Pokémon Café Mix is a Free-to-Play puzzle game in the Pokémon series developed by Genius Sonority, developers of previous Pokémon puzzle games Pokémon Trozei! and Pokémon Shuffle. Initially announced as part of Pokémon Presents on June 17th, 2020, the game was released for Nintendo Switch, Android and iOS on June 24th. On August 18, 2021 it was announced that the game would be getting a title update called Pokémon Café Remix, which launched on October 27 with new gameplay features and expansions.
You are placed in the shoes of a regular human, accompanied by their lovely partner Pokémon Eevee. After visiting a wonderful café open to both humans and Pokémon, the player is inspired to open a café of their own. With the assistance of Leah, a human who helps manage the café, and Eevee, they will make their café dreams come true.
Compared to previous puzzle affairs, the gameplay and Gotta Catch 'Em All mechanics are scaled back quite a bit. Players progress through a series of stages (called "orders") to serve visiting Pokémon various dishes to their liking. For each order, players must tap and drag across the screen, connecting icons of the same Pokémon (representing the Pokémon's motivation) to link them and make them disappear. The more icons you link at once, the bigger the reaction and the more points you get. Each Order has a specific goal, which may involve removing multiple types of items from the field; each item has a unique way to remove them, and you must clear the order within the turn limit to succeed.
Assisting you in your endeavor are, of course, Pokémon. Initially joined by your trusty Eevee, clearing orders allows you to befriend the Pokémon who visit your café, and with enough friendship they will become a member of your staff working the café. Pokémon you befriend can be set as Leader Pokémon, who can be brought to orders to enable powerful Café Skills that can turn the tides in a pinch.
This game provides examples of:
- Antepiece: Any time a new gimmick is introduced, you'll usually get a relatively easy order featuring that gimmick as the sole mechanic, allowing you to practice with getting used to it. Once you pass that, they'll start integrating the new gimmicks with any previously-encountered gimmicks.
- Anti-Frustration Features:
- It is possible for a honey block or caramel piece to duplicate over other gimmicks or objects on the field. In the former case, it will immediately destroy the gimmick, including the otherwise indestructible tomatoes and, in the case of the milk and shaker gimmicks, having one destroyed destroys the other. If it happens to duplicate over special objects like Skill Orbs or megaphones, it will force them to automatically activate, but this won't consume a turn.
- You can set off cafe skills and megaphones in a chain reaction, having one effect set off the other when aligned. This becomes handy when you're strapped on moves and need to finish the objectives in one move, such as unharmed pumpkins if one Café Skill hits it while a megaphone is set off and hits it as well.
- If the stage has tomatoes and/or shakers, the game will only end if the pieces stop moving entirely, provided they're the last thing in need of completion. This allows gravity to take effect, which both pieces need for their objectives to be fulfilled.
- Remix gives all Pokémon specialties at specific levels they reach, such as giving them the chance to completely destroy a couple of any sort of gimmick by simply making a combo within their reach or yielding more fruit from boxes. If the specialty involves the Tomato or Basil, the gimmick item will join the chain allowing them to be moved more easily.
- Furthermore, when a long chain can damage multiple gimmicks, the specialties will only target the ones that haven't been as damaged in case the ones at the tip of the chain can be normally cleared in one go.
- If the board ends up with no possible moves available except for using items (which pretty much has to be on purpose, as that requires there to be no skills or megaphones and no more than one Pokémon of each species, which would require gimmicks like honey to spread to cover all entry points and the player to match every possible Pokémon without clearing the gimmicks), the puzzle will be completely reset without costing stamina and all items used will be refunded.
- Ascended Extra: The first cutscene of the game depicts your character and Eevee visiting a Pokémon café headed by a cheerful Charizard, which is apparently the inspiration for your own café. However, the original café is never mentioned again... until the first event of Remix, three days after the re-launch, when said Charizard shows up unexpectedly and is suspected of scouting the place. Like all visitors, it can be recruited.
- Awesome, but Impractical:
- Mew's skill, when fused with another skill icon, involves clearing the entire board of icons. However, even linking Mew icons isn't going to be enough to charge one skill in time, and the effect will not clear gimmicks that require more than one hit to destroy.
- Similarly, Ditto's combined skill turns every Pokémon icon into itself. It does not advance gimmicks at all, though, outside of the small radius of its activation.
- Big Eater: Events when a very hungry Pokémon visits the cafe involve making order after order to satisfy its stomach until the event expires, implying the trope. This occurs to even Pokémon that aren't known to be big eaters. This also includes Mewtwo.
- Blush Sticker: The game's artstyle gives oval-shaped blush marks on Leah and the Pokémon. Even Pokémon with fur or feathers would sport these.
- Bribing Your Way to Victory:
- The game's main method of monetization is "golden acorns". You can earn golden acorns by clearing orders, but you can also buy them with real money. Golden acorns have a wide variety of uses, such as gaining extra turns if you fail an order and buying powerful items, and the fastest way to get more of them is, of course, money.
