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Critter Café
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Cute, Cosy, and Full of Critters (Gamescom) - Critter Café Interview with creator Eleanor Gregory
We caught up with the creator of the delightful life-sim title to learn more about how it's combining adorable creatures and cosy café aesthetics.
Audio transcription
"Hello everyone, I'm Alex here with Gamereactor. I'm here with Eleanor, we've just checked out Critter Café. She is the original creator of Critter Café and is basically going to tell us what we can expect to see in Critter Café and I've said Critter Café a lot."
"Eleanor, talk about Critter Café so I can stop saying their name.
So, Critter Café. Yeah, Critter Café is a wholesome game that's all about finding and rescuing these magical creatures known as Critters who have found themselves stuck in these strange portals out in the world and it's up to you to go and rescue them by solving environmental puzzles and then bringing them back to your rescue café, which is like a cat café or a dog café."
"Rescue café is a famous setting.
I really like something that I like when I was sort of playing the game just now is the depth that you've got in what you can do with the Critters. It's not just sort of like a split between rescue mission and controlling your café. There's sort of a natural progression of what you can do with them, how you can get more cosmetics with them and how you bring them into the café."
"Could you talk a bit about the sort of ideas of what you wanted to do with the Critters and make it more than just a they sit in the Critter corner where you can say hi to them and then otherwise it's just a café simulate.
Yeah, of course. So, while you're rescuing the Critters, when you brought them back to your rescue café, of course, we want to avoid the idea that you're just going out and snatching animals to work in your café, basically. So, we also want to introduce you taking care of your Critters as well."
"So, when you first rescue a Critter, you'll need to settle it into your café before it can come and spend time in the café activities. That's where you visit them in their own habitat.
You can feed them, you can play with them, you can just take a little bit of care of them to settle in before they come and help you out."
"There's also the element, as you talked about, in the rescue missions where you do get more of a puzzle type game. You get the hammer, which I discovered very quickly and sort of didn't put it down.
What can players expect as well when they go on these rescue missions?
Yeah, so with the rescue missions, this is all about solving environmental puzzles to find your way to the Critter that's found themselves stuck in this strange fantasy world through the portal."
"So, you'll be using tools such as the hammer to clear out obstacles to make your way through and then also using some of the environmental puzzle elements such as pushing and pulling blocks around just to make your way through.
I really like the art style that you've gone for. I really like the designs of the Critters specifically."
"What sort of, did you have many inspirations for this? What was the sort of idea behind it?
Yeah, just all things design on Critters.
Yeah, so with the Critters particularly, there's two kinds of inspirations they come from.
So, some are our own fantasy twists on real world animals."
"Bubble Bill, for example, he was one of our friends with a duck and dinosaur crossover.
And then some of them are also just based on other fantasy animals, such as one of my favourites is Favern, who's like a little pastel dragon.
Yeah, and we've also, as I said, it's not just Critters, although they are the shining beacon of this game."
"You've got the cafe element, which is full of customisation and there's also customisation of the player character.
Can you talk about sort of how the player can customise not only the cafe they control, but themselves as well?
Yeah, so customisation is something we of course want to lean into that freedom of expression.
So you have your cafe space, which is, you know, a universal place that the player is refurbishing."
"So you can add new items that you've unlocked, you can change the wallpaper and floor.
But then also with the player as well, again, freedom of expression.
So all of the characters and the customisation options are completely genderless.
So you're not going to be locked in or out of any particular options because of something like that."
"When you have a cosmetic option, it will always be available to you.
And you can always come over when you're in the cafe and change up your look if you just feel like changing it day to day.
There's also the cafe mini games that you have, sort of, it's got a wholesome vibe to it, though.
You're not going to get, you know, customers if we talked about tutting or like angry footsteps."
"So, you know, anyone who's worked in the service industry will know you get those things.
But yeah, it's a much nicer cafe environment.
Yeah, absolutely.
So one of the cafe activities, the one we talked about there, is open for trade where you're serving your customers by completing small mini games."
"And again, as you were saying, we're going for that wholesome vibe.
So, you know, if you mess up one of the mini games for the orders, then this customer is not going to get super angry with you and just storm out and say they're never coming back.
But if you do, you know, make it round as many customers as you can, if you do perfect those mini games, then they can have an even nicer time than they would anyway."
"It's worth pointing out as well, not everything lives at the cafe.
You have your habitat section and you also have the wider area as well.
We can find these rifts sort of what came into the world designing around that.
And, you know, how did you broaden out the scope from just the cafe itself?
Yeah, so we have the cafe space and then we mentioned the habitat."
"So this is where the critters are, you know, having their little sanctuary away from spending time in the cafe.
That's a break for space, if you will.
Yeah. And that was we sort of wanted to lead into the closeness there because, you know, this is this is the critters home now.
You know, you've rescued them from the strange situation they found themselves in."
"You know, selling them into this, you know, leaning into the fantasy vibes as well for a cozy space there.
Sort of similar with the outdoor world as well.
So, you know, we just kind of wanted to create these, you know, really nice welcoming environments for the player to go and explore and look around for these portals and just feel really cozy."
"It's a place where I would like to live.
If anyone, by the way, if anyone is is onto this reference, you probably won't be.
But like really wholesome primeval.
If you watch that British TV series, it was something we just chatted about."
"And I was like, I need to say that because I feel like it's it's definitely a way to say it.
But otherwise, when can we expect to see Critter Cafe and what can we see it on?
So Critter Cafe will be releasing later this year and releasing on PC and Switch.
Thank you so much for your time."
Gamescom
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