Sunny Cafe Review By Mo Mahoney

At completexbox we are very much community driven, and welcome guest articles, opinion pieces and reviews. This Review is written by the very talented Mo Mahoney.

Sunny Café was released on March 27^th, 2024 on PC, PS4/PS5, Nintendo Switch, and Xbox One/Xbox series X/S and was developed by Eastasiasoft and GameNobility. Sunny Café is a visual novel game in Chinese and can be played with English subtitles as well as traditional Chinese and simplified Chinese respectively.

Visual and Audio:

For a visual novel, Sunny Café has a solid overall artistic vision. The sound overlay was great as well as the menu options and music levels were all well done. The only critique I had was in the change of caricatures between loading scenes and in mini games. I was not sure why the team chose this option but other than being a different art style, it didn’t hinder the progression of the game at all.

Objective:

Sunny Café is a visual novel and is an interesting story regarding feelings associated with falling in love and the reminiscence of the past and the deep presence of uncertainty surrounded by a past relationship. What sets Sunny Café apart is that it has another love story spread out between the game for coffee. Sunny Café is one of the first games that I have played concerning the making of the medicinal brew from the heavens and all the extra pieces required to make a special cup of joe. We meet Bowen Wu who is running his family’s café when a met cue over the location of a library occurs between Bowen and Kathy Gu.

The decision making throughout the game not only concerning the characters throughout, but the correct selections of which beverage suits each person is an important piece of the puzzle. The mini games vary, and the best aspect of the game is that the mini game selection walks you through the process and then has you do one or two of the mini games during different points throughout the story. The team used these mini games to split up the long bits of dialogue and were welcome throughout. I had hoped that the correct selection of the coffee for each person would make for a different outcome, but upon my second completion of the game, I did not see a difference respectively.

This did not deter me from enjoying the story as a big fan of coffee as well as a good story, Sunny Café captured both of those in this game. The best part of the mini games is that the can be repeated without taking a hit to your score, meaning if you are a perfectionist you can keep working to get that perfect run of pouring water through a filter (pictured below).

For those looking for likeminded Achievement Hunters, Sunny Café comes with a 2000 total achievement points. They are split between story outcomes and finding lore throughout the level. The lore pieces can be found between chapters 1-5 and are easily missed so it may take two or three play throughs to find them all.

Summary

Sunny Café is nicely produced for a visual novel and gives a lot of interesting topics concerning both past and present relationships and a breakdown of important coffee antidotes. This game is a genre breaker and can be enjoyed by most gamers who enjoy a good story.