About Pastriez Bakery Cafe:
I love simulation games. I love being put in a position to decide the strategy for growing a business or a colony or whatever else I can be in charge of. But the simulation is only half of the formula for success, because you also need feedback to know if your strategies are working. Plenty of sims struggle with presenting a compelling system to work with, but plenty more fail to give you all the tools to work with those systems effectively. Bakery is one such game that stumbles on that key point, which would be a real shame if it did well at any of the other keys of the genre. You have found your calling in life, managing a little bakery in the middle of a bustling city. After picking one of five aspiring bakers to guide, you select a plot in one of the city’s many districts. There’s an inspiring grand opening, and then you and your first employee get right to work in your modest shop. Every day there’s bread to bake, orders to ring up, spills to mop, and shelves to stock. You’ll also have some colorful characters dropping by to offer you items or share their stories with you. If you can make your business take off and maintain your popularity, eventually you’ll get the chance to prove your mastery of the art of baking. Except you won’t, because this game is virtually impenetrable in every way. You start with a clean isometric view of your store, watching folks come in and grab bread and take it to the register. You need bakers to bake and clerks to ring people up and stock the shelves, but you don’t get to tell them how or when to do this. The only control you have over your bakers is setting what should be on each shelf. You can’t do anything with your clerks, so if they decide to sweep the floor while ten people stand fuming in line, you’re just going to have to eat those lost sales. You can help your employees by assigning points to their skills when they level up or buying them personal items to help their performance, but the former takes forever and the latter is ridiculously expensive
