Video Game / My Cafe

My Cafe—Recipes & Stories is a mobile Idle Game published by Melsoft Games, where you play as a new Cafe owner trying to make success with this new business. And as you expand and improve your establishment, and gain more and more loyalty from your customer base, you begin to uncover stories from your regulars, and perhaps even influence their lives, for better or for worse.

Although it has a mostly character-driven narrative, My Cafe has some Time Management elements, where the player must fulfill various dish orders and other requests from walk-in customers and improve the cafe's prosperity by buying new equipment and furniture, and unlock new recipes.

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The game provides examples of:

• Ad Reward:
  • The TV furniture can play ads every few hours to give some diamonds. This is frequently lampshaded whenever the TV is brought up in in-game dialogues, as the customers complain about how the TV only show ads.
  • There's also random gifts/rewards that grants gold, rubies, diamonds, tickets or other boosters if you watch an ad.
  • The telephone sometimes offers a bonus order for an ad. This bonus order usually offers rarer spice rewards.
  • In the Quest mode, the player can watch an ad once every 4 hours to gain 30 energy points to explore the location. Every few hours or so, they can also watch additional ads for 100, 75, 50 then 25 energy points.
• Adult Adoptee: When Clyde Bowen comes searching for the children he might have sired during his youth, he is introduced to Emily—who grew up without a father and is of the right age to be his long-lost kid. She is later revealed not to be his daughter after all (her biological father is in prison), but Clyde decides that he doesn't care and formally adopts Emily even though she is a working adult.
• All Asians Know Martial Arts: Defied by Lucas who says that being an Asian doesn't mean that he'd know kung-fu or karate when the player asks him for martial arts tips. He does fulfill a different common Asian stereotype, however.
• Alternate Universe: Level 35 has Lucas—the resident inventor—try to build a time machine. It exploded while he was working on it, which opened a wormhole to a parallel universe where things aren't quite the same as the player's main world.
• Always Identical Twins: Ann, the game's primary barista, and Koffsky, have twin siblings. Unsurprisingly, both pairs are identical, although Ann and her sister Chloe have Identical Twin ID Tags.
• Art Evolution: At first, the characters' artwork had a rather "semi-realistic" design that somewhat resembles their in-game sprites. In 2021, all of the staff and customers are given are given a redesign with a more cartoony appearance.
• Asian and Nerdy: Lucas is the only character explicitly stated to be Asian, and is also the smartest character in the game, being a genius inventor who can create reality warping machines.
• Attractive Bent-Gender: In one chapter, Ben disguises himself as a woman named Celine to infiltrate into a gang, and while the player never gets to see what his female disguise looks like, he must be attractive enough for the gang leader to fall in love with Celine.
• Awesomeness by Analysis: Margaret has a very good intuition, and could easily deduce Koffsky's history and how he lost his first restaurant based on a single picture taken from his social media.
• Betting Mini-Game: Margaret offers the player to play dice against her for extra cash. The player wins double the betting amount if they get a higher total score, but loses the money if they get the lower score. Oh, and the numbers are totally random, and there is nothing you can do to increase your chance of winning.
• The Bus Came Back: A few customers go away for plot-relevant reasons and stops showing up in the cafe until they resolve those issues.
  • After getting arrested for theft in chapter 4, Ben seemingly disappears from the plot, but he returns as a regular customer once more in chapter 11.
  • Likewise, Mike leaves the town after failing to buy out the cafe in Chapter 28. However he returns in Chapter 36 after leaving the Corporation.
• But Thou Must!: Zigzagged. Several story dialogues with the customers gives you several response options, but most of the time, the result will be the same regardless of what you pick. For example, in Chapter 15, you will have to poll your customers about who they're voting for in the upcoming Mayor election. You can try to talk them into voting for either Jennifer or Donald, but with the exception of Mary (who will cast the deciding vote on whomever the player tells her to), they will stick to their preferred candidate.
• Calming Tea: Briefly alluded when the player talks to Koffsky after the latter had just been robbed. Koffsky asks you what is the best thing to calm your nerves after such an ordeal, and the possible answers are tea, sweet things and a good music. The correct answer is actually music, although if you answer tea (or sweet things), Koffsky will acknowledge that they do help.
• Commonality Connection: Bill is on pretty good terms with Ben after he hired the latter to help him work on his game. When he realises that Ben is also a comic book geek, he's ecstatic.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Chapter 28 introduces a customer named Mike, the CEO of a generically-named Corporation, a food-chain company that thrives by driving their competitors out of business, and then jacking up the prices of their goods while reducing the quality of the food after they've effectively monopolized the field.
• Couple Theme Naming: Chapter 14 introduces a customer named Donald. Chapter 32 introduces one named Daisy. Is it really a surprise that the two end up together?
• Disappeared Dad: Inverted with Clyde Bowen, a once famous musician who used to fooled around with numerous women. Now that he's grown older and wishes to settle down, he wishes to reunite with the children he might had sired during his wild days, and asks the player to help him find his children. Bill's research would lead Clyde to Emily, and they seem to get along great, but it is later revealed that Clyde's daughter is actually Mary, not Emily. Emily's real father is in prison. Mary wasn't included in Bill's list because he was only searching for children who grew up without a father, while Mary was adopted at birth by a farmer couple, so she ostensibly has a complete set of parents.
