甜点恋人 / Pastry Lovers

1 elephant went out to play

Upon a spider's web one day

He found it such enormous fun

That he called for another elephant to come.


2 elephants went out to play

Upon a spider's web one day

They found it such enormous fun

That they called for another elephant to come.


3 elephants went out to play

Upon a spider's web one day

They found it such enormous fun

That they called for another elephant to come.


4 elephants went out to play

Upon a spider's web one day

They found it such enormous fun

That they called for another elephant to come.


5 elephants went out to play

Upon a spider's web one day

They found it such enormous fun

But there weren't any more elephants to come.


6 elephants went out to play

Upon a spider's web one day

He found it such enormous fun

That he called for another elephant to come.


7 elephants went out to play

Upon a spider's web one day

They found it such enormous fun

That they called for another elephant to come.


8 elephants went out to play

Upon a spider's web one day

They found it such enormous fun

That they called for another elephant to come.


9 elephants went out to play

Upon a spider's web one day

They found it such enormous fun

That they called for another elephant to come.


10 elephants went out to play

Upon a spider's web one day

They found it such enormous fun

But there weren't any more elephants to come.


11 elephants went out to play

Upon a spider's web one day

They found it such enormous fun

That they called for another elephant to come.


12 elephants went out to play

Upon a spider's web one day

They found it such enormous fun

That they called for another elephant to come.


13 elephants went out to play

Upon a spider's web one day

They found it such enormous fun

That they called for another elephant to come.


14 elephants went out to play

Upon a spider's web one day

They found it such enormous fun

But there weren't any more elephants to come.


15 elephants went out to play

Upon a spider's web one day

He found it such enormous fun

That he called for another elephant to come.


16 elephants went out to play

Upon a spider's web one day

They found it such enormous fun

That they called for another elephant to come.


17 elephants went out to play

Upon a spider's web one day

They found it such enormous fun

That they called for another elephant to come.


18 elephants went out to play

Upon a spider's web one day

They found it such enormous fun

That they called for another elephant to come.


19 elephants went out to play

Upon a spider's web one day

They found it such enormous fun

But there weren't any more elephants to come.


20 elephants went out to play

Upon a spider's web one day

They found it such enormous fun

But there weren't any more elephants to come.


21 elephants went out to play

Upon a spider's web one day

They found it such enormous fun

That they called for another elephant to come.


22 elephants went out to play

Upon a spider's web one day

They found it such enormous fun

That they called for another elephant to come.


23 elephants went out to play

Upon a spider's web one day

They found it such enormous fun

That they called for another elephant to come.


24 elephants went out to play

Upon a spider's web one day

They found it such enormous fun

But there weren't any more elephants to come.


25 elephants went out to play

Upon a spider's web one day

He found it such enormous fun

That he called for another elephant to come.


26 elephants went out to play

Upon a spider's web one day

They found it such enormous fun

That they called for another elephant to come.


27 elephants went out to play

Upon a spider's web one day

They found it such enormous fun

That they called for another elephant to come.


28 elephants went out to play

Upon a spider's web one day

They found it such enormous fun

That they called for another elephant to come.


29 elephants went out to play

Upon a spider's web one day

They found it such enormous fun

But there weren't any more elephants to come.


30 elephants went out to play

Upon a spider's web one day

They found it such enormous fun

But there weren't any more elephants to come.


31 elephants went out to play

Upon a spider's web one day

They found it such enormous fun

That they called for another elephant to come.


32 elephants went out to play

Upon a spider's web one day

They found it such enormous fun

That they called for another elephant to come.


33 elephants went out to play

Upon a spider's web one day

They found it such enormous fun

That they called for another elephant to come.


34 elephants went out to play

Upon a spider's web one day

They found it such enormous fun

But there weren't any more elephants to come.


35 elephants went out to play

Upon a spider's web one day

He found it such enormous fun

That he called for another elephant to come.


36 elephants went out to play

Upon a spider's web one day

They found it such enormous fun

That they called for another elephant to come.


37 elephants went out to play

Upon a spider's web one day

They found it such enormous fun

That they called for another elephant to come.


38 elephants went out to play

Upon a spider's web one day

They found it such enormous fun

That they called for another elephant to come.


39 elephants went out to play

Upon a spider's web one day

They found it such enormous fun

But there weren't any more elephants to come.