- Remix adds Premium Passes, which yield out more items and exclusive outfits before the passes expire.
- The Delivery feature adds Loot Boxes, which are ready in 23 hours. Golden Acorns can be used to bring back one or eleven of these deliveries at once.
- The game periodically releases Pokémon that are designed to do very well on events/provide a high bonus reward during team events. Lack one of them, and your score will most likely tank/be too slow to complete. Team events are very rarely going to give you a bonus Pokémon to use to get more points, with all of them either being locked to a monthly pass or through delivery.
- Double Unlock: In Remix, unlocking new dishes requires certain Pokémon staff members to reach a certain level. Once that's fulfilled, a puzzle must be completed using the lead Pokémon for the dish.
- Endless Game: Master Café Mode loops forever until new normal stages are added, allowing players to continue earning stars and befriending Pokémon.
- Failure Is the Only Option:
- The marshmallow and pickle jars' gimmick is to alternate between turns so some can open while others can't when setting off a combo next to them. If you happen to let jars that turn on during even turns go untouched, you will fail on the final odd turn no matter what you do. ReMix fixes this with the passive Pokemon skills allowing a clear of those gimmicks even if they're closed.
- To a lesser extent, any other gimmick that requires more than one combo to break them during your final move, such as sugar cubes, popcorn, or chocolate.
- Chestnuts if you have no special skills or megaphones to use. Pumpkins are even worse than chestnuts, needing two skills or megaphones to eliminate. Lack any on those with two moves left and you're done for. This is lessened in Remix if the lead Pokémon has a special gimmick that allow matches to clear them out, but only a couple at a time can be cleared that way.
- Food Porn: One of the major appeals is seeing all the delicious Pokémon-themed dishes the game comes up with.
- Gotta Catch 'Em All: Not quite to the same extent as Trozei or Shuffle, as the order in which you befriend Pokémon is more or less linear according to your in-game progress.
- Hard Mode Filler: Clearing all available regular orders unlocks Master Mode, where you are able to play more difficult versions of the regular orders. Master Mode progress resets when a new wave of orders goes live, and you get some Master Points for your trouble, incentivizing playing during the content downtime.
- Idle Animation: Every Pokémon has one, such as Pikachu standing upright and twitching its ears and Eevee crouching down and ruffling its fur. Some employed Pokémon also have a special, longer idle animation that occurs after waiting a particularly long period of time, such as Squirtle hiding in its shell and Lucario conjuring an Aura Sphere and then gazing at it.
- Interface Screw: The combo indicator that is displayed around the top right part off the game board may end up obscuring icons or gimmicks. Not a major hazard in normal levels, but can be a problem in One-Minute Cooking levels where you're hounded by time and end up not noticing a hidden gimmick.
- It Only Works Once: In the original version:
- Occasionally, a customer Pokémon will have a "friendship bonus" which triples the amount of stars earned from an order. If you don't have enough golden acorns to buy more turns on the order, you'll have to forfeit the bonus.
- Similarly, the second order during a party—worth 2 stars—can only be attempted once, unlike the first order. No amount of hearts will let you continue it.
- Limit Break: Each Pokémon has a Café Skill that comes in the form of a small orb that appears on the field when enough of the user's skill gauge is filled. Café Skills usually have effects that clear parts of the field or transform other icons, complete with special animations. If you get two Café Skill orbs on the field, you can also combine them to produce a more potent effect.
- Luck-Based Mission:
- Certain orders require you to use a certain number of megaphones in the stage. Megaphone spawns are tied to clearing icons, and they have a chance to appear when icons are dropped into the stage. Unfortunately, if the game decides not to cooperate you may find yourself a little shorthanded by the time the turn counter winds down, which may force you to restart, use items, or buy extra turns. Thankfully, this problem goes away once you add megaphone generating staff members such as Munchlax or Starly, whose Café Skill instantly generates and activates megaphones for free.
- Getting Tomatoes or Basil to move down is pretty easy. Getting them to move up, however, is a matter of pushing them around and hoping the game decides that the Tomato or Basil wants to go the way you want it to go. Milk Bottles and Shakers are a two-way example of this, as you'd have to push one towards the other and hope the other doesn't get carried away further by the game's physics. This issue can be mitigated in Remix if the lead Pokémon has a specialty gimmick involving them, as they could grab the tomato/basil leaf with the chain.
- Megaphone generating skills as a whole tends to be finnicky with effectiveness. While it does cover the megaphone requirement on orders, using them to clear gimmicks and more can be more trouble than what it's worth as you can't control where they're pointing.
- Lucky Seven: In both versions, order #777 has a wall in the shape of a 7 on the board, and the score requirement is 77,777. Remix's Three-Star Challenge requires 7 eggs and 7 megaphones for an extra star. The Pokémon that the game will suggest for you is Wobbuffet, whose Café Skill is, coincidentally, luck-based.
