Kupo Cafe Game Awards 2024 Day 2!!
Welcome in, kupo~!! Here are the awards for Day 2 of the Kupo Cafe! Game awards. Find out the moments that touched us throughout 2024!!
Looking at Bad Screen, but Fun Award - Customer Disservice by Sudden Frog
Presented by Moguri
I like chore games. Games where you powerwash buildings. Games where you drive a giant truck from point A to point B. Games where you clean, assemble, demolish, and design all in the process of making a home. Games where you run a simple shop and you have to do all the tasks.
These are just to name a few. But the one that stuck out to me this year is a game where you woke up from amnesia and now have to work a shift using a computer to either approve or deny a purchase request or else they will shoot you on sight. This is Customer Disservice.
This game is a Paper's Please-like where you are given a set of rules and parameters to achieve multiples of the same tasks in a shift. In this case you have to approve or deny citizens wanting to buy things based on their ID and expiration, what district/company are they from and if they even have authorization or clearance to purchase that item. They then through curve balls your way, such as having to manage a timed puzzle game or else you fall asleep, or waiting to hear a certain sound cue which means someone is breaking into your apartment and you have to back away from the computer to call security or take matters into your own hand by shooting them with your employee authorized gun that apparently only pops out in case of dire emergencies.
Come home from work late and tired, and this is how I've been relaxing lately - playing a stressful desk job simulator called "Customer Disservice"
— Moguri @ Make Good Choices (@MogKnight) November 19, 2024
It's fun I swear pic.twitter.com/gfZPpvYOYC
All the while, you have to manage all the bills they throw at you every day. Luckily, you get paid despite being thrown into this not-prison-cell apartment.
Oh, and they also gave you a phone with access to specific people who you do not know and have no real way of knowing other than the group chats and direct messages you are in. I really like this element of this, as it is really the only narrative in the game but framed in a way I feel is unique. Each one of the characters has their own writing style, their own motivations, their own experiences, and a way for you to get out. Or at least make your stay a little better.
There is an entire world outside your apartment, and all you can do is just type away on your phone for companionship or for someone to just throw you a bone. With all the things they tell you, perhaps it's just safer inside.
I will be honest, this game is definitely not everyone's cup of tea. But, for me, it shows that you can have any idea, any concept of a game out there. If it plays well and feels good to play, it's bound to attract some people. Especially if you are a weirdo like me who enjoys picking parts out of a conveyor belt or looking at menus to determine a crucial decision that can mean the difference between getting paid or getting shot in the head. My friends look at screen all day in their work, but me?? I'll take that looking at bad screen experience if it means there's a good story underneath it.
Core Memory Creator Award - Yakuza 7: Like a Dragon by Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio
Presented by Andrew
Wow, another year, another Yakuza game. I have nothing to hide, I love these games, like I mentioned last year, it’s basically like clockwork, new games come out, and I pick back up where I left off last time. I don’t feel the need to catch up with the new hotness (especially with Yakuza 8 and Gaiden out. and Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii around the corner). I know the series is there when I am ready for that next chapter.
In a serendipitous turn of events, near or on the day this is published, I will have returned to Japan for a few weeks to celebrate the new year with family. By chance, I will be visiting Yokohama’s Chinatown, a mid-game area that is part of the initial map of Yakuza 7 that includes Nihondōri, the banks of the Ōka river, Yamashita Park, and the aforementioned Chinatown. Later in this trip, I will be in Osaka’s Dōtenbori, a late game area, and staple environment in the Like a Dragon games. Playing these games, especially playing them through thoroughly enough, you become intimately familiar with the game map. Experts in their field at this point, Ryu Ga Gotoku does an absolutely phenomenal job at recreating the real life places they model their game worlds after, from main avenues and famous vistas, to alleyways, konbinis, and other businesses placed in their in their appropriate location on the map. Akin to the feeling I felt while wandering around Kabuki-chō (Yakuza’s Kamuro-chō real-life analog), I look forward to seeing how accurate Yokohama is to Ijincho.
Speaking of Ijincho, our story centers on one of the internet’s now beloved best-boys Kusuga Ichiban. Ichiban begins the story as a local gangster with a heart of gold, after some major plot he ends up serving an 18-year prison sentence in 2001 and is released in 2019, dealing with not only the culture shock of missing 18 years, but dealing with the people in his former life moving on without him. Through a bout of betrayal by a former mentor, he ends up dumped at a homeless camp in Ijincho with a determination to figure out what's been going on in his absence. Now that may sound pretty gritty on paper, but understand that while this game has its emotional high points it still retains the levity and a breath of situational comedy that the series has been known for. There are also some great sub-stories, I especially like the ones that have their own bespoke little mechanics to them, like Traffic Census Sensei, where you just take a survey of foot traffic in a certain area, or Tour Guide Turmoil, that has you remember fun facts about points of interests in Chinatown. There is also some really good pulpy drama substories that I became quite fond of, A Table for One, Ichiban finds a young boy eating his meals alone and decides to keep him company, An Act of Kindness, a young girl tries to gather donations for her younger brother’s surgery, and It’s the Thought That Counts, where a homeless man finds friendship with a neighborhood passerby.
