REVIEW: ‘Pokemon Cafe Mix’ Is An Adorable And Entertaining Challenge (Switch)

Pokémon Cafe Mix is a single-player puzzle game, published by Nintendo currently available for iOS, Android, and Nintendo Switch. In Cafe Mix, you are the employee of a cafe in which all your visitors and partons are Pokémon. Your job is to take and create delicious meals for visiting Pokémon. If you can befriend certain Pokémon, they can become staff at the cafe, assisting you in making meals using their certain skills.

Pokémon Cafe Mix an extremely cute, entertaining, and challenging experience. I enjoy games that have an ‘easy to pick up, hard to master’ feel. Pokémon line up to be served and you choose the best Pokémon to create that order, and you swirl around Pokémon icons to score points and complete objectives. The Pokémon icons are faces of different Pokémon. You tap and hold one icon and the swirl the icon around trying to link matching ones, building a multiplier. If you can get over ten links, you will fill your employee Pokémon’s skill bar. These skills have a range of effects.

For example, Charmander’s skill clears Pokémon icons and gimmicks to the right. Gimmicks are puzzle pieces that cannot be cleared by simply linking pieces together to make them disappear. Examples of Gimmicks are Sugar Cubes and Chestnuts. You can remove sugar cubes by linking Pokémon icons near them so they can crack. You can also fully remove a sugar cube by using a Pokémon skill. The Chestnut gimmick can only be removed by using a Pokémon skill on it.

Pokémon Cafe Mix starts off easy, giving you a taste of the mechanics in the game and as you continuously complete orders, that’s when it starts to trip you up, and hooks you in. You have a certain amount of moves to complete the order in, coupled with achieving a certain score and removing a certain amount of gimmicks. Upon reaching Order 30 is when the mobile features began to kick in. You can retry if you fail your objectives, using up a heart. You have a total of five. Once you exhaust those retries, you can either wait, half an hour for a heart to refill or use golden acorns. Golden Acorns are currency to buy items that help you in-game and refill your retries. You receive these by completing orders and how well you perform.

As a gamer who loves mobile gaming, not a lot of games keep my interest. I really enjoy Pokémon Cafe Mix because, for the most part, I love Pokemon. I have been a fan of the franchise since its inception in the 90s. Also, I have a love-hate relationship with puzzle games, from not wanting to think but to also strengthen that main muscle we use every day.  Cafe Mix creates this relaxing atmosphere that allows me to think out of the box, even if the object of the game is just swirling icons around. It’s great to see the little monsters I have grown up with, in another capacity other than battling. And what better way to experience that, in making food, something that brings everyone together.

The music in Cafe Mix is extremely soothing and fun to listen to. The art is adorable and Pokémon always delivers that nostalgia effect when you see your favorite Pokémon, especially in this game when they are wearing a cute uniform, may it be a hat or scarf, or a combination of both. The levels and puzzles are well crafted giving players quite the challenge. Many times I thought I achieved success only to be greeted with the retry screen. Microtransactions are pretty reasonable in this game and are not in your face. The game lets you know there are options before you see the title screen. Overall, Pokémon Cafe Mix has been quite an enjoyable mobile game experience.

Pokémon Cafe Mix is available now for Android, iOS, and Nintendo Switch