Pixel Cafe [Review]
Pixel Cafe is a game about a cook/bartender/barista/baker who can’t seem to hold a job for more than thirty days. Wanting to gain independence from her parents and build a life for herself, Pixel moves to a home she inherited from her grandmother in the town of Karstok, where she spent some time as a child. She seeks a job and finds one in foodservice. She ends up finding as new job every month as she’s fired through no fault of her own or the business closes down. I don’t mean to knock the plot device, but I do find it funny. Along the way, she grows as she builds relationships and remembers her grandmother’s wisdom in flashbacks.
Image: Baltoro Games
The meat of the game is Pixel’s job. Gameplay here is reminiscent of Cook, Serve, Delicious. Pixel must serve customers before they run out of patience, juggling multiple orders and methods of prep for each order. As you earn your wage (and tips), you can spend money to upgrade your counters—add prep stations, more ovens, a better coffee machine, etc. Over the course of the month, orders get trickier and new menu items are added. Sometimes this can be confusing; the way the items are presented in customers’ orders doesn’t always make it clear how they’re made if they’re new to you. Once you figure it out, it’s no problem. The gameplay loop of working each day at the job is addictive and satisfying. It feels great when you’ve mastered your stations and figure out how to time and prep most efficiently to ready orders in a flash. I had a rocky start, but soon I’d enter a zen state as the restaurant would get crazy and I couldn’t stop playing.
Pixel can also upgrade furniture in her home with her hard earned cash. Each upgrade gives you a happiness point, which you can use to upgrade your skills. Skills include things like combo length, speeding up time to pour drinks, increasing your window before you burn food, and more. While gaining happiness by improving your home fits the themes of the game and the character’s motivation, it feels a bit tacked on as an activity. I would’ve preferred to spend money directly on skills; the state of Pixel’s house could just be shown as background.
Image: Baltoro Games
Pixel Cafe’s story unfolds in short cutscenes spread out over the work month. She speaks with her employer, a customer, or with her grandmother in memory. It’s all very slice of life as a narrative. Some conversations can get a bit weighty with themes of loss, death, and war. It’s not always tackled in the best way but I admire that the devs are trying to communicate something with more depth of emotion than your typical restaurant management game. The credits roll before the game is actually over; there’s far more to do after that point as you get to see the other branch of the narrative path and more of the city opens up.
I really enjoyed my time with Pixel Cafe. It’s not a groundbreaking game by any means, but it does what it does very, very well.
Baltoro Games’ Pixel Cafe is available now on PC, Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S.
