Cat Cafe Manager Guide

When we love a game, we write a guide. So after playing and reviewing Cat Cafe Manager and having a lot of fun with the game, I thought a guide would be appropriate for the game. You can read the review here. 

As a Cat Cafe Manager, it is your job to take over the running of a Cat Cafe for your Grandmother. Unfortunately, the Cafe is a little run down and needs tender loving care to return it to a once-thriving cafe. The Cafe is in the Village of Caterwaul, where many stray cats roam free and are looking to be adopted.

Many Tasks to Complete

The tasks in the game mainly include managing the running of the Cafe, buying ingredients for the recipes, looking after the customers and the cats, and shopping in town. Decorating and designing the layout of your Cafe and repairing equipment. Hiring staff and increasing their stats and researching upgrades for the Cafe.

Basic Controls

L Stick: Use the L Stick to move around.
R Stick: Use the R Stick to zoom the camera in and out.
ZR: Holding in the ZR button puts the game into Inspect Mode, where you can check on the Stats of whatever you are near.
ZL: Holding the ZL button in will bring up a menu wheel in the bottom left of the screen.

After you customise your character how you like and pick a Trait out of the three on offer, it’s time to build your Cafe. The traits to pick from are as follows:

Gourmand: You enjoy eating food almost as much as you enjoy making it. It gives you a +2 Cooking Ability with a chance of using fewer ingredients.
Gentle: You have a gentle demeanour and can calm down the rowdiest cats. +2 Cat Care and +1 Stress Release for Cats.
Social Butterfly: Gives you the knack for making others comfortable and +2 on serviceability.

What are the Icons on the menu wheel?

Holding in the ZL button will bring up the menu wheel; it has lots of icons on it, and they are as follows:

Map: Select the map to visit the town.
Chair: Build and Decorate the Cafe by pressing the chair icon.
Cup: Arrange your Cafe’s menu once you have the ingredients.
Cats Face: Check the status of the cats you have in your Cafe, train and give them Traits.
Staff: The staff icon lets you check your staff’s stats, train them, and apply Traits.
Megaphone: This is where you can advertise for a particular set of customers to visit your Cafe. For example, if you want more witches or only witches to visit your Cafe, click on the witch’s hat and add it to the notice board.

Next, you can click on all the choices and add them to the notice board; then, you will receive resources from all types of customers. However, you must have the ingredients for each recipe that all the customers prefer; otherwise, they will be unhappy.

Cat Cafe Customers

As customers stop by your Cafe, it’s up to you to ensure that the customers leave satisfied and all their Needs are attended to so you earn plenty of Delight as Delight makes the world go around in Caterwaul Way. Customers are split into six different groups, with each group having different Needs, and they pay using different resources as they leave the Cafe. The resources you earn can then be used to buy recipe ingredients and furniture items in the shop and increase the skills cafe at the Shrine Upgrade.

Customer Icons

Green Leaf: Vagabond customers will pay in Fabrics.
Paintbrush: Artists pay in jewels.
Punk Hairstyle: Punk customers pay in materials.
Witches Hat: Witches pay in Nectar
Fish: Fisherfolk customers pay in Fish.
Briefcase: Business People play in Gold.

Regular Customers

As well as normal customers who come and go from your Cafe, you also have regular customers. Regular customers are the NPCs that will drive the storyline forward in the game. Regular customers have a Friendship Bar which increases the more you interact with them. Each time the friendship bar fills up, you’ll go up a friendship level with that NPC. At times indicated by the game, you can phone a regular customer from the red phone box beside the Cafe and invite them to your Cafe.

Resources

Let’s have a look at the different resources in the game. As I’ve mentioned above, Customers to your Cafe and Regular customers pay in various resources and increase the Delight Bar. The resources are then used to purchase ingredients and furniture in the shops, so the more customers you serve and make happy, the more resources you will receive in a day.

Fabric: Fabric is used as a currency in the Furniture shop in the town.
Nectar: Nectar is needed to buy ingredients and recipes from the market.
Fish: Fish is used to buy rewards and cat food, cat toys and stray lures from the pet shop in town.
Gems: Gems are used to purchase decorations at the furniture shop in town.
Gold: Gold is used to buy the highest quality furniture from the shop.
Materials: Materials are used while you are in Build Mode and constructing the Cafe inside and out.

Shrine

Once you meet Grimalkin, the black cat, he invites you to visit the Shrine in the village. At the Shrine, you can upgrade various things, such as increase the amount of Staff you can have or the number of chairs you can place in the Cafe. The Delight that the customers give you when they leave your Cafe happy is used at the Shrine for research.

Cats

Cats in your Cat Cafe make your customers happy by meeting their Cat Need stats. Each cat is unique, with its own look, stats, and personality. It’s your job to pick out the right combination of cats for your Cafe to please and relax your customers. By placing a tin of Cat Lure in the food bowl outside the Cafe you can encourage stray cats to visit. It takes a couple of tries to encourage a stray cat to stay, you must pet the one you choose to adopt when they are lured to your Cafe. Once the cat is happy to be adopted, you can give them a name.

Once the cat is adopted you must keep your cats well fed by filling the food bowl inside the Cafe and giving them attention, petting them and cleaning up accidents and buying toys. At the start of the game, you can only adopt one cat, but as you progress and research at the Shrine, the limit increases. You can check the notice board in town for adverts from people looking to adopt a cat from your care when your Cafe reaches its limit for Cats. 

Designing your Cafe

Going into Build mode in the menu allows you to build and decorate your cat cafe. In Build mode, you can build walls and floors and add wallpaper and windows to your Cafe. In Decorate mode, you can decorate the inside of the cat cafe with the furniture you have bought from the shop.

Chairs play a huge part in the game. The more chairs you have in your Cafe, the more customers you will have and the more resources you receive. All the furniture has stats that match the customers’ or cat’s needs. You can either mix and match furniture themes or stick to one theme.

Let’s go Shopping

Gruff’s Decorations Shop

Visit Gruff’s Decoration shop in the village to buy furniture, wallpaper and decorations. Each piece of furniture has stats to pay attention to as the customers can have Needs that correspond to a particular type of furniture. To buy furniture and decoration, you will need Gold, Fabrics and Jewels.

Bonner’s Market

In the Market, you can buy recipes from the first menu and on the second menu are the ingredients to buy. A handy list on the left of the screen shows you what ingredients you already have. You’ll need Nectar to buy recipes or ingredients.

Pet Goods Shop

The Pet goods shop is where you can buy food and toys for your cats. All items purchased in the Pet Goods Shop need Fish and Gold resources. The first menu is for Lures. Lures are required to entice stray cats to your Cafe so that you can gain their trust and adopt them. Each item you buy from the shop has stats that affect your Cafe. You can view the Cafes stats by going into build mode and pressing X.

Hire Staff

In the beginning, the Cafe has only one member of Staff, you! So be prepared to be busy and a master of all jobs. You eventually can hire Staff to help once you have researched extra Staff at the Shrine in the village as you progress through the game and earn Delight.

By going to the notice board in the Village, you can choose a new member of Staff from the ones on offer. All Staff come with their traits and stats, which can be increased during the gameplay.

Staff in the Cafe automatically perform their cafe duties serving the customers as long as they have the ingredients and equipment you get from the Villiage shops. So it’s handy that the Staff work automatically as you can leave them to it and pop to the Market if you need ingredients.

Each member of Staff has their Stats which can be increased through training. Using the ZL button will bring up a menu wheel in the bottom left of the screen, and click on the Staff icon.

We hope you have just as much fun with Cat Cafe Manager as we did with these tips under your  belt!