Tailside: Cozy Cafe Sim
Tailside: Cozy Cafe Sim is a lovely and genuinely cozy shopkeeping game with charming pixel art and an inviting atmosphere. Unfortunately, part of that charm is currently undercut by a few questionable design choices and a pacing that feels slightly too demanding for a game that’s meant to be relaxing. That said, it’s still in early access, so there’s plenty of room for refinement.
Your customers are adorable miniature forest creatures who hop around your café, perhaps energized by the drinks you serve them. Your main responsibility is preparing those drinks. Orders appear in a task queue at the top of the screen, with some of them needing to be completed under a time limit if you want to earn tips for them. These timing windows, as well as the minimum number of orders needed to reach the daily goal, are quite strict for a game that is supposed to be relaxing by nature.
Most of your day is spent on the drink preparation screen, which, unfortunately, means you rarely get to actually watch the cute customers enjoying your café. The only break from the kitchen comes when you’re required to clean up after them, going around the room and collecting the cups they toss on the floor once they’re done, which you’re required to do several times per day. Once you unlock additional areas, you’ll have even more space that needs cleaning, which further takes up your time, leaving you less time to prepare orders. These areas are located outside of your cafe, accessible only by moving your character to a different screen. The slow movement, as well as various collision issues (you always bump into other NPCs when walking, as your cafe is rather crowded), make this whole cleaning process a rather unenjoyable chore. A global cleanliness indicator is shown on the screen while your cafe is open, but it doesn’t show which of these areas needs cleaning. But, on the positive side, clicking on one cup automatically collects nearby cups as well, making cleanup faster and a tad more bearable.
The gameplay is heavily click-based and demands rather quick reactions, as orders pile up rapidly. Each day feels more like a rush-hour shift than a cozy café experience where you can sit back and relax, and the pace sometimes borders on being stressful, depending on how many recipes you have unlocked. This is perhaps enhanced by the fact that you will never have a feeling of accomplishment for fulfilling all orders, as the game infinitely generates them as long as your café is open and clean.
Preparing a single coffee requires following a few simple steps but involves multiple clicks on different machines with different timings or playing some minigames (some of which are quite dreadful and time-consuming, such as the latte art or milk frothing minigames). Ingredients run out extremely quickly and need to be restocked after only five uses. Upgrading the starting devices helps with this issue a bit, as they can hold three charges instead of one, but the game remains heavy on clicking. On top of that, a sorting minigame where you have to select the correct beans out of a mixed set triggers at specific intervals, which also interrupts your work. These frequent disruptions break immersion and make it hard to settle into a satisfying rhythm.
Each level grants one skill point, which can be spent on café upgrades such as faster bean grinding, quicker brewing, or more efficient milk heating. Skill points can also be used to unlock new recipes or to skip the awfully repetitive minigames (although these upgrades are very costly). Around day ten (or slightly earlier), progression slows dramatically. Leveling up begins to require a substantial amount of XP, meaning acquiring a single skill point can take several in-game days of work. Since the costs of new recipes start at five skill points (with the option of further upgrading them for more skill points), unlocking one can require a few hours of gameplay or hundreds of completed orders. At this stage, the experience becomes extremely grindy and repetitive. Starting with only three recipes is also not optimal, as you’re stuck repeating the same orders hundreds of times during the first 3-4 in-game weeks until you can afford to unlock a new recipe.
Another major drawback for some players (especially the ones returning to the game after some time) could be the lack of visible recipe information during gameplay. You can’t see ingredient requirements or cup sizes for drinks at a glance. Although the cookbook shows this information, checking it requires pausing your work, which is yet another aspect that disrupts the already fast-paced flow of the game.
On a more positive note, the game is generous with its café decoration system. Decorative items unlock as you progress, and you receive free items almost every day. The shop prices are also very reasonable. Already bought items can be resold for a lower price, allowing you to recoup some of the money spent. Unlike skill points or experience, it’s fairly easy to gather coins, thus to customize and fill your café with decorations, which is one of the most rewarding aspects of the experience.
In its current state, Tailside: Cozy Cafe Sim feels like a game with plenty of charm and individuality, but one that hasn’t yet aligned its mechanics with its cozy premise. The demanding pacing based on heavy clicking and its grind-heavy progression both work against the relaxing experience that the game is clearly aiming for. Still, beneath these rough edges lies a shopkeeper game with a delightful concept, beautiful aesthetics, and Twitch integration (the café’s customers can borrow your viewers’ names). If future updates manage to smooth out progression and balance out the cooking aspect a bit, Tailside: Cozy Cafe Sim has the potential to grow into the cozy café sim it wants to be. For now, it’s a promising early access title best enjoyed by players who don’t mind a bit of pressure in their gameplay.
