An honest mini review of how I feel.

[Spyro's Molten Macchiato]

I consider myself a pretty big fan of the CSD series, but so far this demo hasn't hit the mark for me. As the only really positive things I can say about it is that the OST was nice, and the graphics look good.
The game control wise feels too easy at the moment, as I feel like the keys I press, and the things I do don't have a massive impact. Instead of picking from a ton of options and learning orders it's just,"press A, then do not press W." Thing is too, this game does seem to have separate orders with each food, and you can see the names in the bottom right corner of the screen. Instead of the center of it, so you'll almost never notice it. I'm not even paying attention to around 2/3 of the screen, and I don't really ever pay attention to the food being made. It's so far away in comparison to the button commands. I never had that issue with CSD 1-3. There's still potential for that same, "learn the recipe," to happen here. I just think that the name of the order needs to be moved. That way players can still remember, "for tomatoes, I do this."
Another gripe I have is the question buttons and how they function. I like the idea behind them, pressing a button an unknown amount of times to keep yourself on your toes. I just think the sound prompt for these needs to be a bit more noticeable for some foods. As it can be very easy to press the button, and you notice it a few seconds too late.
Also some of the button graphics could be a bit more obvious, as some of the differences are so small. Like maybe some type of visual instead of just, "not A."
I'm really looking forward to this game, and I would love to see some improvements from demo to release. I understand that the goal here was to try something new, but I just don't think it works yet. It's not as investing as the CSD series due to the UI. There's nothing wrong with wanting your game to have an easy mode, I get that it's not supposed to be as difficult, I just think that in between mark isn't quite there yet. I think more can be done here to have that same level of investment while keeping a good grip on not making the game too difficult for those who want something more chill.
The normal game play felt like an easier mode to begin with. I get this isn't CSD4, but it's super hard to sit here and not compare it to CSD as a whole. Because it's very obvious there's a lot of drawn inspiration from the series. I think there is some potential here, and I get that this is an earlier build, but I definitely think a lot needs to be done to improve upon, and make this all a better experience. I adore this series and would love to enjoy this game, even though I understand it's a different take.

[chubigans]

Thank you for the feedback! We're going to have an updated build tomorrow that should address some of these points, and I think the final game will have a lot more opportunities to allow you to make the game more difficult should that be what you want- it was a struggle determining what level of difficulty we wanted with this demo, and even now it's too hard for some people (so we had to do a chill mode yet again).

Thanks so much and I hope you give our new build a try when it's up!

[chubigans]

The new build is now up, give it a try and let me know what you think!