Like A Dragon (LAD), departs from the previous iterations of Yakuza games by replacing the brawling action combat with turn-based RPG mechanics. Visually similar but now with a traditional RPG sub-menus and design. I don’t feel the need to go deeply into the specifics of its combat, I don’t find it particularly unique or interesting, you have various strengths of damage-dealing moves, some attacks have elemental attributes, area of effect range, some status moves, amongst the genre staples. If you’ve played a handful of JRPGs in the last few years, it’s not too big of a learning curve to get over familiarity-wise. You’ll find some moves are better in others (Shout out to Thumbtack Scatter and Divine Shot), but as a whole the gameplay is relatively straightforward, with some exceptions, more on that later.
Now, obviously this would not be a Yakuza discussion without bringing up its variety of bespoke mini-games that, for me, have always been the highlight of the series. The Business Management mini-game is a tangentially-related side quest, akin to previous Hostess Club mini-games of the series, where Ichiban is tasked to save a failing family business from being taken over. The gameplay is a relaxed business simulator, you move employees around, you purchase and upgrade business and you deal with a timed rhythm game-esque shareholder meetings. The main incentive to interact with this minigame is you get a very useful party member, some unique moves for Ichiban, and some serious money the farther you progress. For me, the real draw, just like any gamer, is that I like seeing the number go up.
You see dear reader, in my day job, all we live and breath for is to see our number go up, and in most cases, I cannot influence that number, I am but a passive observer. But in this game, I get to make those decisions, decide what to invest in, and how resources should be used. It may sound petty but at some point in my career I have been conditioned by capitalism to love seeing how big I can get the company’s profits to grow. Nevertheless I found myself playing it not only to grind cash, but as a generally enjoyable part of the Yakuza 7 experience.
Returning to the gameplay of LAD, while relatively straightforward it does conceal some unexpected difficulty spikes, one that caught me off guard, was a major fight with one of the series’s major characters. Narratively, this makes sense, the fight should be difficult, the character you are fighting is canonically one of the strongest people in this universe, you should not be cake-walking through it like any other fight, but the fight is put in an awkward section that you hope you have a decent save backed up that allows you to grind a (more than a few in my case) couple of levels. Again weird but not the worst thing in the world.
The worst thing in the world would be what I am about to admit right now.
I never actually finished Yakuza 7, I got so close, but in the end I didn’t have it in me to finish the game. The second to last fight in the game, against a Tendo Yosuke, was what broke me, I spent more than a couple of attempts to really to try to overcome his 1 Hit-KO move, but in the end I think I just got unlucky because he always seemed to target Ichiban and it was a direct gameover. After a while, I just couldn’t continue and shelved the game as “completed enough”. Sometimes it is what it is.
Overall I deeply enjoyed Like A Dragon, that’s no surprise, what does surprise me is that even after so many iterations, I can still the consistency of its development team, as well as the confidence to change its formulas to better suit their sense of innovation. Look forward to next year for my belated thoughts on Like A Dragon 8!
Childhood Nostalgia Award - UFO 50 by Mossmouth
Presented by Moguri
s a child of the late 90's and early 2000's, lots of things, looking back, moved at such a rapid pace where it makes me wonder how the working adults felt about it back then. While I was learning my alphabet and colors, technology moved into the digital age and the boom of the internet and dot com bubble kept pushing through. While I was digging holes in the sand, a new world event seemed to happen every other week that sent ripples in domestic and foreign policy and economy. One thing was constant though - my parents being cool enough to let me play video games.
One thing that my parents taught me that I keep to my heart was the ability to save a few bucks here and there. Now, I must preface this before I continue on - the rest of this paragraph is alleged happenings. We had a local Blockbuster where we spent like $8 a month so me and my brother can rent a game. But somewhere somehow my dad gave us a PS1 that can run games burnt on a CD, which later I learned he had paid someone to install a mod chip on it. Later on, he'd give us stacks of CDs and showed us how to burn things on it, going from MP3 mixes to many other things. Again, looking back I never fully understood the full gravity of all this.