- Mundane Utility: Several Café Skills in this game are depicted as Pokémon using their moves to do café work, such as Squirtle using Water Gun to wash dishes, Bulbasaur using Razor Leaf to cut vegetables, Snorlax Body Slamming pizza dough flat, etc.
- Mythology Gag:
- In Remix, the first specialty Lucario has is chocolate.
- Mew's final recruitment card requirement is to complete order #151 (its Pokedex number).
- Victini's Café Skill references V-create in both its animation and V-shaped pattern, while its five-star outfit is labeled Searing Chef (a play on Victini's other special move Searing Shot).
- The Charming Emolga event features Snivy being a bit frustrated with it, much like Ash's Snivy towards Iris's Emolga in Pokémon the Series: Black & White. One of the Bingo goals for that event is to clear 587 leader Pokemon icons, Emolga's Pokedex number.
- New Work, Recycled Graphics: The Pokémon icons are mostly recycled from Trozei and Shuffle, though some icons have been revamped in design.
- No Fair Cheating: Remix adds training stages that can grant massive amounts of EXP to Pokémon by spending up to 3 stamina. However, occasionally there are situations where players have temporary infinite stamina, such as free 15-minute stamina gifts or 6-hour infinite stamina for returning players, which would lead to some serious level grinding sessions. The devs counter this by forcing players to spend Golden Acorns if they want to use 2 or more stamina at once, forcing players to use one stamina at a time to conserve their acorns.
- Not So Extinct: Even Hisuian Forms of Pokémon can visit the Café, such as Zorua.
- Palette Swap: Some Shiny Pokemon are available to play as — Celebi via a promotion for Pokémon: Secrets of the Jungle, and several others if you get lucky in ReMix.
- Play Every Day: The game rewards logging in daily with several bonuses for each day. During the original's release, the fifth day unlocked Pikachu for the cafe staff, while the tenth day gave you the Tasty Tart in-game item. The Remix release nets an alternate outfit for Eevee.
- Retool: The Remix update is essentially an entirely new game, with carryovers from the previous version such as items and Pokémon partners.
- Ridiculously Cute Critter: All the Pokémon are presented in a Super-Deformed and cheerful art style, to the point that freaking Charizard can compete against Dragonite for cutest dragon.
- Scoring Points: Chaining icons and activating Café Skills increases your score, which is usually a requirement for fulfilling Orders. The one-minute cooking mode introduces a time limit, where the goal is to rack up the highest score before time is up.
- Socialization Bonus:
- During the original, some events give rewards based on the total number of stars gathered by everyone on a team, which can have up to 30 players.
- In Remix, team members can cheer on their teammates to give them up to 5 more stamina to use upon request. Once you request it, you cannot request again for 24 hours.
- Starter Mon: Eevee. In the original version, you'll ditch it almost immediately as soon as you befriend your first Pokémon, Charmander, as you're actively encouraged to bring Pokémon whose specialty matches the specific Order, and Eevee is typeless. In Remix, however, it stays useful for a bit longer, due to instead specializing in all order types as well as being able to clear sugar cubes, whipped cream, and nuts* instantly, which are some of the most common gimmicks, plus it has the lowest skill gauge (at 50) compared to other Pokémon (whose gauge is at least 60) and thus can generate its skill faster.
- Super-Deformed: The artstyle for this game is almost exclusively chibi, except for the humans.
- Suspicious Video-Game Generosity: In Remix, every stage has a high move limit in order to clear them. However, this is because each order is divided into two: the first half is the standard level, and then there's the second half, which will most likely take less turns to complete assuming that the player has managed to clear the first half as quickly as possible.
- Tastes Better Than It Looks: The Yummy Yamper Pasta by no means looks disgusting or surely doesn't taste horrible... though it does prominently display Yamper's ass as bread.
- Temporary Online Content: Some Pokémon are special visitors, which only show up for a few days in real time and have to be befriended before a deadline to have them stay as employees. Both versions have events for gaining points solo or a team, while ReMix added One-Minute Cooking, another limited-time event that could net potential staff members. Eventually some paid events were added so you could get the limited-time Pokemon you missed.
- Unwinnable by Design: Some of the training stages happen to be so incompatible with certain Pokémon attempting them, as their skills can't possibly help as much as the required skills, often needing to use the player's items to clear them. A patch for ReMix attempted to fix this, but there are still times where this can occur.
- Video-Game Lives: The game uses Candy Crush Saga-style lives where you're technically able to go on as long as you want whenever you want, but failing an order depletes a heart. Run out of hearts, and you won't be able to retry orders until your hearts recharge. This was abandoned upon the transition to Remix, which halves the stamina recharge time but depletes it upon every order regardless of success.
- Wholesome Crossdresser: Male Pikachu can access the Fancy Dress outfit (obtained via a special event), and nobody in the café, not even Pikachu, minds.
