Welcome to our latest review on the Indie Brew, where we grind down and brew the freshest indie games. Today, we have a new coffee making game in town that’s stirring up some interest with its unique mechanics – Coffee Caravan.
Prefer to watch the video version? Check it out here
Story
Coffee Caravan is a cozy coffee-making simulator where you are tasked with setting up a coffee shop out of a caravan and serving your customers. Unlike your regular management sims, Coffee Caravan doesn’t actually include a story element, so we won’t be rating it for story in this review.
GAMEPLAY
The world of Coffee Caravan is absolute chaos at its worst and only slightly less so at its best. The game starts with setting up shop in a caravan, equipped with basic coffee making equipment. Each recipe is unique, requiring specific steps to create the perfect brew for each customer.
The most intriguing part of the game is its utilization of dungeon crawler and roguelite mechanics. The level map is randomly generated and you need to complete each level without any customers getting frustrated, otherwise, you start from the beginning. There are easy and hard customer serving levels, mystery levels, shop levels, and treasure levels. The path you take through the level map influences the gameplay experience and progression.
The shop levels allow you to purchase new coffee recipes, machines, upgrades, and furniture that impacts how you and your customers interact. Mystery levels are unpredictable, introducing new character types, events that affect you or your customers, or a bonus visit to the shop. Treasure levels offer the choice of 3 different items or a boost to your cash. Losing a level sends you back to the start, but with different pathways, making each run unique.
At the end of each level map is a extreme challenge level, which could be seen as this game’s version of a boss fight, and successfully completing this will unlock new vans and other levels to progress through.
The management, cafe sim, side of the game is addictive and fun, with some challenging levels in there too, but combining it with the dungeon crawler style level map really ups the ante in the game and definitely makes you strive to get past the point you lost at last time. It’s definitely a challenging game, but one that has some solid gameplay so for gameplay we’re rating Coffee Caravan as Fully Caffeinated
PERFORMANCE
Coffee Caravan’s performance is commendable. The game plays smoothly without requiring high resources, and no bugs or issues were encountered during gameplay. The controls function well with a keyboard and mouse, though there’s a learning curve to get used to them. A bit of an improvement could be made by adding an option to swap items, but otherwise it’s a well executed game, so for performance we’re ranking Coffee Caravan as Fully Caffeinated.
DESIGN
The cute design of Coffee Caravan is another strong point. The art style is fun and stands out, with detailed illustrations of coffee recipes and machines. The soundtrack seamlessly blends calming chaos, matching the overall vibe of the game.
The design works together to create a game that looks deceiving cozy, whilst still hinting at the chaos that awaits you so for design, I’m rating coffee caravan as Juiced.
ORIGINALITY
Coffee Caravan puts a caffeinated spin on the management sim genre. It might remind you of games like Diner Dash, Pixel Cafe, Overcooked, or Plate Up, but the coffee-specific theme and the attention to detail set it apart. The integration of dungeon crawler aspects adds an extra layer of risk and reward, providing a good substitute for a storyline.
Overall, this a game that took us by surprise and certainly is a game that has more to it then meets the eye, so for originality, we’re rating Coffee Caravan as Fully Caffeinated.
THE FINAL BREW
In conclusion, Coffee Caravan is more than meets the eye. It’s a management sim game with a cozy style, but it packs a punch with its underlying mechanics. The thoughtful and realistic design of the coffee recipes, coupled with the spot-on preparation methods, make this game a must-try for coffee lovers and management sim enthusiasts alike.
After carefully grinding the beans, weighing and pressing the grinds, and brewing this game down, it’s time for the final taste test. And the verdict? Coffee Caravan is fully caffeinated and ready to serve.
Coffee Caravan is currently available on Steam, you can find it here: https://bit.ly/48ZQgg4
Until next time, stay caffeinated!
