First impressions

[Numenorean]

Great game so far, very relaxing and chill.

Just few game mechanics that would need a bit of tweaking.

First of all the customer management: not sure if it is planned but there is no penalty for customers not being served, neither when you get their order and they leave, nor when you don't get their order at all so far; or at least I noticed no penalty. If this is by default it is great as it add no stress and it makes the game more chill to be honest.

Second point is tied to the first: if you plan to punish the player for missing orders, then you should stop the timer when the player is preparing an order, as things like cutting the cake or getting the coffee art takes a LOT of time, and that affect the in game timer, so I noticed that while I was trying to just satisfy orders, customers would just leave and there was nothing I could do as I was just doing what the game was asking, and I can only do one order at time.

If you plan to not add any penalty, that is fine, but if you add penalties, you should stop the timer when the player is preparing an order, or at least increase the grace period considerably, as these activities really takes a long time.

Another thing that is not really timed well is the daily cycle: the day start in the morning but if you go out to grab a critter the morning is done and you end up serving few customers only as it is already afternoon. Again, the timer should either account for a whole day or only when you serve customers; so you can just dedicate a day to rescue a critter and start the new day directly serving customers to maximize XP gain.

Also you may want to add some checks for furniture placement: if you place some chair or sofa too close you can't reach some customers and can't get their orders... So would be great if you add a check when placing furniture so you always ensure the player can reach the customer to get their orders.

Last but not least; beside the cafe activities the world outside is basically void of interactions. The game reminds me a lot of "Little Dragon cafe"; but while in that game you would go outside the cafe to collect ingredients and find recipes, here you don't do any of that, so would be great if the game would also have something to do with that nice map you made outside of the cafe; and with all these characters outside. Not expecting something like Stardew valley of course, but as you imply that the town "get to know you and your cafe", would be nice to get some interactions and to see actually something going on... Otherwise if all the gameplay is limited to the cafe, having that area where you walk around but can't do much feels a bit of a waste.

Thanks for the demo, it is really well done and so far didn't find many bugs (just one, where customers respawn if you go in edit mode at the end of the day, but it is just cosmetic); I will probably pick this up when it will be released. Cheers!

[löyly]

Agreed on everything.

I found it a bit frustrating how fast customers got impatient and left - I didn't even have the slightest chance to serve everyone. I'm also hoping for more low-key colours to customise interior with, and the ability to pan around the camera perspective.
I didn't get very far because I kept getting complete press-the-off-button crashes, but that's an issue I've had with several games probably because of something with Steam Play for Linux.

Edit: I also started out annoyed because of the prompt to "grab a controller" - bold assumption that every PC player has one :/
Anyway, this looks like it has potential to become a very interesting and cute game. Following for updates.

[cgroves]

Hey! Thank you so much for this, great to hear that you're enjoying the demo overall :)

On there being no penalty for not serving customers - at the end of every shift you earn an amount of XP/rewards for the amount of customers you've served, and the quality of the food/drink you've served. So if you don't serve a customer, that negatively affects your rewards at the end. No plans atm around additional penalties in this area of the game

On the daily cycle and interactions topics, I'll feed these thoughts back to our team for their awareness and consideration :)

On furniture placement, yes this has been mentioned elsewhere so I'll add your feedback to this topic. Thank you again! <3

[Isabellez]

I second that the game timer should stop when preparing coffee, food, etc. It was annoying to see people leave when it just wasn't possible to serve them!

It was quite clunky/irritating to play with the keyboard/mouse, I'd suggest adding an obvious note on the steam page that a controller is required. I would have been so frustrated if I had bought the game expecting that keyboard/mouse would be okay, as I don't have a controller.