Calico

Do you like cafe’s? Do you like kittens or dogs or animals in general? Then we might have a game for you! Calico, a simulation game about running at Cat Café, is out now for the Nintendo Switch. Here is our review!

Calico is a simulation game where you run a Cat café. Basically your job is to build the café up, put animals in it, craft food, do favors for the locals and further expand the world of Calico.

If you like Harvest Moon or Story of Seasons, then there’s a chance you’ll like Calico.

The game is not as polished as Harvest Moon or Story of Seasons. It is an indie game so it doesn’t have the budget of those experiences. It also has some glitches and environmental pop-ins here and there.

We detailed some of these things in our preview of the game. Calico feels like it could be a great game but these glitches and pop-ins do hold it back a little. Also not being able to share screenshots of this game online seems like a huge mistake! With an update or two, it seems like Calico could be an excellent game.

That said, Calico is still a good game. The gameplay is fun and very cute. Its an easy going game where you can basically do whatever you want. Pick who you want to help, figure out what’ll go into your café and where you want to go next. The world is fairly big and there is lots to discover. Calico has a wonderful quirky sense of humor. Oh and the recipe crafting is pretty neat.

Calico is also a beautiful game. The water color style of graphics makes it a very pleasing looking game. It looks nice in handhed mode and on the TV. The game also has good music; the music with vocals is a big stand out.

There is one odd thing we should mention about the game’s controls though: the B button is the confirm button for Calico instead of A button. Thats takes a bit of getting use to. I still find myself pushing A sometimes and canceling out stuff. Aside from that, Calico controls well. Overall, Calico is a good game!

Calico is a fun game despite its glitches and pop-ins. With a few updates, it is very likely that this game will be really great. It is still worth checking out though, especially if you’re a Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons fan.

Calico gets a 7.5 out of 10.

Update: Just read this via Calico’s kickstarter page and it made me very happy:

“The first console patch has been submitted and we are currently waiting for them to get approval via the various platforms.

They will contain the same things as the PC patches, plus Switch will have the A and B buttons switched to what they are supposed to be for Switch controllers.

After we finish bug fixes, we will be moving onto regular free content updates as well! We will have an update soon that maps our our plans with that more specifically.”

I looked over the PC patch notes and noticed that it takes care of a lot of the issues I ran into and issues that I don’t remember seeing even. Plus the free content updates are exciting! I will definitely be revisiting this title and checking out the updates. You can expect more Calico articles from me in the future. Possibly a score revision eventually too.

Thanks to Whitehorn Digital for providing a digital code for this review. Calico is now available on the Nintendo Switch eshop!