Makes me feel less lonely

This game was completely different from what I expected, but impressed me a lot. Based on the visuals, you'd assume it's a time management cooking game, but it's actually more of a puzzle game about creating the best dish for each guest. Whenever you're cooking, serving drinks, or interacting with customers, time completely freezes.

So, if time is a non-factor, what's the gameplay?

Well, every night, characters from the Touhou universe will show up as "special guests", and rather than ordering off the menu you create, they say something about one of the types of food they like. Then, the player needs to cook up a special dish for them based on what the special guest said, and what you know about the guest based on their previous visits.

For example, Chen the cat comes to my izakaya and says she likes sweet foods, but in her previous visit, she said she likes fish. So, I make some dried fish chips, and by adding honey as an extra ingredient, I satisfy multiple of her desired tags, earning a unique reward from that special guest.

The really fun part of the game kicked in for me, about 7 hours in, when I started to get up to 4 special guests visiting at once. I needed to keep track of what each character liked, and how I could use all of my cooking stations at once to best serve each of them. Special guests also have kinds of foods they hate, for a slight extra challenge. So, during a shift, I spend very little time rushing to do things quickly, and instead will ponder for minutes at a time about good ingredient combinations for each special guest.

I should mention that this all constitutes the night time portion of the game, which is about 70%. The other 30%, the day time portion, has you freely walk around various areas of the world, gathering ingredients and freely interacting with the Touhou characters in their respective areas. You can chat to learn more about them, do small side-quests, or invite them to come as special guests that night, all with the goal of raising your bond with the characters to unlock new dishes, bonuses, and cosmetics. As someone with no knowledge of Touhou, I really enjoyed interacting with the characters, but I would say the writing is the game's weak point, with several dialogues feeling too longwinded to convey an interesting story.

The one other negative point I would say about this game is the lack of difficulty. At the time of writing this, I am about 19 hours in, and I have yet to unintentionally mess up a special guest's order and receive their unique punishment. It's a really fun brain exercise running the izakaya, but I would sooner describe it as mildly intense, rather than challenging.

To summarise, I recommend this game because it's a unique puzzle/cooking game, introducing Touhou characters to the player via their food preferences when they visit your izakaya, and then having the player remember each character's likes when they become a repeat customer. It's not a difficult, time-management crunch, as the visuals might lead you to believe, but rather a good chance to meet interesting characters and perfect special orders for each of them.

good gmae