Cozy Gaming - Coffee Caravan

 Recently I played this cute lil game called Coffee Caravan that both drove me nuts and made me feel very satisfied. Before getting to the review, here is the official synopsis and pictures:

Fuel your coffee passion in Coffee Caravan! As a cafe manager, brew, experiment with delicious recipes, and build your dream coffee business on wheels. Serve customers, unlock new flavors, purchase appliances, and enjoy your procedurally generated road trip in this roguelite experience.

I'll start with the good stuff. The concept is very simple: you memorize different ways to make coffee and serve them to your customers. The design is rather charming and cute. I loved that I could position things the way I wanted them too - all the machines/tables/decorations can be moved and put both inside and outside the van. 

Now onto the cons. There isn't much customization to do, both to the interior and to the character itself. You get like 3 hair colors, 2 pants, 2 skirts or something like that. The van can't be changed at all, but you can put some flowers/trees on the surrounding area. That is mostly a cosmetic issue, so if you don't care about that, it's not that bad. 

The controls are a bit wonky when played with a joystick. I played with a generic PC controller (to compare: I played Overcooked with it, and it was amazing), and you just can't be precise with it. It's much better when played with a keyboard and mouse combo. Maybe it's just me, but I definitely noticed I got better results with the latter. 

The one, major issue I had that totally made things frustrating for me was the fact that when you fail a level (the moment you don't serve ONE customer, it's over) you have to start the whole section from the beginning. To explain things better - the game is divided in sections, e.g. the first one has the smallest caravan and you get maybe 10 levels. When you pass the "boss level" you move on to the "medium caravan" section, then the "large caravan" etc. I don't know how many sections there is because I gave up when I failed for the fourth time on the "medium" section. 

Look, I don't mind being bad at a game, or even having to repeat the same level a thousand times (I did this a lot of times to get achievements by playing a level perfectly in other games). That is not the problem. The problem is having to repeat 10 levels I already played before and being bored out of my mind. And that is why, despite it having certain qualities, I can't say I was very happy playing it. It felt more like a chore.