The last video game thing my dad ever gave me was a few GBA cartridges he picked up after his deployment to the Middle East. Four in total, and GBA in hand I tried them all out. Boot up the first one: 100 in 1 games. A Spiderman side-scroller. A Ninja Turtles side-scroller. Some kind of racing game. A real random assortment of games. The kicker?? There's only really 10 games on it. Less because some even crashed. The rest of the 90 are just pallet swaps or some kind of code injection where your character moved a little faster or just something so small where it should not even be considered new.
There was one he gave me that I really treasured though. I'm pretty sure this one was that compiled a lot of Game Boy Color and NES games on it. But it gave me so many hours of enjoyment. I remember playing a lot of Felix the Cat, and a clone of Super Mario Bros for the Game Boy but Mario being swapped out for Pikachu.
Later on in life, I learned that what I played were called bootleg games. Games that someone had to compile, engineer, and mass produce all to make a quick buck. For some, they might feel ripped off. But for me, just being able to play something was enough for me to feel enjoyment.
Lots of memories to share and all this to say: UFO 50 really brought me back to those days and moved me in a way where no other game has done before.
The quick pitch for UFO 50 is that is a collection of old games you have found in a storage lot and now you have access to this entire company's games, from the very first one to the last one. As you play through, there are so many different genres and different game ideas to explore. And they are all fully fleshed out games, from simple platformers to whole RPG/Adventure games. As you play through, you get a sense of what the company was going through at the time. How game design and philosophy changes, how the controls change, and all the really subtle things really make a different between games.
Just having all this in front of you can be overwhelming, especially when you first boot up the game. But once you pick one and check it out - you decide if it is worth your time or not. No matter your choice, the next game is waiting for you. Each game is self-contained, so when you come back it's always from the start, like how the games of old were.
I can talk so much about all these games individually, but the through-line of all of them for me is: they sure don't make them like the used to.
I appreciate a game like UFO 50 existing, if not for all the stellar gameplay but to also show a moment of time in gaming history. While modern games are peppered with autosaves and fast travel and addressability features and online elements and constant updates and added features down the line - UFO 50 chooses to be a reminder of where games come from while also being an example of how well these games play to stand the test of time. While these ones in particular are fictional, the games that these take inspiration from are still very much stand the test of time.
And you know what?? It's good to look back sometimes. Just remember not to stay there too long, though. Otherwise, you won't be able to see the good in the modern stuff too~.
Square Enix’s Lifetime Achievement Award - Queen's Blood from Final Fantasy VII Rebirth by Square Enix
Presented by Andrew
Queen’s Blood is the spiritual successor to the highly-lauded Triple Triad card game found in Final Fantasy 8. Why Square Enix decided to make a bespoke, infinitely detailed Final Fantasy game that purely focused on Cloud playing a card game? Beats me, but I am here for it. Queen’s Blood, for the uninitiated, is a deck-building card game, somewhat of a natural extension from the aforementioned Triple Triad, but played on a board similar to Mega Man Battle Network. I apologize in advance for this review, because I have quite a limited scope when it comes to card games, while I do enjoy them at a surface level, they have never been a major interest of mine. Again, more of a general interest sort of thing, I do not hold any ill-will towards card games. Which makes this inclusion more of a standout as I am deeply in love with Queen’s Blood.
Queen’s Blood in itself is a relatively straightforward game, played on a grid of 3x5, each player after a mulligan sets one card at a time on the field restricted by card strength, and backline support. The win conditions are simple, win by the biggest score possible, but score is collected by winning at least one of the three rows on the board. For example if you outscore your opponent in the top row, then whatever you score was in that row is added to your final score. Given that, there can be some situations where you can lose two of the rows on the board but still win the overall game if you outscore your opponent in the one row you do win. The game builds upon simple mechanics that evolves into more unique cards that can dictate entire strategies and playstyles, and you owe it to yourself if you have any interest in card games, there is some real weird stuff you can exploit in some of the more rarer cards.
I do not want to get too much into the weeds on how this works, mostly because I do not think I can do the game justice in that regard, but if you have a basic grasp on deck-building and the rules that it sets up for you, it can be picked up pretty easily. But there’s a certain speed to the game that helps keep my focus on it compared to other card games, given on average you play up maybe 8 cards, matches move fast, and a good starting round can become tenuous given a bad play or an unforeseen card. The game centers on this incredible push and pull tension between players as you not only fight for points, but for territory. There’s also a lot of great feedback from the sound and effect design to the play setting and its luxurious soundtrack.
