Ever wanted to run your own café tailored to the infamous subculture of hipsters? Well, now you can in Hipster Café!
A copy of this game was provided for the purposes of this review.
As the title of the game suggests, you are the new owner of a café that caters to hipsters of different kinds. You will want to develop your menu and interior to fit the needs of the hipsters you are trying to please. This includes specialty coffee concoctions with latte art on top, unheard-of food combinations served on unconventional surfaces, and varying novelty activities to amuse your customers.
It is a straightforward simulator so learning how to play is easy, with any specifics covered in the tutorial. Besides creating the menu items and decorating the café, you also need to do research to unlock more food options, new drinks, and more entertainment. You can increase your research speed with employees having high research skills. Speaking of employees, you can hire and let go employees of your choice that have different skills from cooking, ordering, serving, etc. That is the extent of their purpose, but they do come with amusing bios fitting their hipster persona.
Social media also plays a significant role in the game, mainly with objectives revolving around followers on their parody Twitter. You’ll also have opportunities to take advantage of trends to garner more followers and attention overall. This doesn’t have that much impact on your café, to be honest, and only really matters when you want to complete objectives.
Once fully playing the game there are a few things that I wish had more explanation, like if you hover over an icon a pop-up could explain its meaning for example. An example of something I had no idea what it meant in the game was shooing. I still don’t really know why you want your employees to shoo customers into leaving to be honest. Another example of something I wish was better explained is how to expand your café and when you can. When you zoom out you can see a bunch of empty properties beside you that I assume you can acquire to expand. But how, when, and why you would are not explained.
The game is overall a lighthearted and somewhat comedic approach to the hipster subculture. With straightforward mechanics, the humor is what ultimately makes the game unique. The novelty does wear off, but the gameplay is solid enough to make it a good simulation game.
What theme would you like to see in a simulation game? Share your ideas in the comments.
This post is an Indie Game Collective Showcase
I mean, if you are going to go for it, you might as well be totally self aware and include it in the name 😄😎