Bone's Cafe

I found the controls and UI very frustrating for a PC game. Not for me.

I did have fun with this game. However its oversights detract way too much from the experience. It's fun at the very beginning when you're figuring stuff out and unlocking things at a nice pace. Then you notice that the mechanic on killing costumers for ingredients is as superficial and simple as it could ever be and the game teaches you to exploit it by having a table cast aside to do it easily with no witnesses. From there onward, and assuming you've unlocked the grinder, oven and mixer (which you can achieve in 1 to 2 hours) that's it. You've seen everything in the game. Everything from here on forward is just a different mix of the same things all the time. No more mechanics or creativity in the gameplay department. [h3][b]What else is there to have the game feel interesting? [/b][/h3] - Music? Always the same one. - Scaling? A bigger restaurant just means doing the same gameplay with more repetition at the same time - more time planning out slowly and constantly redoing stuff (which I'll further explain ahead) - less time actually playing with costumers and feeling progression. - Art? There are some nice redesigns for some elements, however floors an walls are always the same and the designs of machines in the recipes are always the default, so, if you're not using the default textures, you're always actively having to remember which machine resembles what to follow the recipes. [h3][b]Following the recipes[/b][/h3] There are a lot of recipes in the game with good variety and it feels fun. Is it fun to cook them? Well... In the beginning they're simple enough and you're getting used to the machines and mechanics, so it's fun. Later they're more complex, requiring you to cook a 2nd recipe to join it together with the rest of the ingredients for the final result. It's interesting that you have to find the recipe, having all the ingredients on the tooltip and figuring out the order... Then it slides downhill... After discovering a recipe, when you choose it for the menu the tooltip still shows the raw ingredients, without any help for the order to do stuff. Figuring this shortcoming with the simplistic menus is an achievement in of itself after unavoidable trial and error. However if you open the recipes menu and pin the recipe you want, it then shows the different dishes that form it when cooked together. Thus you only have to memorize those simple combinations and follow the greater recipe, which is now on your HUD; completely ignoring the useless automatic tooltip that comes with choosing the recipe for the daily menu which is a mess that only made sense to exist before discovering the recipe. This means every single recipe you want to create has to be pinned one at a time to be properly read, some of them requiring a second recipe within themselves you can't pin (there's a limit for one single pinned recipe). It's either that or you have to fry your brains memorizing each step in preparing each dish to[b] finally start playing.[/b] [h3][b]Cooking and Minions[/b][/h3] It's lacking just every quality of life addition imaginable. Your minions are your own behavior saved and replayed on loop on a time limit for each minion. [b]You'll be sharing the spaces with your minions.[/b] Going through corridors you have to change direction exactly on the crossover or else you'll walk against furniture and stand still. This unpredictability of the movement and the moving food items around you will make you be constantly doings things you don't want. [b]The button to pick dishes from the ground, tables, machines or their hands is the same.[/b] Need to change a single piece of furniture? Took the item from their hands by accident? They got to a station to pick up an item, but, since it was empty at the moment, they placed theirs in it? Then your minion is as good as dead as they don't even reset their behavior once something goes against it. They just freeze forever and you have to manually delete them and record them all over again. You can't just record a section of their behavior or god forbid have them automatically fix some simple interruptions in their commands. So be ready to do speedruns of the same recipes one at a time all of the time because of this. Are you now remembering the hassle it is to follow a recipe as I explained above? Yeah... To add minions you just keep on killing costumers in a corner. Which you quickly optimize and do without effort or drawbacks (other than the occasional costumer walking to the chair occupied by a corpse you didn't yet chop up). You quickly rise those numbers from the moment you got automation with 6 to 10 minions. But, given how painful it is to manage them, good luck even thinking of playing with more than that In sum this is the game. You don't place decorations, you have to place stations with only functionality and automation in mind, there's no costumer mood or satisfaction (besides time limits), no balance between expenses and profits... I just get shocked as each game about running a business repeatedly ends up being less fun or engaging than games like Sims 3, Sims 4 or Rimworld (mods) which have said mechanics as optional addons.