40 elephants went out to play

Upon a spider's web one day

They found it such enormous fun

But there weren't any more elephants to come.


41 elephants went out to play

Upon a spider's web one day

They found it such enormous fun

That they called for another elephant to come.


42 elephants went out to play

Upon a spider's web one day

They found it such enormous fun

That they called for another elephant to come.


43 elephants went out to play

Upon a spider's web one day

They found it such enormous fun

That they called for another elephant to come.


44 elephants went out to play

Upon a spider's web one day

They found it such enormous fun

But there weren't any more elephants to come.


45 elephants went out to play

Upon a spider's web one day

He found it such enormous fun

That he called for another elephant to come.


46 elephants went out to play

Upon a spider's web one day

They found it such enormous fun

That they called for another elephant to come.


47 elephants went out to play

Upon a spider's web one day

They found it such enormous fun

That they called for another elephant to come.


48 elephants went out to play

Upon a spider's web one day

They found it such enormous fun

That they called for another elephant to come.


49 elephants went out to play

Upon a spider's web one day

They found it such enormous fun

But there weren't any more elephants to come.


50 elephants went out to play

Upon a spider's web one day

They found it such enormous fun

But there weren't any more elephants to come.

My favorite genre: poorly translated

甜点恋人 / Pastry Lovers is not a game, it's a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure e-book that's been dumped on Steam masquerading as a game. As a visual/interactive novel, this doesn't feature any notable gameplay, it's just a lot of clicking through badly written dialogue that would never have been accepted or published in print, which poses the question, "How did something this badly written end up on Steam?".

To answer that question: When someone hoping to become an author is unable to get published in print, they spend $100 and dump their high school fan-fiction onto Steam, under the guise of a game.

This E-book features Choose-Your-Own-Adventure elements where you make some decisions that don't do anything to change the fact this is just an E-Book. Nobody finished reading a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book and said "Boy, what a great game I just played!". Because E-books aren't games. And neither is this.

This CYOA E-book follows the protagonist through a cooking school and on to dating various food obsessed individuals. Your choices don't really matter this much except for one very important decision you can make: Not to buy this garbage non-game E-book.

Visual novels/e-books are tedious at best... imagine the best novel you ever read, be that Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy or 2001: A Space Odyssey or Twilight (if you have terrible taste in literature), but then translate that to a format where the words dribble out and you have to click your mouse every time you wanted to read the next sentence, instead of just turning the pages. You'd think it was garbage.

Now imagine that experience, but with much worse writing (because if these guys could write professionally, they'd be published authors and this would be on shelves in bookstores, and they wouldn't have to pay Valve $100 to self-publish this on Steam), and you have your average Steam e-book.

One of the chief problems with failed authors polluting Steam with non-game E-books is that E-books can easily just be presented in a web browser... there's no justification for charging money on Steam for what might as well be a webpage. We don't spend thousands on buying a gaming rig to spend money on Steam for something Chrome or Firefox could do.

You can get better quality books and comics for free online or from public libraries, or from bookstores for a fraction of the price of this "game". Steam isn't a comic book store, neither is it Netflix, it's for games. Your gaming rig is not a Kindle. It's impossible for me to recommend things to PC gamers that aren't really games.

On the upside, the E-Book does feature customisable controls and resolution, so at least some of the basic, minimum requirements have been met. Unfortunately there's a number of other technical defects and shortcomings which contribute to the game being difficult to recommend to gamers.

These technical defects push this E-Book below acceptable standards for any modern PC game.

甜点恋人 / Pastry Lovers didn't appeal much to the people who own a copy of the E-Book, either. It has achievements, and they show us a very clear picture that the E-Book didn't really capture any interest from gamers. The most commonly and easily attained achievement is for reading the first chapter of the e-book, trivial to get, but less than 29 percent of players bothered to get that far before uninstalling the E-Book. Hardly a success story, gamers just weren't all that interested in the E-Book.

And that does raise the question... why do books need achievements? There's no achievements for reading War and Peace or The Hobbit. Although this is perhaps a foolish move from the developer, because it proves more than 2/3rds of people who tried to read this book gave up and threw it out. This is a phenomenal failure from an authorship perspective. But we already knew this was badly written.

