I encountered features of the game which were creative and thematic, but which also felt unrefined or even accidental. The orc customer throwing axes at the player are signaled with an arrow reticle on his person, and yet I feel as though it's a perfect opportunity to just signal a mechanic with your voice actors and do away with the featureless white circle. Furthermore, a sound occurs when he throws the axe; it has a twirling timbre, yet it remains fairly still flying through the air rather than visually twirling. Several customers entering at a time can lead to a situation in which one suddenly emerges from under another and I have more to deal with than I thought, however as dynamic as this makes the game, I can't help but feel it's basically unintentional due to them simply using the same pathing. This could have been thematically grafted on with couples/parties entering; they will quickly stack the workload but they'll wait longer by socializing, and uh, voice acting. Did I mention the voice acting? They have cute characters but all of their lines are stomped on by the grindset 🔥🔥🔥 meter.
The game has a strong start in establishing Nerve motivations with an explicit structural flow of items and customers, and a timer-tier-bar combo pressing you to do as perfectly as possible. This clarity, however, is somewhat befuddled by Heart aspirations which run counter to the Nerve gameplay; that is to say that characterizing the customers and giving them voices and reactions to my gameplay actually intrigues me to do worse and acquire the reward of characterization from getting a poor grade. Perhaps you could really have something quite special in revisting this dynamic; urge the player to do worse and better at the same time and allow them the simple fun of choosing. The challenge of course, is making doing bad fun, and you already have some skeleton-- er orc, in the way of what that looks like. The more I decide to not care about my fantasy tavern job, the more the game could go from a chef management sim to a bullet hell gauntlet.
While I think the more finely crafted game loop of obvious inspirations such as Overcooked and Papa Louie's Saga are more fun, the potential for more dynamic relationships with characters is leagues above Mass Effect, because rather than just a little wheel with good guy and bad guy one liners, you get to personify bad behavior and it becomes a far more replayable experience.