Simulator games. They are everywhere nowadays. Running a supermarket, brewing beer, power washing, being a baker. If you can name it, there might be a simulator game for it. December 2024 saw the release of Cafe Paris by Virtual Sky Interactive. How does this game stack up to the other simulation games on the market? Let’s find out!
The Story
You’re running the 24/7 cafe just around the corner from the Eiffel Tower. Serving up coffee and baked goods to various customers, as well as getting a glimpse into the day-to-day lives of some of the patrons of your cafe.
The Good
I’m going to be blunt – my initial playing of this game, there was nothing that I could note as a positive. We’ll get into the reasons below. The only positive thing I can attest to is that the environment of the cafe was done very well (if not a little lacking, especially behind the serving counter).
The Bad
Where to start, where to start.
Right away – the audio. In the Settings of the game, there is no option to adjust the volume. It is either on or off and I will say, the opening menu of the game can be a bit deafening if you’re not ready for it.
As we land in the cafe, it becomes immediately apparent that the variety is lacking. There are three drink options and three pastry options – making for a total of nine possible combinations of food and drink. You can see the issue – the process of delivering orders gets very repetitive very quickly. To make it worse, it does not seem there will ever be an opportunity to expand on our menu.
There are only 5-6 customers that come in…again and again and again. And you can converse with these individuals but the dialogue for each of them is the same and never varies. Except David. David appears to be the only individual who has a more in-depth conversation, mainly about his love for coffee. He speaks with you once…and never returns.
In order to ensure that your patrons receive their orders, you have to be perfectly aligned behind the register. Are you a foot to the right? Nope – move over to properly give them their food and drink. Some of these technical issues can definitely pull you out of the game. Additionally, because this cafe is 24/7, you will be working during the night. And you will know you’re working at night because it gets very dark in the cafe (almost to the point where you can’t see).
Last nit to pick – one of the customers routinely had a case of broken neck. If you moved to a certain direction around her, her neck took a strong and questionable angle that would make a chiropractor cringe.
The Update!
I initially played this game on December 30th. As you can imagine from my notes above, I got relatively bored of the tedium pretty quickly. On January 8th, I found myself needing to grab some screenshots of the game for the purposes of this article. So I booted up the game and figured “Why not play through a little bit again to ensure that I can grab what I need?”
Imagine my surprise when I discover that there have been updates to Cafe Paris! The first big piece of news: David came back! We get to have a few more dialogue options and David opens up about his conflicts with his partner and whether or not he is ready to have children. Now, I don’t know about all of you, but…I would not really want to heap such a burden on my local barista. Maybe that’s just me. Regardless, it’s nice to see an expansion of David’s story.
I also noticed as I was playing that there are now achievements on Steam for your gameplay efforts. As someone who likes the concept of 100% completing a game, this appeals to me.
And lastly, after serving around your 20th – 25th customer (I honestly wasn’t paying attention to the number), you now have the option to leave the cafe. Upon leaving, you get a nice little cutscene again of patrons in the cafe as the camera pans out to show the iconic Eiffel Tower and a return to the game menu. I looked on Discord to see how long I had been playing the game. A whopping 20 minutes.
The Overall
There is a huge market for all of these simulation games. As someone who has fallen down the rabbit hole of PowerWash Simulator, there is something relaxing about the humdrum life in a certain role. However, there needs to be an offering of some variety. Cafe Paris, unfortunately, does not provide any such variety. There is a lot of potential for what this game could be, and the fact that there were updates between my first and second playings of the game show that the developers do have some vested interest in improving the game.
But even taking this into account, we come to the biggest concern that I have. While I received this game for free to provide coverage of the content, this game was available for purchase upon my first playthrough for $10 USD on Steam. Given the state that this game was in just two weeks after being released (Steam notes its release on December 16th, 2024), I cannot fathom having paid any amount of money for the Cafe Paris as it stood at that time.
The reviewer (KingOTheCask) was provided a review code for the purpose of creating content on this game. This review was played on PC.
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