Yasuhiro Wada's new game - Little Dragons Cafe

All other video games not related to the main farming series - Pokemon, Stardew Valley, My Time at Portia, and other indie-developed games.
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Getaris
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I would be completely ok with a single dragon if the pet system is completely and deep enough.
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Bluie
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Bonus points if it changes colours depending on what you feed it.

Wait.

I'm having a bad flashback with the four exclusive Ember plushies for Hometown Story. It was impossible to get all four colour variants and my friend went half insane trying to find the E3 exclusive blue plush. *shudder*
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Getaris
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Wait it was exclusive?

I won an Ember plush a long time ago during a contest, they gave me the choice of four colors. Had I known the blue one was "rare" I would've choosen that. (I went with Green because lizards).
Last edited by Getaris on Feb 26, 2018 11:49 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Bluie
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Green was from Gamestop, Yellow was from Natsume's store, Red was from Amazon, and Blue was an E3 exclusive + given out at other promotional events.

Blue is the rarest of the four, the only one i'm finding for sale rn looks like a bootleg (eyes and eyebrows are off).
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Getaris
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Oh wow that's interesting! I had no idea.

And yes, I assume you mean they one they have on amazon. Comparing it to mine, the eyes are farther from the eyebrowns, the head-body proportions are wrong, the shape and seams of the head are different, the neck is longer, the wings are higher, and it doesn't seem to have tag in the hip.

Althought 2 sellers have them, maybe the picture in the storefront is a generic picture? You could ask the sellers for better pictures.

(sorry for the derailing, but it's kinda related... Wada, Dragons... Right?)
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I was never really interested in Hometown Story and I didn't even know Birthday Beginnings was a thing until today but this seems to have promise. Hearing that we'll explore a world to find ingredients reminds me of Fantasy Life's chef life.* I wonder if we'll also get to grow some our ingredients in a little garden of our own or something. I'm eager to hear more about this! Seems like it'll be out before we know it. Is it being released internationally in the summer or-?
//Dumb question but I just want to make sure I'm understanding correctly.

*Fantasy Life is one of my favorite 3DS title I highly recommend it for those who haven't played it.
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Kikki
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It'd be cool if it reminded me of Fantasy Life, which was packed with things to do, but since it's made by the same guy as HTS and in that you go around scavenging items to sell (which doesn't sound much different than going around scavenging items to cook, to me) it only reminds me of that, which wasn't fun at all, even though I've seen it work well enough in a few other games. It's actually kind of weird, how that game never came together to me. It just felt so empty.

However, I think overall that Hometown Story was a flop. (?) It certainly has terrible ratings, anyway. And I doubt that this is a guy who can't learn from the past, so since it already sounds like there have been more things packed into this game than there was into HTS, I'm not going to write this one off based on that. But I have definitely got to see more before I'll know if I'm going to get it. I'm pretty sure it's going to have a fairly appealing aesthetic since these are experienced devs, and that's always a big draw for me...I like eye candy. If it has characters that look interesting to me, a story I can get into, and enough activities to keep me from wandering my character around aimlessly all the time, I'll probably buy it. Right now I am as doubtful as I am hopeful. More info will hopefully tilt the scale one way or another.
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One of HTS's biggest problems was how empty and disconnected the map felt. You had these large areas that would have items that could be picked up that were either too tiny or blended into the environment. This made traversing the map a royal pain, especially when you had customers back at your shop lining up, who would leave if not served in a certain time frame.

Imo, simulation games need to have smaller areas and a main hub. If you look at games like Animal Crossing, it's one hub area with small areas attached to it. HTS shares a lot of AC's mechanics, from gathering, exploring, and fishing (if you have the EU version) but while it's easy and fun in AC, it's tedious and hardly rewarding in HTS.

I really feel like that one of the big reasons HTS just didn't click. If the game ceases to be fun and becomes a chore of sorts, why even play it?

If we look at the newest Bokumono it's similar to AC. You have a main hub and three towns that are a total of 2 screens each that are also seamlessly connected together via side entrances or the area right outside your farm. It's big, yet compact, easy to traverse.

IIRC, HTS had around 5-7 screens(maybe more), many of which were empty voids and hard to get back to your shop if you were in the furthest one. It was a really bad design choice and could have benefitted from some fast travel or something. I think it's pretty much why Rune Factory games give you the teleport spell at the beginning of each game so it's easy to get back to your hub. Who would want to walk all the way back to their farm for 20+ screens after clearing a dungeon? No one. It's the same with Fantasy Life, you get fast travel for getting around quicker and you can also rent mounts for quicker map traversing.

So yeah, HTS had a lot of potential, but it's bad design ruined it. If Little Dragons Cafe fixes at least that, it's already better.
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Post  Posted:

It sounds super comfy and I like the aesthetic. I'm surprised Gamexplain hasn't covered this yet.
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When should we see some news on the NPCs? It comes out in a few months.
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Ronin19
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Anonymous Fish wrote:When should we see some news on the NPCs? It comes out in a few months.
Well, E3 is coming up. Maybe in 3 months or less?
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Kikki
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We might not see anything before launch. Not all games reveal that many of their details before a trailer or demo goes up in the eshop prior to or even at launch. E3 is probably the best bet, if the devs tend to show those types of game there. (I don't know if they do or not. Were Birthdays or Hometown Story or any of those other games shown at E3 before?) I've seen no hints about what Aksys intends to do at E3 2018, yet. Nintendo Direct is always possible, too...there should be at least one more before the game is out.

But in the end, no one can answer that because there's been no more news. All we know is what is in that article. It's possible that the game may get a feature in a gaming magazine in Japan, like Famitsu or etc, and then we'd get a little more information that way, but that's anybody's guess, since this is a brand new, stand-alone game, not an established series like Bokumono.
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Kikki
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I don't know if this counts as a double post when it's this much later, but if it does, sorry about that!

Just BARELY not breaking the ten day rule, here, looks like. Look, guys...screenshots! The style is very peculiar, like it has a 'poster edges' filter overlaid over the whole game or something. Don't know if I like it or not...will have to look at the pics a while longer...

*a while later* ... Looked at it quite a while, now, and still don't know what I think. Be nice if there were a little more information along with the shots, but there doesn't seem to be any, so I don't know how those shots ended up on Gamefly.

EDIT: Technically I think I did actually break the ten day rule by about four hours, didn't I? Sorry about that, too. I'm a muffinhead.
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Oh wow! That's very interesting.
I'm also not sure what to think of the texture... I think overall I'm leaning more on the positive side. I do think it's very cute.
But it may get tiresome after some time. Hard to say from a few screenshots.

And yeah some more info would be lovely, since it doesn't show much of the actual gameplay in these shots but it's all very cool to see nonetheless.

Looks pretty cute. o:
I forgot for a moment that it's coming for Switch, not 3DS, so I was surprised by the smoothness of the models are first.

Thanks so much for sharing, Kikki!
And I think it's alright if it was a little past ten days. This is the only thread we have for the game afterall, not like the board is being clogged with something irrelevant.
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RopeMaidenKirie
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Oh don't worry, the forums have been so slow it's not a big deal to bump up the thread :)

For people who don't want to go to the website, here are the pictures for easier viewing:
Spoiler:
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I actually really like the artstyle! Pretty unique. Great find Kikki!
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