• Decided by One Vote: The mayoral election in Chapter 15 between Donald and Jennifer. Everyone except Mary have their preferred candidate, and the camps are tied in numbers. Mary is to cast the deciding vote, and she will pick whoever the player tells her to pick.
• Doom Magnet: Alice seems to be bring disasters wherever she goes. When she goes to a train station, the engine breaks down; when she visits a nearby village, it gets burned down, when she gets hospitalised, the place gets flooded, etc. One of the story involves the player trying to help her so that she'd stop bringing mist
• Easily Elected: After Jennifer steps down as a mayor, she intends to leave the position to Donald, the deputy mayor. However, thanks to some paperwork error, Donald accidentally made his girlfriend Daisy (who is a real estate agent) the mayor instead. She didn't even know about this until she heard the rumours from the other café customers.
• Evil Twin: Koffsky has an identical twin brother named Edward who had not only sabotage his business, but also ruined his relationship with his girlfriend. He is noted to be much more rude and sullen than Koffsky.
• Exact Words: When Bill gets drunk during his stag party, he worries that he might have cheated on Mary because the last thing he remembers of the night was hitting it off with a girl in a Catwoman's outfit. Lucas says that Bill has "physical contact" with her, which seems to confirm Bill's fears. Of course, this being Lucas, Bill didn't actually do anything dirty with the girl (who is actually Ben in disguise, sent by Mary as a Secret Test of Character), and the "physical contact" was him pushing the woman away when she tries to seduce him.
• Fourth-Date Marriage: In chapter 4, Ben proposes to Mary, his girlfriend for about one month, and she agrees. Of course, due to the suddenness of the wedding, none of Mary's friends and family could come, because they've all got other plans already. Then it is revealed that Ben is a con artist who gets arrested for the theft of the Mona Lisa painting, prompting Mary to immediately divorce him.
• "Freaky Friday" Flip: In chapter 46, Lucas and Emily swap bodies after Emily accidentally activated a strange device while visiting Lucas's lab.
• Freemium Timer: The seasonal Quest is a sort-of Hidden Object Game where the player must help another character navigate through a building to solve various mysteries. Performing an action can consume from 3 to 50 energy. The energy bar can be refilled from food (which takes about 2-3 hours to generate), watching ads, or consume energy bars (purchased using diamonds).
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: The customer's storylines rarely factor into their actions in the cafe. Unless they are said to leave town.
  • In chapter 20, Ben says that he's so broke he is unable to pay his rent (though Margaret pays for his expenses out of guilt for framing him for the Mona Lisa fiasco). Somehow, he still have enough money to eat at the cafe regularly, and can even pay hundreds and thousands of dollars for the occasional special items.
  • For some reason, characters who are supposed to be bitter enemies, love rivals and/or ex-es have no qualms sitting with each other instead of with their current love interests, despite not actually being on speaking terms.
  • Characters occasionally talk about another person behind their backs... when the person they're talking about is right next to them!
• Genius Sweet Tooth: Lucas is a genius inventor, and claims to require lots of sweets to get in his "mind space" whenever he needs to do some more serious thinking.
• The Ghost: A lot of the customers have their own lives outside the cafe and would frequently makes reference to acquaintace or family members that never actually show up, such as Mary's adoptive parents, Koffsky's Evil Twin, Elsa's ex-husband, Donald's aunt, etc.
• Happily Adopted:
  • Mary is abandoned by her birth mother as a baby, and is taken in by a loving couple who raised her as any good parent would. Mary doesn't even realise that she's adopted until she accidentally meets her biological mother, Elsa.
  • While trying to find his missing children, Clyde meets Emily and has a good rapport with her. While she turns out to not be his daughter, Clyde decides that blood doesn't matter, and officially adopts Emily as his daughter.
• Heel–Face Turn: Mike is first introduced as a villain who tries to destroy your cafe. He leaves town after the player manages to outsmart him with Donald and Fernando's help, but later returns after quitting the Corporation and becomes a regular customer.
• Henpecked Husband: Margaret has Carl wrapped around her fingers, and she can pretty much make him do anything. She can wrong him and then have him apologize and make up for her mistake.
• Identical Twin ID Tag: Chloe and Ann are identical twins, but Chloe is blonde while Ann has dark hair.
• Idle Game: The bulk of My Cafe's gameplay—i.e. serving food orders to customers—can be done automatically by the cafe's crew. Accepting phone/special orders, fulfilling special orders and buying equipment/upgrades and playing mini-games requires the players' input, but otherwise the game will run by itself.
• Invented Individual: Kevin's new love, Nicki, turns out to be a completely non-existent person. She was a persona created by Elsa and Felicia, who were mad at Kevin for two-timing them and wanted a payback.
• Last-Name Basis:
  • Koffsky's given name is actually Frederick, although this is never mentioned in the English version.
