Little Dragons Cafe

The game looks pretty yet cheap in places, but the simple presentation is easy to digest, especially with the sometimes-deeper concepts addressed in the story. I may not be the right audience for this, but as I watch my daughter delight in playing, it is easy to take a page from the story and appreciate the title for what it is instead of what it is not. Despite all of its issues, it is oddly delightful to spend a day playing in the old LDC helping friends, cooking new recipes, or exploring with a dragon!

Little Dragons Cafe is a game targeted at a younger audience, and we think it succeeds in delivering a good experience for them. More experienced players won't find them that enjoyable, but we think it's entertaining anyway.

Yasuhiro Wada shows his new creation with this easy game that everyone in the house can afford to play. We expected much more from the Harvest Moon and Rune Factory creator, and at least we wanted something more of management in a game that is supposed to let us manage our own cafe. But we have a dragon.

Charming but too soon redundant mix of coffee house management (including cookin rhythm minigames) and raising a dragon with very obvious technical problems.

Ultimately, this sweet treat is delightful at first but definitely won’t fill you up for long.

Little Dragons Café can be fiddly and repetitive, but it's not all together awful. A host of interesting, well-rounded characters provide an engaging story as you raise the world's cutest dragon. It might not be the most taxing game, but it provides a cathartic experience with its simplistic approach to café management.

Despite the piles of issues and annoyances, Little Dragons Café isn’t an unpleasant game. The overall art direction, character design, and music all present a storybook charm that pulls you in early and keeps it enjoyable in the midst of the grind. More than anything, the simple gameplay just gets stretched thin over the 40 hour story. While we don’t often focus on cost, the full $60 price tag also seems particularly difficult to justify. With a stronger investment and more developed gameplay, a sequel may still have potential, but as it is, Little Dragons Café could have used a bit more time in the oven.

Little Dragons Cafe is a charming game that has all the ingredients to be an ideal game to play when you’re feeling stressed or overwhelmed, but it doesn’t manage to be fun enough to make you want to commit to it. It would benefit from a pace that isn’t abysmally slow and having more activities to partake in. Even with my adorable dragon child following me around and the game’s visual charms, the overall experience lacks the substance to make me want to stay much longer than the customers who visited my cafe.

Like those lemonade stands, good intentions can’t change this lukewarm sugar-water into something satisfying.

Little Dragons Cafe falls far behind any other game in the genre by miles. There just isn’t enough here to keep people engaged long enough to make it worth the money.