A Doughnut-Making Sim That Is A Mix Of Flavours, Not All Of Which Work
As I started my life as a mood confectioner in High Times, making my first few mood-enhancing doughnuts, I felt like I was playing a game that was made just for me. I have a real soft spot for process-driven cooking games, where you’re abiding by a recipe and delivering the best possible foodstuff for your customer (games like Sweet Bakery Tycoon). But I have a bigger soft spot for games like Strange Horticulture and Wax Heads, where the customers’ needs are puzzles to be deciphered.
High Times brings those two games together in a delightful half-and-half doughnut. You’re looking for clues in the customer’s request, searching for terms and phrases that might point to a specific doughnut. And then you’re making that doughnut, dropping batter into a fryer, dousing it in icing, and then scattering hundreds-and-thousands on top. A successful doughnut means an improved relationship with the customer, which in turn unlocks new conversation options and moments.
As It Turns Out, You Can Have Too Many Doughnuts
For a few hours, I felt like High Times was tailor-made for me. It was a hybrid of two of my favourite genres. But while I fell in love with High Times quickly, the glamour began to wear off as the hours passed. High Times ended up becoming a game that I enjoyed in small doses. I found myself loving the idea of it, more than I enjoyed the game itself, and completing it ended up being more of a chore than I expected.
I’ll try to explain why. You begin High Times as a mood confectioner that you have dressed and named yourself, but – unfortunately – comes with a personality that you can’t alter. The main character of High Times is pre-baked, and that led to my first antagonisms with the game. I didn’t find my character to be likeable: they’re self-interested and judgmental of the customers, and most of the visual-novel-style dialogue options were variations of ‘acerbic’ and ‘dry’. You can’t really imprint on the character you’re given, and I didn’t like my guy all that much.
That stretches to the characters you meet, and the relationships you have with them. High Times is a kind of pudding-based Scott Pilgrim vs The World. The main, romanceable characters you meet in your little doughnut shop are almost uniformly exes. So, they are all familiar with you, and they are products of decisions that you didn’t make. Since you broke up with them – or they broke up with you – there’s almost always some animosity to iron out. As a visual novel, I found High Times to be a knotty, moderately unlikeable one, even if it was well-written and full of quirky characters.
Getting Into The Doughnut Routine
But High Times isn’t just a visual novel. Each day, you arrive at The Hotbox, ready to start your day. The bell tinkles and the first customer wanders in. The customer-order, very much unlike Strange Horticulture, Wax Heads et al, is not scripted. There is no certainty as to who will arrive in your cafe on any given day.
Instead, the customers are randomly chosen. You might get a visit from some of the thirty more generic clientele, who you can’t romance. Or a romanceable character might turn up, and your progression with them will determine what happens next. If their previous visit was successful enough that you unlocked a new story moment with them, then that will trigger. If not, something more standard will play out.
I have to interject here to talk about this algorithm for determining who visits you and when. While it is possible to tweak the likelihood that your favourite – or needed – customer arrives (thanks to a decoration system for your cafe that applies RNG buffs based on what you display), it’s still far from certain. You can spend day after generic day, working through inconsequential dialogue and doughnuts, hoping that your beau arrives, but they don’t. And that randomness makes High Times an occasional grind. I’m far from convinced that it is a structure that works better than the linear Wax Heads, for example. While the algorithm prolongs the game, it’s not the kind of lengthening that I enjoyed.
A Doughnut-Filling For Every Mood
Regardless of who turns up, though, they will have a need – clearly articulated or otherwise – that will point to a doughnut. They might be in need of focus, or want to be nostalgic about something. They might need calming up or calming down. Each flavour, topping and icing in High Times is a mood enhancer, and you can check your recipes to find out which flavour does what. You convert their emotional desires into doughnut form, finding the one that suits them.
This puzzle is my favourite part of High Times. It has a neat habit of dealing in subtext: what the customer wants is not always what they need. You can listen to their state of mind and come to a conclusion that is different from their own self-diagnosis. Most of the time, High Times has anticipated this, and rewards you for thinking between the lines. It’s a clever system that gets more taxing, more intricate over time.
Then it’s onto the doughnut-making, which is more simplistic than your average Cooking Mama or Sweet Bakery Tycoon. There are no time-limits or awkward minigames to negotiate. Most of the time, you’re just following a process, tapping at the right buttons and remembering the right ingredients. If anything, I wanted more: a little more tapping of the head and rubbing the stomach. I wanted to show off my multi-tasking skills. But while it was less engaging than I expected, it was also completely harmless, outside of some odd bugs and visual stuttering, as if High Times were struggling to keep up with my inputs.
Then it’s results time: the customer reacts to your choice, and your relationship meter goes up. You might unlock a new scenario – something that will play when the customer next turns up (if they ever turn up). Or you might chip away at the %, working towards something new.
It’s The Circle Of Dough, The Wheel Of Fortune
After that, it’s back to the office for cashing up, spending some of your hard-earned cash on decorations that increase your affinity for certain characters, or ingredients and molds that you can use to create more doughnuts. You can scan social media and your DMs for valuable information, or you can move onto the next day, where the cycle continues.
But as my hours started stacking up in High Times, I felt the need to keep playing dwindling. By adopting a randomised model, rather than a linear one, I felt like High Times was being a bit frivolous with my time. I wanted to be making more headway than I was making. There were characters that I didn’t care for – like Harry Yen – and characters that I adored – like the chicken-obsessed Riri – but I couldn’t do enough to push one away and invite the other one more often. Much like real retail, I suppose.
If the visual novel writing was more engaging, and if the doughnut-making was more satisfying, I think the problem would have been lessened. But I bounced off the snarky, slightly unlikeable dialogue, and making doughnuts became a smidge monotonous. I was absolutely there for the diagnosis of each customer, and stockpiling cash for store-improvements, though.
I dearly wanted to love High Times, and would have placed a hefty bet on it happening. It was an amalgam of pretty much everything I like in cozy games. But the visual novel, baking and customer-care doesn’t blend perfectly, and a determination to make you play longer through randomness manages to undermine a lot of what makes High Times work so well.
I’ll keep playing High Times, though, I suspect. There are still a few customers for me to woo, and I even like spending time with some of them. But I expected to gobble down High Times eagerly. I didn’t expect to put it off for when I was in the right mood.
Important Links
High Times – Dating/Cooking Sim Serves Up Donuts, Drama And Romance – https://www.thexboxhub.com/high-times-dating-cooking-sim-serves-up-donuts-drama-and-romance/
Buy from the Xbox Store – https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/high-times/9p5rtc9g5jvg/0010
