A Short and Sweet Puzzle Break
Little Helper Cafe places you in the role of a little hedgehog that is responsible for ensuring everyone’s coffee has a cube of sugar added to it. As the game’s store page puts it, every cafe needs a helper. That said, every cafe actually needs employees and this little hedgehog looks like he may be getting underpaid for his efforts, but we aren’t here to discuss the economic situation of hedgehogs employed at cafes.
We are here to discuss how good of a game Little Helper Cafe actually is. Like many of the other games released by Afil Games, this is a family friendly puzzle game that is mechanically simple. Controls are limited to the act of moving side to side, as well as up and down. Each level consists of at least one cup of coffee and one cube of sugar that needs to be added to said cup.
It’s also worth noting that for whatever reason, they made sure to give the hedgehog a very well-defined booty, which is also present in every level. But I’ve digressed.
Mastering the Hedgehog and the Outer Walls
At first, these levels are very simple and straightforward. The cube needs to be pushed around the various obstacles to make its way into the coffee. The thing about puzzle games like this is that the maps are actually smaller than they appear. The sugar cube cannot be moved back into the center of the level if it makes contact with the outermost wall. Unless there is a section of the wall that the block is touching that extends out even further, which would allow the player to approach the block from the previously inaccessible direction.
Approaching each level with this in mind makes solving the puzzles much easier, because when a player is mentally working through the solution, acknowledging this reduces the risk of pursuing the incorrect solution.
These kinds of puzzles are always a good way to practice spatial awareness, because even the simple ones require some level of mental planning. Granted, Little Helper Cafe is a fairly simple game, but there are some puzzles that can take a little longer to think through.
Hazards for the Budding Barista
Now, this is still a fairly easy game and anyone who has played any amount of puzzle games won’t struggle to complete the game in an hour or so. But younger children will most likely find a decent challenge with Little Helper Cafe.
As the game progresses, levels introduce hazards like macarons that can be used to plug up holes in the ground, and honey that causes the cubes of sugar to slide across the length of the honey trail.
Which really doesn’t make any sense. After all, honey is well known for being a sticky substance that things get stuck on. It makes no sense that it’s used in this context as a slippery surface for things to slide across. Sliding floors like this are a staple of these types of puzzles, but it just doesn’t make sense logically.
Again though, this is just me overthinking things that don’t need to be thought about.
Juggling Multiple Cubes and Cups
At this point in Little Helper Cafe, most puzzles will involve moving two sugar cubes into two separate cups of coffee, and they will often include extra cubes that need to be positioned to allow access to the cups of coffee.
This is when the puzzles start to require a little more forward planning, but they are still fairly simple to accomplish.
The Gamerscore Boost: 2000 Points in Record Time
Another perk of picking up Little Help Cafe is the inflated Gamerscore of 2000. This can be unlocked in under 30 minutes without fuss, which is a recurring theme with Afil Games titles. So if you are the kind of gamer that buys games specifically to boost their Gamerscore, you can see it increase by 2000 points in the same amount of time it would take you to finish watching an episode of your favorite show on Netflix.
These puzzle games that cost a few dollars at a time almost always feel like something that you would find on a mobile app store for free, which would be stacked to the brim with ads. In fact, I am sure there are mobile games that feature puzzles of the same quality or even higher that don’t cost anything. But they will also be full of ads, and they don’t add anything to your Xbox Gamerscore. Which by itself is sometimes enough of a deciding factor to go with a game on Xbox compared to a different platform.
An Easy Afternoon Treat
Overall, Little Helper Cafe is a game that can be quickly and easily completed by anyone that has played any substantial, or even insubstantial, number of puzzle games. It’s not a game that will blow players away by any means; the visuals are incredibly simple, and the soundtrack is so forgettable it is pretty much redundant.
Little Helper Cafe is a short game that isn’t terrible, but it’s also not very memorable.
Important Links
Can you Beat the Latest Sokoban Puzzler? Little Helper Cafe Releases on Xbox, PlayStation and PC – https://www.thexboxhub.com/can-you-beat-the-latest-sokoban-puzzler-little-helper-cafe-releases-on-xbox-playstation-and-pc/
Buy, Optimised for Xbox Series X|S – https://www.xbox.com/en-gb/games/store/little-helper-cafe/9mx6xg87lcd0
Grab an Xbox One version – https://www.xbox.com/en-gb/games/store/little-helper-cafe-xbox-one/9mtj87269pc0
There’s a Bundle too – https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/little-helper-cafe-xbox-bundle/9NN908G5B1PH/0010