Reviewing SteamDB to check how popular this E-Book was with readers reveals a surprise... there's a modest spike in reader counts for the E-Book. But this only happened once, around the same time that trading cards were applied to the E-Book... so this is just card idlers getting their cards and moving on. A closer look at the numbers shows the E-Book just has a couple of readers every week running up the E-Book and idling it for cards, then deleting it. We must ask how it benefits gamers for there to be so many E-Books like this, with no merit as a serious game, that only generate sales from people idling and selling the trading cards.

So, should you buy this E-Book? Is this one of the best of the 100,000+ games on Steam?

甜点恋人 / Pastry Lovers has the ridiculous, laughable price of around $5 USD, it's not worth it given the defects and shortcomings with the product, especially considering the sheer number of completely free, much higher quality games on Steam. For comparison, the $5 asking price for this game could get you games like "Civilization VI", "Don't Starve Together" or "Planet Coaster". Quality, professionally made games like those are frequently on sale cheaper than this.

It gives me Yumeiro Patissiere vibes, too bad i'm struggling to piece together what is happening since the translation is so terrible. I kinda wanted to hold on so i could see DM's ending but i just can't with the translation so i'll probably just look it up on Youtube. But sometimes some of the odd things the characters say makes me chuckle though so that's the positive of it.

I would advice to watch Yumeiro Patissiere instead. It's a really cute anime. Kashino and Ichigo was my OTP back in the day.

The translation seems to be not the best, but I like the game regardless.
It has an interesting story and the characters are very much relatable and cheerful.

This game is a wonderful, feel-good game! I've completed all of the number 1 (best) endings and found each story enjoyable.

I recommend building your favor with each guy at the same time and then saving before choosing a route so that you can complete more routes without having to play through the first part of the game again.

This is a fun, cute, feel-good game and honestly one of my favorite otome games so far!

My personal favorite was the teacher, but all of them were cute in their own way!

I recommend looking up a guide here on steam to get the 1 ending for your desired character(s). I also recommend trying to get S grade when you can (The first is pretty easy - just make sure to study at night instead of sleeping until you've unlocked the recipe in the book and then just make sure your other trait levels are high.)

I recommend this game generally, but it's at a 60:40 ratio of recommend to not recommend. (See "The Ugly" section for a HUGE detractor.) Pastry Lovers is a mixed-gameplay visual novel featuring a 16-year-old female protagonist named Sakura who wishes to become a pastry chef, which is a renowned and highly coveted position in her kingdom of *snorts* Carseland. She works hard to get a scholarship to the prestigious St. Patras College, which specializes in pastry-making, as she is an orphan, and along the way makes new friends, romantic interests, and discovers more about her parentless background.

This game features stat-raising, but beyond the first story section, managing stats is easy enough, as there isn't a corresponding "negative" stat like fatigue. Sakura's free days are split into three parts, plus a night-time event; during the day, players can choose to visit different locations where they will raise stats and befriend the secondary characters, while at night, the options are to bake delicious cakes and visit Sakura's beaus to raise their affection. Eventually, the story branches off into four paths, where Sakura can accompany different love interests ("LIs") to different potential career paths as she enters the internship stage of her academic career. The LIs include: the kindly professor; the noble; the talented genius; and the seductive gangster.

The Good:
+ MC Sakura Asakawa is your average honest, kind heroine. She is adequately developed, her reaction choices are diverse, and she has ambitions beyond simply falling in love. (Love actually never enters her radar until the tail-end of the route.)
+ The individual routes offer different styles of gameplay, from business management of a cafe to typical otome visual novel sequences. I liked the variety, though see "The Ugly" for what parts were done well.
+ The love interests were generally interesting. Were they complex and memorable? Perhaps not, in the grand scheme of all games, but at least while I was playing this game, I had enough interest and attention to want to find out what happened to them or with them. They all fell pretty neatly within their tropes, but it didn't bother me too much. One of the LIs looks like Pent from Fire Emblem, and I am loving it.
+ I liked most of the endings. There is a good variety, and sometimes you get ones where the MC and her beau end up happily ever after pursuing their shared love of pastry, or you get ones where MC doesn't make it with the LI but strikes it out on her own or with a friend.
+ There are actual, developed female friend supporting characters in this game, one of which has romantic undertones. I kid you not. Sakura has two at her school and then she has an encounter with a rival in another route that ends pretty satisfactorily. That isn't to say there aren't any witchy rival characters, as there certainly are--however, they pick on Sakura and her friends out of competition and snobbery, not out of a love rivalry.
+ The background art is really nice and surprisingly detailed.

