It is truly a very empty game.
This is also just a general annoyance and nitpicky, but while it is nice to have the character be fat (oh sorry, "fluffy" - calling it this makes it slightly more annoying imo, but sure, whatever, it's there at least) there is no way to just not have an hourglass figure. Like if you wanted to have a girl main character just do that. The facial hair options are kinda nice but you're out of luck if you wanted to not have visible curves, and also they just look bizarre at certain max slider ranges. Customizing colors is also a pain on the controller, and there's not really a way to save any colors (or if there is it's hidden or so obtuse my brain forgot it on purpose). The gradients just don't look very good after lots of fiddling, tho that's probably on me for trying to do gradients so much. They only really work on the long tails and your shirts.
I got this on sale for very cheap, but honestly I don't think it was really worth it for me personally. If you want to kill five-ish hours or are more motivated than me to 100% the animal collection, then go for it, but I wouldn't pay full price for this. I would listen to the people complaining about the cooking minigames in this animal showcase being an utter nightmare on keyboard and mouse, because controller was only marginally better. Really what killed this was the advertisement as a cafe management sim for me. I'm a fan of restaurant sims and this was really a collect animals and do fetch quests simulator, which is not anywhere close to being the same. The customization was merely ok to a little annoying to navigate on the controller.