Cafe Paris Review (PC)

It’s a quarter past the hour, and the Eiffel Tower has, after several hours of catering to tourists and cultural events, suddenly become a much quieter place. The veil of darkness has taken a firm hold on the hustle and bustle of the Parisian capital, and I, as spontaneous as I like to imagine myself being, am still here, in this small coffee shop, mindlessly serving pastries to an endless stream of customers, and essentially gazing out of the window wondering when the shift will end so that I might be able to explore the world beyond the glass. I love my job—adore it, even. But, like all forms of work, there is a novelty to the experience, and, regrettably, it isn’t something that tends to stick around forever. In the end, such work becomes more of an endless slog, and if Café Paris is anything — it’s a slog.

Café Paris doesn’t exactly conceal its cards or fashion a smokescreen of its own; on the contrary, it more or less wears its heart on its sleeve, and it pretty much tells you right from the get-go that, while there are several perks to owning a local Parisian café—hearing stories, admiring the views, and toying around with a few pastry products, for example—you won’t be going much farther than what the job description spells out on the menu. In an almost identical vein as, well, just about any other shop or business simulation game, Café Paris follows a formulaic path—a route that mostly focuses on serving customers, unraveling the occasional web of stories, and making more cups of coffee than you could shake a stick at. Oh, and did I mention that it’s a round-the-clock job, too? No extended lunch breaks for you, sunshine!

Stockholm Syndrome

Don’t get me wrong, the first hour or so of Café Paris is a lot of fun. In addition to the Eiffel Tower that looms just outside of your shop window looking fantastically beautiful for most hours of the day, the initial gameplay loop also has a fairly solid variety of options, including the pastries you pick to the brews you rustle up with your trusty kitchen-based gadgets and gizmos, and so on and so forth. However, after a short while, those faithful panoramic views eventually begin to grate into a dull and somewhat depressing image, and the locals who flood through the woodwork of your store soon begin to dwindle into irritating cardboard cutouts with little to no charismatic qualities or interesting personality traits whatsoever.

The café that you hold the keys for is rather minimal in terms of its aesthetic appeal; it’s essentially a rectangular stretch of floor space with the usual bells and whistles of a traditional European coffee shop — and that’s about it. Unsurprisingly, it isn’t exactly somewhere where you can freely stretch your legs; in fact, if you’re not frantically sidestepping between one or two of the major appliances, then you’re not really moving around at all. And, again, this isn’t a bad thing. Well, it isn’t a bad thing, provided that you’re accustomed to liminal spaces and the usual A-to-B progression tropes. But, like I said, everything begins to take a toll after a set amount of time, and a lot of those administrative tasks, as “cozy” and as simple as they may be, soon become, I don’t know, tedious and boring. That’s café life, though, I suppose.

In Limbo

There is a hook, of sorts, that initially entices you to delve deeper into the game’s story: the characters, or the local cake-loving connoisseurs, if you will, who are stitched into the idea that, if you serve them their ideal confectioneries for a certain period of time, you will eventually unlock more of their backstories and habits. For example, if you serve a customer once, then you might find that they’ll return the next day, and ultimately share their inner secrets with you, or the pastries and beverages that make their inner souls tick. As for whether or not these tales are actually worth lending an ear to, on the other hand, is debatable, and they’re things that’ll no doubt have various meanings for different people. For me, though, I guess I just wasn’t entirely sure if I wanted to know their life stories.

Aside from being able to tune in on the occasional local’s latest spiel, Café Paris also allows you to carry out several basic tasks, most of which you’ll have no doubt already seen and accomplished in Coffee Talk or, to some extent, Supermarket Simulator. Simply put, you’ll work around the clock to boil delicious beverages, stock pastries and other European delicacies, and earn a small wage to further develop your business and finesse your culinary wizardry. That’s about all there is to it, and so, naturally, you’ll need to take full advantage of your time management skills to fulfill orders in a timely manner, and not to mention keep your guests returning to your café for future homely concoctions.

Paper Thin

I’m on the fence with a lot of things that crop up in Café Paris, particularly the characters and their paper-thin personalities. To warrant a hearty amount of attention, a game must have one or two interesting hooks that simply convince you to carve a little deeper into the tapestry of events that orbit around the day-to-day cycle. And, to give credit where it’s due, some of these characters do have their moments, but I wouldn’t say that there’s enough of an incentive to keep you second-guessing their roles or motives. You can pour them their favorite drinks, and you can get them their chosen appetizer to help elevate your relationship with them, but that’s about as far as you can go before things begin to feel more like a chore than an activity of any form of interest.

To add insult to injury (and I do feel a little guilty here), the graphics in Café Paris aren’t particularly special. Scratch that, they’re tolerable, or at least, they’re on a similar wavelength as the lion’s share of alternate business simulation games. And by that, I mean that they’re most condensed into wooden gestures, jagged surfaces, and almost laughable facial expressions, to round off just a few of its audiovisual specialties. Full disclosure: Café Paris isn’t a comedy — but it probably could’ve been, had it made the effort to mix humor with its tasteless and borderline mediocre dialogue. Oh, and did I forget to mention that its characters frequently phase in and out of one another? Ain’t no queuing system here, folks.

Verdict

While you could quite easily argue that there is enough content to scratch that post-Supermarket Simulator itch, I can’t quite bring myself to say that Café Paris has the same level of depth as a lot of its competitors. It’s an okay-ish game on the surface, and it helps that a lot of its in-game mechanics and progression hooks are easy to understand and develop on the move. Having said that, there just isn’t a huge amount of substance to the gameplay itself, and it pains me to admit it, but the truth is, there’s scarcely anything to write home about outside of the usual trimmings and trappings of a bog-standard shop-keeping simulation game. It’s fun in short bursts, for sure, but to say that it’s capable of stealing dozens of hours of your time just wouldn’t be entirely true.

When all’s said and done, if you’re happy to substitute the gratifying qualities of the workload in exchange for a slightly more subtle sense of accomplishment, then you’re probably going to enjoy working the checkouts at this cozy establishment. Granted, you won’t find a lot of meat on the bones, so to speak, but if you’re content with the idea of selling the odd cup of coffee and conversing with one or two paper-thin personalities, then again, you might find what you’re looking for in the tight-knit quarters of Café Paris. As for whether or not it’s worth the investment, however, is another matter, as it may boil down to the question of whether or not you have the mental capacity to withstand the monotony of it all. For me, personally, I just can’t vouch for it.