The Meh:
o Music and graphics are proportionate to the game price. The CGs are a tiny bit amateurish, or at least lack clean lines, and the soundtrack is a generally unoffensive riff off of common tunes.
o Story is a bit touch-and-go. The intro is extremely short and lacking in any sort of explanation. We just get a simple explanation that the people of Carseland (lol) love their desserts, so pastry chefs are highly renowned and that only the richest can afford to train. This setting was a bit puzzling to me. The story does improve as the game goes on, first when Sakura enters the college and begins finding clues to her background, and then as she embarks on her LI routes. So I would not categorize the story as cerebral, but it is also thankfully not over-the-top dramatic.
o Miscellaneous info-dumps. There are sections where you get a lot of real-world information about pastries, tea, farming, etc. Some of it was interesting, but every so often my eyes would glaze over...... and I would think, "Why? What's the point of including information that is this detailed? It doesn't have an effect on the story."
o I wasn't affected personally, but I could see people who get this game anticipating a lot of romance be let down. The romance is very subtle, and even in the individual routes, the focus is about evenly divided between the internship goal and the relationship.

The Ugly:
- The editing. OH MY GOSH THE EDITING. It is terrible. I didn't have too many issues with understanding the basic story line and dialogue since I have ESL/EFL relatives, but especially during times when the story or narrative would change to convoluted explanations of the history of tea, I would get lost. If I were to record all of the awkward phrasing, spelling mistakes, contextual mistakes, there would probably be at LEAST one per segment of clickable text. That is a lot. I didn't hate it enough to want to rage-quit the game, but it did get pretty tedious. When a game is 90% text-based, the text does need to be on-point, or at least precise enough to not detract from one's ability to read and understand. The mistakes are all over the board too: awkward phrasing, spelling errors, MC's last name is Asakawa but is frequently misspelled as Assakawa (lol), sometimes the same text dialogue appears over and over or repeats itself in a loop, some of the characters are referred to by multiple names or titles without any explanation.
- Though I would definitely not categorize this as the worst, sometimes gameplay can get repetitive, which is usually prevalent in stat-raisers. It's really only terrible in one individual route, when you attempt to go for the multiple endings due to the gameplay mechanisms of that particular route. At one point, I was afraid my mouse was going to expire due to all the click-clicking.
- There is no skip-read option, which can be difficult when attempting to replay. There is a fast-forward option that is very effective, but you will likely zoom by unread text and be forced to move on or re-load.
- The CGs are a little amateurish, especially compared to the background and sprite art. The lines could use some cleaning and the proportions are off.

TL;DR review is it's a light, fluffy visual novel about a girl who wants to be a pastry chef, who finds love while pursuing her ambition. It's good for a one-and-done play, but if you are sensitive to underdeveloped storylines and bad editing or struggle with reading, then I would not recommend this game.

Don't bother buying or playing this unless you love reading broken English. The developer put zero effort into the English translation and possibly just google translate, copy and paste each dialogue with no consistency at all. The storyline are just mediocre. The CG for the endings are quite badly drawn when compared to the usual interactions and profile pictures. It's like they just decided that they got bored with making this and just slap any artwork for the endings. 'Nuff said.

I struggled with this game at the beginning, as at first, I couldn’t decide if I liked it or not. I think I was quite baffled by what I had downloaded. It is an otome style game but it actually involves more than your usual visual novel style game.

So before I downloaded this game for the measly sum I did (I can’t remember exactly how much but it was less than a loaf of bread…) I read the reviews. The ones I saw were mostly negative but I still decided to give it a go as it was so cheap.

So, what do I like about this game?

After much consideration, I do like the style of gameplay. It has all the themes of your standard otome (picking a certain route and ending with a character of your choice) but then has the extra dimension of actually having to gain the stats you need to progress. You have to actually read everything as there are quizzes. However the downside to this format is if you don’t save often enough, you have the frustration of having to start again. A lot.

The theme is sweet enough. You attend a school, learning to make pastries and deserts. You have to raise your skills in certain amounts of time or you fail. You have to gain favour with your peers (and potential partners) or you fail. It seems simple enough and it is, as long as you save quite often. It takes a while to complete this game, which is good if you want something a little more than an hour’s story book.

