It’s my first night on the job, and I couldn’t be more excited to start working at this cozy cat cafe. That is, until my clientele changes from cute to curiously weird.
It’s been a long day in my small but sturdy cafe. As the lights dim slowly, I feel like all my hard work is behind me. The light from the streetlamps outside and the glow of the deli fill the cafe with a warm and comforting amber glimmer. I’m ready for a quiet night selling boba and foam-filled lattes.
Or so I thought. Then the doors swing open, and a dark figure with glowing red eyes crawls through into the cafe. It talks in tongues, but I realize what it’s asking for: shots. If an interdimensional being wants some shots, then shots it gets. Who am I to judge?
What follows is a cosmic horror whirlwind of psychic beings, heavy metal fans, sentient butts that strip me of all my toilet paper, and one particularly grumpy cat with a knife that keeps trying to rob me. Despite refusing to give him my money, the tabby keeps coming back to try again, and then he’ll just sit in my cafe menacingly. However, all of these misfortunes have made me fall in love with this cat cafe.
A quali-tea game
When it comes to a year of great indie games, An Average Day at the Cat Cafe may have taken the top spot for me in 2022. It was scarily close to beating out The Outlast Trials for my best game of the year.
I was getting to know my clients, and my business was all the better for it
I don’t play many simulator games, but this one stands out for all the right reasons. First off, the cozy and quiet atmosphere in the Cat Cafe is just the right tone for a frosty winter's day. Similarly, everything is so hectic this time of year; having something so simple is a breath of fresh air.
An Average Day at the Cat Cafe is stressful enough to keep me focused but relaxing and funny enough that I don’t want to turn it off. The cast of characters that you interact with is amazingly peculiar, like the buff gym cats that only like mango boba and the lovely old frogs who always ask for foam on their latte. I felt like I was getting to know my clients, and my business was all the better for it.
Thankfully, with all my regulars that I’m gathering from this dimension and the next. I believe I’m more than prepared for the hours I plan to spend working in my cat cafe.
Scratch this gaming itch.io
I found An Average Day at the Cat Cafe while browsing my favorite gaming platform, Itch.io. For those who haven’t heard of this website, it’s a platform for indie game developers to post content and get audience feedback. While you can choose the amount you pay for each game, meaning they are technically free, it’s always good practice to tip your developers.
Itch.io has always been a staple for me; it’s a great space for discovering creative games. In particular, the horror games on this website are some of the best I’ve played. That’s why I was so pleasantly surprised to find An Average Day at the Cat Cafe, a game with a dash of horror that didn’t make my soul leave my body in fear.
Some of the best games on this site range from a retail worker's worst nightmare: Night of the Consumers, to the reality-bending No Players Online. There are so many examples of excellent games that you can spend hours and hours just browsing and giving loads of different developers a go. For now, I’m just happy to say that I can add An Average Day at the Cat Cafe to this excellent list.