  • Likewise, Ernesto Petrovich is usually known as simply Petrovich in the game.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall:
  • In chapter 26, Bill mentions that he's developing a game called My Bistro, which he says is "similar to the one we're in right now." This implies that some awareness that he's inside a game, but he might simply be referring that his game's setting is similar to the cafe he frequents.
  • At one point, Elsa complains that the TV in the cafe only plays ads, and even that's infrequently. The TV equipment exists only for the player to run ads to get gems. Apparently that's all the customers see of the TV as well.
• Meaningful Name: The resident police officer is aptly named Watson Holmes. He says that due to his name, he is destined to become a police detective.
• Mistaken for Cheating: Happens to Bill a few times.
  • When Henry Dougan is first introduced, he is in the middle of investigating Bill, whom he suspects is cheating on Mary with Emily, as the two seems to hang out together (in secret) a lot. However, it is revealed that Bill is merely planning a surprise birthday for Mary, and since Emily is an event organiser, she is helping out with the preparations.
  • Bill does this to himself when he gets drunk during his stag party, and is told by Lucas that he has a "physical contact" with a woman in a Catwoman outfit that he developed a strong connection with. Turns out nothing happened, and Bill was staunchly faithful to Mary, after all.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Not really a celebrity, but Bill the IT expert is definitely based on Bill Gates of the Microsoft company. Not only do they share the same given names and computer savviness, they also have similar hairstyle, glasses, and general figure.
• Odd Friendship: Despite being uncomfortable around him at first, Bill develops a strong friendship with Ben—his girlfriend's ex-husband—to the point that he wants the latter to act as his best man for his wedding.
• Outhumbling Each Other: In chapter 43, Felicia and Margaret accidentally get their wedding reservations double-booked twice. Both women then do all they can to back out of their own reservations to let the other experience their dream wedding.
• Overly Narrow Superlative: In chapter 24, Ron tries to design his own football team uniform as a good luck charm to help them win a match. He shows the design to Felicia—who works as an editor to a high-profile fashion magazine—to ask for her opinion. She ends her assessment by saying that if the town ever hosts a contest for the best fashion designed by the captain of a football team, Ron would definitely win first place (out of one contestant).
• Previously Overlooked Paramour: After Mary divorces the art thief Ben, she receives a note from Bill, a tech whiz who had until recently carried a torch for her and done nothing about it. Eventually, after Bill joins a soccer team, Mary and Bill enter a relationship.
• Rotating Protagonist: The game has 20 or so "main" customers, and each chapter/level usually focuses on a different character's journey to achieve some goal.
• Secret Test of Character: Mary tries to test Bill's faithfulness by having Ben dress up as a catwoman and flirt with him while Bill is drunk.
• Serial Spouse: Margaret claims to have been married 13 times. However, this is actually a ruse. In reality, she has only one husband, Carl, whom she "married" thirteen times, and their wedding receptions serve as a cover to rob priceless artifacts from the museum.
• Sibling Yin-Yang: Olivia is a cool-headed and respected lawyer. Her younger sister Michaela is a wild and free-spirited troublemaker. Olivia can't stand her sister at first, though they are starting to try and reconcile.
• Smarter Than You Look: Cleo is a seemingly airheadeded DJ who cares more about her popularity than anything else, but while she is quite shallow/materialistic, she is otherwise very knowledgeable in science, history and politics.
• The Syndicate: Margaret and Carl are former members of a vaguely identified syndicate that focuses on antiques robberies.
• Trademark Favourite Food: Watson really loves cinnamon, and would always request for new recipes with cinnamon in them.
• Two-Person Love Triangle: In chapter 35, Lucas and the player visits an alternate universe. Lucas falls in love with Emily, who is a scientist, but they cannot be together because doing so will create a time paradox that will destroy the universe. After returning to the main universe, Lucas gets paired up with Emily (an advertising agent in this universe) for a project, and Emily falls in love with him, but Lucas is conflicted because the main universe Emily is unlike the scientist!Emily he actually likes.
• Unrequited Love Switcheroo: When Ron and Cleo started dating for the first time, Ron expresses disappointment with Cleo, as she tends to say embarrassing things whenever she is nervous. Cleo succeeds in improving herself, but the relationship between the two remain strained. Later on, Cleo criticises Ron for his lame sense of humour, and after Ron tries to learn to be more funny to impress her, Cleo starts dating Ron's humour "coach" instead.
• Walking the Earth: Diego is a traveling artist who lives in a van and drops by to the cafe once in a while to collect orders and exchange stories, before leaving again for an indefinite period of time.
• Woman Scorned: Even after breaking up with him, both Elsa and Felicia were still mad at Kevin for two-timing them, and plans revenge. With the help of Margaret, they managed to make Kevin look like a fool by tricking him to fall in love with a non-existent woman.
• Wrong Guy First: At first, Mary is in a relationship with Ben, while Bill is hopelessly in love with her. After meeting Ben, however, the player finds something fishy about him, especially since he's overly eager to marry her, despite only knowing each other for one month. Of course, he is later arrested for theft, prompting Mary to divorce him. With the player's help, Bill gets together with Mary.