My family and I recently played through one of our new games, Neko Neko Cafe. The main idea of the game is that you are a chef at a cat cafe, serving your cat customers. The general play is very similar to Just Desserts, but instead of ingredients, you have actual desserts in your hand that you will serve to your customers. This game provides a few twists, though, that I rather like because they give more replayability to the game.
One of the fun parts of this game is that the dessert cards are two sided. The basic desserts (bottom row) are much easier to obtain, but the customers they satisfy do not give as many points as the customers who want higher quality desserts (upper row). You have a little control over your desserts because you can choose to take your turn's action to convert two matching basic desserts into one of the better desserts on the back of the card. Be careful, though, because you have to choose which dessert to make, and one of your opponents might satisfy the customer you're eyeing!
I absolutely love the spinner wheel for this game. It's a large spinner, and the colors are vivid, so it is very appealing visually. On your turn, one of the actions you can choose to do is to spin on the dessert wheel. If the spinner lands on the desserts, you can take either the basic or advanced dessert. If you opt for the basic one, you can spin again, though you have to take the basic dessert on the second spin. Opting for the advanced dessert gets you that dessert, but you cannot spin again this turn. If either of your spins lands on the Catastrophes or Specials spots, you draw a card from those decks and see what happens!
Another fun feature of Neko Neko Cafe that sets it apart from Just Desserts and similar games is the addition of Frequent Customers. Frequent Customers represent cats that keep coming back to the restaurant. They have multiple wants, and, the more you satisfy them, the more points you get. This gives someone who is not satisfying a lot of regular customers the chance to still take away a number of points.
One other thing that I really like about this game is the artwork. The drawings of the cats and the desserts are adorable. Despite the cute nature of the drawings, though, the artwork has a lot of variety and is put onto high quality cards and the game is full of cat puns, so the feeling of the game is fun and whimsical.
Neko Neko Cafe was a lot of fun to play. It has a few different game modes and options to make you want to play the game several times. Those options also give the game the ability to last from five minutes to approximately two hours, depending on your time and patience. Overall, I would say this game is purrfect!