Now, Queen’s Blood isn’t just a standalone card game, Square Enix’s writing team gave it an absolutely fantastic narrative that gets Cloud to travel all across the Western Continent to uncover the rumors of the mysterious Shadowblood Queen. While Queen’s Blood is a common game played by many in Gaia, its origins are obscured in mythos and rumors. You will have to play cards with anyone and everyone you meet in order to gain more insight on what knowledge these cards have hidden. From neighborhood kids, to robots, to sexy demon men everyone is out here playing cards. In keeping with the royalty theme, you also get cool titles at major intervals in your quest, going from Blood Servant to Blood Knight and beyond.
I’m surprised with how popular Queen’s Blood has been since its release, that there has been no announcement of a standalone mobile port. I understand from an interview with the game director that the development team is quite fond of the title. Further, I feel that fans have made their demand known, as I was present at one of Square Enix’s concert series, where its theme was met with incredible applause. I understand that the PC port is releasing soon in January 2025, so hopefully we can get some good news on this.
That being said, I wonder what else Cloud has been up to?
Out-of-College Working Adult Nostalgia Award - Galaxy Burger by Galactic Workshop
Presented by Moguri
When this game popped up in the newly released tab on Steam, I knew I had to buy this game.
Galaxy Burger is a game where you make burgers for customers.
And that's it.
There's progression, there's a bunch of recipes and ingredients, there's mechanics that break up monotony like fryers and drink machines and many kinds of people to serve, and also there's multiplayer (though I haven't tried it out since my friends are not too keen on playing cooking games with me, ever since... the incident).
But that's all there is to it.
I am not a stranger to any kind of cooking game. I've probably played like 80% of the cooking games out there. But Galaxy Burger combines for me the rush and thrill of completing accurate orders and watching the ticket line be cleared, but also allows me to be chill and take things easy.
Usually a cooking game has time limits where the customer needs their food as soon as possible. Here, it's an optional mode. Usually a cooking game punishes you for wasting food or makes it dire when you screw up an order. Here, it'll cost you a bit on money or reputation but it's honestly not anything you can recover from. Usually a cooking game is stressful on purpose as the main game challenge element. Here, it is the most chill cooking restaurant game out there. Dare I say, the only real good chill cooking game out there.
This game takes me back to when I used to work in food service - first at a food truck, then a middle-end burger chain, then at the prepared foods section at a big middle-end grocery chain. What people sometimes think that it's either really stressful with all the orders that come in, or really chill during all the slow hours. But there is also that space in-between. Not fast enough where you feel it's hard to keep up. Not slow enough where you have to actively find things to do otherwise the manager gets on your case. But that spot in-between where you can focus on the task at hand at your pace. Be in the zone, doing a good job without any extra added stress.
And that's the beauty of Galaxy Burger. The food truck, the grill. It's your domain. You can take all the time you want in the worlds, or you can just push burgers out at your own speed. You can pre-make, plan, and arrange your station, or you can make everything to order.
Galaxy Burger strike a balance that's just so perfect in a "chore game" like this. One that in all my years of gaming with a foodie passion, I have never come across a game like this that is at least so well-suited for what I want in a cooking game. The blend of realism and fantasy elements and game design elements is so good it honestly deserves a Michelin Star.
If you love food games, I cannot recommend this game enough. Also, please play with me if you get it. I love-a to cook.
The Game that Made Me Cry Award - Fruitbus by Krillbite Studio
Presented by Moguri
Fruitbus is a game where you run a fruit-based food truck that you can drive around three different islands to open your doors and serve food to hungry customers.
That is what I thought this game was when I bought it. While the above is true, I didn't really expect it be more than that.
Ultimately, your goal is to fulfill your dead grandmother's last wish - to have a grand feast with her friends, the people she calls dear. Years had past when you last seen her, and by getting her letter with her final request you set off to find the Fruitbus in a junkyard to restore it to working condition. You take it off to the ferry and begin your adventure, with your Grandma's urn in the front seat. Seatbelted, of course. Can't have that flying away, especially with the way you have been driving.
Mechanically, the game is really fun. You forage for your own ingredients as you roam around the islands, put them all in these storage baskets that you have to buy and put in the truck yourself, and once you have enough of things you open the doors to your truck and begin serving your first things to can only make - salads. As you roam around more, there are more ingredients for you to find. More tools and more cooking methods you can unlock. And I appreciate all the interactivity when both chopping the food and putting everything altogether. I appreciate how this game is not overly tutorialized or hand-holdy. I remember unlocking the stove and there's this specific icon for having an ingredient roasted versus having it stir-fried. I was getting orders wrong for a while and was trying to figure it out, cursing at my imaginary grandma for help which she couldn't give me. The pains of being thrusted into this line of business by myself. Eventually, I figured it out through some bit of trial and error. Luckily the villagers and tourists are somewhat forgiving. As in, they will come back, even if you are trash at first. But you find ways to optimize your setup and even your food combinations. Some food combos give you a kind of synergy bonus, which means more money. You can also in a way exploit your customers by having the option of not giving them what the initially ask for. A kind of failsafe when you don't have an ingredient they want but you also don't want to lose them as a customer. Again, it's your business after all.