However, this game just keeps on giving. I thought I’d completed it, I was about to get the guy of choice and … bam … whole new massive level to beat, with considerably more story. As far as value for money goes…well, I think I got my few pences worth. But here’s why that also works against it. Depending on the route you choose after you complete the first section at collage, it can get a little infuriating. I have at several points said “is this even possible”, whilst following the story with one particular character route and in the end, I actually gave up.

Some of the text and translations are a bit messy, but I’ve seen worse, and there are some obvious little bugs (they don’t really affect gameplay) but all in all it’s not a terrible game, which is why after much debate, I decided to give it the thumbs up. You can’t really dip in and out of this one, as you have to build up your stats and answer things correctly after other characters have spoken (so if you come back a couple of days later and can’t remember you’re a bit stuck) but you can complete a character route over a few days by stopping at certain points. If you can get this cheaply, it may be worth a try but if you’re a fan of simple story-telling otome with the odd choice, this probably isn’t for you.

You get to play as Sakura who is a young girl with a dream of becoming a famous pastry chef. Throughout your sweet pastry adventure, you meet new friends as you learn how to bake with them. and maybe even the prince of your dreams! I enjoyed playing this game alot because the story was really interesting and beautiful and the characters are so loveable and also because you learn about the history of pastry and cakes in real life too. I would totally recommend this game. 💕

I purchased this game on sale, and I'm happy I did. I'm even happier that it was cheap. It's a cute game, appealing visually. I had some trouble because the translations were not great, with grammar errors throughout and odd sentences that didn't quite make sense, though the basic idea of each scene did get through. The soundtrack was pretty limited, though charming in its own way. Each love interest had his own storyline (after a certain point in the gameplay), complete with their own minigames and structures. I did find the endings to be rather unsatisfyingly quick and incomplete, and the love story for all but Henry Yin quite shallow, but I would recommend it as a story to play when you want something simple and light-hearted.

I tried to like the game, but with its sub-standard quality of translation to english and how it seems like several artists made the supporting characters (so no consistent art style), it's hard to like it.

Simply terrible. I do not think there is any reason to play this game at all, for a visual novel, the translation is unacceptable, and the gameplay is minimalistic at best. The game could only be saved by good sprite work, but even then, the sprites were plain, and barely changed. The music left much to be desired as well.

Since I read Visual Novels for storyline and content I would have to say this one is worth reading/playing. The bad boy is not too obnoxious or sexually forward, and the other three boys are not overly patronizing, conceited or condescending. There is some fan service at a hot spring once in college. Actually all the characters encountered are pleasant to deal with. One can have a hidden "love" interest during the end game and even a female "love" interest that plays out in the extras. Compared to some other visual novels the characters, both main characters and supporting characters, in action and personality are more realistic which for me is what I am looking for.

The storyline is about an the orphan girl Sakura who wants to be a pastry cook. There are several sub-story lines that run throughout the game and the main "mystery" plays out during the end of the game in a couple of the boy's individual story lines.

The game begins in Sakura's hometown and later with her at college assuming the player manages to pass the entrance examination which is the first part is a cooking trivia test. So do not skip the lesson review when offered unless you are a cooking trivia expert. There a tiny glitch that sometimes appears during the "cooking portion" of the entrance examination so I recommend saving before taking the test.

During the hometown portion there are plenty of characters to interact with which earn points in various areas. Each section of this game has a GOAL to achieve before advancement is allowed. In the home town portion most of the extra characters are available to get all achievement hearts from. These extra character achievement hearts are important since the reward for getting all of them is an item that boosts one of stats. It is possible to get all these hearts plus some heart points from the one of the main "boy" characters, DM. So go explore and interact.

Once in college, there are a couple of extra characters to get full achievement heart points which give the player extras. There are three GOALS the player needs to achieve, one at the end of each semester/year plus another trivia test for advancement. So focus on each GOAL and getting as many points in all the stat areas as the player can get. I recommend romancing all those boys with those pastries and with the best pastires as much as possible. By the end of college it is possible to have every boy madly in love (well over 110 hearts required), all classes complete, and all but one extra character with complete achievement hearts.

The hardest part of the game comes at the end during the Intern phase because this is where every boy's individual story line plays out, plus the "hidden" love story assuming one has managed to get the hearts for it. There are three endings for each main boy. Steam achievements are for only Ending 1. Each individual boy story line has its own GOAL involved and can be quite tough to achieve. The "mystery" of the overall story also plays out during the various end sections of the game.

