Don’t let the art or premise fool you, this was actually a really bad game.

So as usual, this is yet another one of those otome games based off an April Fool’s joke by the Nekopara team. Honestly it should probably have stayed a joke, because unlike Hatoful Boyfriend that apparently had a deep and involved story, this one just feel like a sad and incomplete demo game. The premise is about the nameless faceless heroine (who is also a college student?) whose grandpa died and now she’s the owner of a cafe – but she has some catboy employees which clearly makes this a neko cafe. Unfortunately that’s basically it. There is nothing else to the game other than all the catboys fighting for her attention to be her adopted cat (while I guess all the others just become regular cafe employees?? Honestly, whatever lol.) Anyway time for our spicy catboy summary (and I say this unironically because all their names are based off spices.)

Fennel – Fennel is the serious stoic cat man with the megane, but turns out he has a cute hobby of collecting figures and actually becomes all dere dere when in the right circumstance. A typical tsun but dere nuko.

Dill – The shota template but because he’s voiced by Enoki Junya and is into fashion magazines, I kept having Cupid Parasite flashbacks to Keisaiin but if Keiisain was that little brother type instead of the massive tsundere type. Despite being a catboy, he apparently knows how to do makeup better than the heroine does. Damn gurl, come on.

Sage – To complement the lil’ bro trope with Dill, Sage is like your aniki who will protect you from the random dude who hits on you while you are buying groceries. And of course soon as you think you have a crush on him, he will immediately friendzone you because you will always be his lil’ sis! Also he’s got the whole wafuu stereotype going so he loves Japanese food and always wears some kind of kimono. What a waste of Umehara’s voice.

Laurier – Some steam reviews called him rapey, but any otome game player knows it’s just that “I’m a sexy cat man” stereotype. He didn’t even do anything rapey except like randomly lay himself in the heroine’s lap because well…he’s a cat so we can forgive that right? The only interesting thing about him is that when he eats sweets, he somehow mentally goes into shota mode and is like BOKU I WUV SWEETS CAN I GIVE U A KISS ONEECHAN UWU. The worst part is you probably think I’m joking with this UWU shit but no, the translators did it for real:

Anyway that aside though, honestly if you’re an Ishikawa Kaito fan uh….some of those fanservice kissing sounds were…mm yes. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)✨ So honestly, at least I got to enjoy that part 😂😂😂

I mean, you get what you pay for – and in this case nothing. It’s a free game so nothing of value was lost except my time but it’s ok, I was fishing and painting my nails while this was on automode because there’s nothing to read! All the lines are spoken because the heroine has no voice, no lines and just a bunch of emoji reactions. There’s not even dialogue choices in the game. It’s literally just a self-reading novel that just randomly ends like a short demo. There’s no real ending, no real character development and I am convinced this game just hates women. The reason I say this, the heroine has no lines, no name and is just a camera. But even side character women get nothing. At one point 2 customers came into their cafe, a man and a woman on a date. For a second I thought the man was by himself waiting for his date – until I realized his date is there because they gave the man a voice and lines – but his date had no lines and no voice. Even a random little boy got a voice and lines…but not a single woman in this game gets lines. W T F. ಠ_ಠ???????

After the initial “common route” each route there after took me less than an hour to complete on just automode. If you read fast and don’t wait for the characters to finish talking, it’s probably even less. It’s such a huge disappointment since the visuals and voice acting was great but they clearly just wanted to throw this game out as “come watch catboys doing cat things at this cafe”. The heroine treatment makes it feel cheap and crappy and the sudden endings are just the cherry on top of the bad experience. Anyway just a shame of good art & voice acting, and if they ever do a full game in the future like Hatoful did, hopefully they actually create meaningful stories and an actual heroine or something. Though honestly, I somehow don’t foresee this happening so this will just be yet another forgetful kusoge in my 2021 end of year review. 😂