All this to drive the narrative of the game. There are a number of friends Grandma really wants to invite, and the way you do that is to find them on their island and complete their quest line. There are specific foods that they want with specific ingredients and cooking methods. You don't have them all unlocked at first, so it forces you to explore new areas, grind a bit for money, and buy certain appliances, all to fulfill their request. All these friends play a role in Grandma's life - from the hotel owner who helped kickstart the Fruitbus' success to your own dear mother despite her not initially supporting her to the food critic who had some choice words to say about Grandma's cooking. Along the way, you also meet other people who Grandma didn't specifically request their presence, but were people who were impacted by the Fruitbus or indirectly by Grandma. For example, you meet a musician down on their luck, but the seeing the Fruitbus reminded them of all the good times they had with their partner duo and had become inspired once more. Another person had never met your Grandmother, but just by you being there and continuing on her legacy through the Fruitbus he had become inspired enough to quit his job and do something he enjoys in life.
Food has a way of bringing people together. Food has a way of inspiring. Food is just magical in a lot of ways like that. And it's usually not because of just the food - it's the person that made the food. I'm not a fan of the idea of "love language" ideals, but I personally believe that the act of making food for someone is truly an act of love. Giving a bit of nourishment, that tiny moment of enjoyment in their life whether it means a lot to them or is just one passing second of happiness or bliss as they take that bite. Giving food is giving a bit of love, and this game just reaffirms that for me. My passion for food comes from ultimately making others happy, which is why I try so hard in my own personal and professional cooking. To make others happy.
I'm sure Grandma felt the same way. The way you actually learn more about her in this game is by cooking her own creations and recipes. After making a certain one of Grandma's food, you get an option to taste test it, which then puts you in a flashback. A moment of time and memory that you and Grandma share.
What I love about these flashbacks is that they are willing to show Grandma's full personality. You'd think in a game like this they would want to show Grandma as this perfect loving person who contributed perfectly in society and beloved by every single person she met. But to be perfectly honest, Grandma is kind of a jerk. Don't get me wrong, she loved what she did and had a passion for it as the owner of Fruitbus. But she's feisty, believes in a "tough love" philosophy but doesn't fully express to the other person the "why" of doing things, and she is quick to hold grudges that ultimately last a long time. Heck, part of the progression of this game is digging up the things in her past that she literally buries, calling them "time capsules" while in reality they are items that belong to others that she lowkey stole. A treasured pot lid. A truck topper that Grandma broke. Medical and deed records. Part of a radio tower's electronic system. Grandma also made you bury a thing of your too. Perhaps it was all a part of her master plan...
All this to say - Grandma isn't perfect. She even admits it and the mistakes she made. Her signature food isn't even optimally great to sell and often doesn't seem to be great flavor combinations or cooking methods. But at the end of the day, this is Grandma. Whether you like it, whether you agree with it or not. What matters is that this is Grandma.
At the end of the game, you meet back at the same place where you started the game. On the beach front with you, her urn, and dozens and dozens of people. Her closest friends, but in reality the few people she really want there for closure after "wronging" them. People who were just normal customer of Grandma that mean a lot to them. And people who never new Grandma but wanted to support you and the Fruitbus as a business. You talk to all of them. You sit on the bench with your Grandma one last time. And in the final moments - you let it all go. Spread her ashes the way she wanted it to go.
I have to admit, I teared up a bit at the end. I personally lost my Grandma in 2023, and have recently lost another person near and dear in my family this year. It was hard then, and it is hard now. But a think you learn in life - funerals and goodbyes like this are not really for them, but they are for us, the living. To grieve, and to celebrate the life and connections they gave us.
Fruitbus reminds me of the ways we connect with others, and the most simplest of ways one can do that is through good food. Whether it be giving food or just sharing a moment together with good food like at a restaurant, food has a magical way of bring people and communities together. That's why we have things like potlucks and cookouts.That's why we invite others to restaurants or to check out new places to eat. If not for the food itself, but for the company. It's almost primal in a way, as human as humanity itself.
So thank you Fruitbus. Thank you imaginary Grandma. You are the sweetest of imaginary Grandmas.
2025 goal for me - invite others to more food experiences.