Overall, the game is worth reading/playing and does not get disjointed or awkward in reading when dealing with all the different character's (main or supporting) storylines. My only very small complaint is during the individual end story lines there are grammatical and spelling mistakes (as if the translator changed). But these errors are not so bad one has to figure out what is supposed to be being said. Again worth the price and the read.

At $0.49 cents on sale, I'd say Pastry Lovers was a total steal. While I think the current price of $4.99 is reasonable, I probably would not have bought it in the first place had it not been so cheap. For reference, the biggest issues are the English translation errors. It's not so horrible that it becomes impossible to decipher, but the wording and flow of the sentences are, at most times, pretty awkward and rough. It did cause me to take the game less seriously overall, though most of the time it was harmless and easy to overlook.

There is no voice acting, which comes as somewhat of a disappointment due to a large part of the enjoyability factor of otomes coming from the characters' voices - for me at least. But it wasn't too much of a problem since the background music fit pretty well with the mood of the scene, and there were some sound effects. The only other complaint that I have is that the art was very mismatched. The backgrounds were all very beautiful, and while all of the character art was fine, it looked like it was done by different people. It was quite odd and even off-setting to see how multiple characters could vary wildly in art style from each other. Plus, the CG's left much to be desired. Nothing game-changing, however.

The story itself was fairly interesting. I'm not a chef nor a cooking enthusiast myself, but I was intrigued by some of the designs of and information about certain pastries. However, if you're like me, you will find that it becomes rather drab and uninteresting (especially during the later half of the game) when they start going on and on about cooking techniques, ingredients, history of pastries, etc... As for the routes, nothing special to be honest. None of the boys stood out in my mind as particularly interesting or memorable. If anything, Christopher DM would have to be my favorite. I do wish Lina could have been a route, since it almost seems as if she was meant to be, but, nevertheless, it was an efficient time-killer.

While I do not give this game an enthusiastic reccomendation, I could not find any reason to give it a thumbs-down. It really was a nice, cute little game with a lot of perks to it. I got a good 12 hours out of it, fully completed. If you like slice-of-life stat raising games about making pastries, coupled with a fairly intriguing background plot, then this game is for you.

This game wasn't great. The translation is poor. There were elements that I enjoyed and Hannan Ye's story line was actually not bad. The story feels unfinished and the raising scores to do things is repetitive. Though in reading some online forums this is in fact a chopped up version of the actual game. I am interested enough in this game that I would love to play the actual full version of the game, but I can't reccommend buying this version of the game. If you don't mind grinding and only getting bits and pieces for a reward then feel free to pick up this game when its on super sale. I reccomend making multiple save files so you don't have to keep going back.

I bought this during the Steam Winter Sale for just 49 cents and I seriously feel like I stole it. I picked it up because of the extremely cheap price even though I'd never heard of it before, and was more than pleasantly surprised.

Pastry Lovers is fairly straightforward, not too difficult, and somehow wonderfully addicting. I love the stat mechanics, as they make it feel like you can actually strategically work towards getting a good ending as opposed to hoping you click the right answers. The character art is also fantastic, and the story has several different pieces that weave together to make it complex and interesting. A route is also lengthy enough to feel satisfying but not endless.

I will say that the translation of the game is far from perfect, and it shows. There were more than a few moments where I was pulled out of the story and stuck trying to read through a cluster of sentences, which is unfortunate. However, the text is overall comprehensible, so even the worst of the translation errors won't lose you entirely.

This is one of very few VNs/Otomes that has me looking forward to going through all of the different routes (when usually I stop after playing just a couple of them) - I would definitely recommend this game, even at full price.

♥ Cute and engaging storyline.

Though it's a bit ironic for a person with massive food allergies (no chiffon cake for me!) to play a game centered around everything I can't have, I couldn't help but love it. The storyline is pleasing, a bit of mystery thrown in, and just enough side events to keep it interesting without taking away from the main story.

There is more dialogue than in other games, and the highlight of choices revolve around creating pastries, teas, etc. There seems to be an even split between baking and romance.

And yes, you will be quizzed on food. Harshly. I'm lucky that the in-game overlay works (thank you google, lol) and I had a culinary friend to help me. If you're looking for a pure romance game, I wouldn't suggest getting this - you need to be interested in baking, if not love it.

♥ Beautiful details.

