A rather interesting puzzle card game, though some mechanics seem poorly thought out. And this is a puzzle game, despite how it looks like a time management game. There is time management involved, but you can at any time freeze time to place cards where you need them. I stopped just shy of level 10, as while I was enjoying my time, the game wasn't truly hooking me just yet. Additionally, as it currently has no steam achievements (at the time of this review), I also didn't feel compelled to continue despite not being hooked. Add achievements and I'll definitely come back to continue playing. The rest of this review is nitpicks and suggestions, but I do feel it's a nice game.
Now, some poorly thought out mechanics (at the time of this review). These are also all rather minor, and barely impacted my enjoyment of the game:
1. The fridge is semi-useless. The game makes it sound like you can only transfer the items stored in the fridge between rounds, and each fridge is limited to 6 card, but they also give you a cupboard with seemingly endless space, and everything stored within it also transfers between rounds.
2. The card-pack system is just another chore. If you need a specific card, you can often just buy a card-pack, and if you don't get the card you need, sell everything you got back for a full refund and try again. This can also be done while time is completely frozen, so it's just busywork in the end, as you will get what you need once the game allows you. In fact, you can just use extra cards with tools you aren't currently using, and sell the product for more than the base cards cost. This does kinda make sense, as you're turning time spent on a tool into money instead of it going to waste.
3. When doing the frying action, you can use any type of oil you're provided to do the frying, but the recipe cards always show sunflower oil. The fact you can even do this is only even mentioned during a loading screen hint. However, this is downplayed by the prior issue, because if you could only use sunflower oil, well you could just keep cycling the condiment card-pack until you got it.
4. Now, while you can seem to keep an endless supply of cards between levels, your money is wiped at the end of each level as well, meaning you can transfer money by buying and storing cards. I did see that a later upgrade seems to be a credit card, which may have this as a feature (I dunno, I stopped playing before I got to it). If it does, it's also not really needed, because I have never had money problems.
5. The cat's dialogue feels like it often delays the game, especially at the end of a level before the special customer, where the game just doesn't let you do anything for several seconds, every. single. time.
Improvements that can be made:
1. Add steam achievements. There's a whole group of people who have little interest in games that don't have achievements. It's silly, but just this simple addition would help drive players to your game.
2. Add difficulty options. Right now it feels like playing on an easy/normal mode, while I feel I could handle something a little harder. As examples: Remove the cupboard or limit what if anything it transfers between levels. Remove the ability to pause time. Reduce selling prices unless you actually process items first. This could even be a per-level choice, so you can choose when selecting a level what difficulty you want to play on, with the final reward being modified if you succeed on a harder difficulty.
3. Make all cat dialogue skippable to smooth out how the game feels.