Despite the problems with translations, it's clear that love was put into the other details. The graphics are beautiful, the pastries look positively d e l i c i o u s, and the music is charming.

I usually (if not always) play games on mute, leaving music/movies on in the background. Pastry Lovers is the first game in over a year I can remember /willingly/ leaving unmuted. Wonderful level of detail.

♥ Lots of playtime!

I bought the game for 49cents (USD) and spent more than seven hours playing. I earned all the achievements, though I still have 2 endings to explore with the 5 characters offered, along with further in-game achievements to earn.

I was pleased about the gameplay offered, especially as the story continues after you've chosen your internship -/- your lover's route. That was a nice change from other otome games that end once you've chosen your lover. I was grateful for the expanded storylines, and the various cutscenes/"secret" things to be unlocked.

I would have paid full price. Pastry Lovers is worth it!

✘ Wonky translations.

I know that otome games can be a mixed bag when it comes to translations. Some are seemingly translated by Google translate, others more care is put into. While Pastry Lovers has amusing translations and can be fairly well understood, there should have been more quality control.

I'm sure that plenty of people would have offered free translation help, in exchange for a copy of the game, a credit, etc. so it wasn't a situation of not being able to find help. I would rather wait longer for a game to be released and have superior quality than a quicker release -/- development shortcuts taken.

✘ Blatant sexism.

No, I'm not a cis-scum hating, tumblr loving person. I'm a normal, eighteen year old girl, who loves the romance genre more than she probably should. I'm used to the norm of female main characters, whether in books or games, that lack self-confidence and persue a fast, unhealthy relationship w/their love interest/s.

While this game offered more relationship development than expected, there were obvious, even blatant moments of sexism from working as a call girl (forgive me...hostess :') to the fan-service provided in the hot springs. The males offered the usual responses of wanting to protect Sakura, have her help them with /their/ dreams (except w/William's path and the teacher).

All of these things are seemingly the standard for otome games, and the romance genre as a whole. While it didn't take away my enjoyment of the game (hello guilty pleasures!) it is a standard that should begin to evolve.

✘ No % progress in the internship path.

Once you choose your internship path, a few of the paths will require you to gain certain %'s in different categories to progress. While the menu provides a list of the %'s needed to advance, there is nothing that keeps track of your progress, beyond the chat screen that appears after you make choices. So while it shows you your progress after making choices, there's no log/record you can see of your % progress, before making choices. This can turn into a real pain, especially if you follow the pastry shop internship later on.

note: I played this on another acc thru family share -/- low playtime recorded on this one

I wanted to like this game, but the poor translating and awful writing made it impossible. I'm no stickler for grammar, but I found myself reading and re-reading text boxes to figure out exactly what the author(s) meant to say. It was frustrating enough that I uninstalled.

This otome visual novel by Chengguang Youxi（橙光游戏）, Shi Xiaonan（石小楠）and Forever Entertainment S.A. feature an orphan girl Sakura Asakusa who was raised and brought up at a monastery in a remote island on the western part of the Carseland Kingdom. Amidst the backdrop of pastry making and pastries being exclusive only among nobles and high officials within the kingdom, the emergence of St. Patras College as an academy to teach pastry making to all who enrol at the college regardless of social status with full scholarships being awarded to promising applicants and students who score S in their examinations, a mysterious notebook which details numerous pastry making recipes that was found with Sakura at the monastery and the support and encouragement by Sakura's close friends, neighbours and a visitor at West Island made Sakura decide to pursue her ambition to enrol at St. Patras College.

Over the course of this visual novel, Sakura will build up her attributes, learn and discover up to 8 new pastry recipes, obtain up to 4 pets and 10 treasures to help her, gain favourability with 4 main characters and 13 supporting characters, discover 5 clues about Sakura's origins, gain admission into St. Patras College and pass two semester exams and progress along a main character route where she can go on an overseas study trip to East Island with Christopher DM or Henin, intern at a declining pastry shop and turn things around with Henry Yin, intern at the palace as a pastry chef with William and discover more about her past and possibly get reunited with her long-lost father or start her own society(business) with Haonan Ye and have her brush with criminals with good and bad endings in each character route and obtain up to 13 optional in-game achievements.

The story and plot is written as a romance visual novel with a share of comedy, tragedy, mystery, drama and thriller. There are dating simulator and stat management mechanics with conditions for progressing further into the story clearly listed out in the tasks section of the menu. The visual novel also has plenty of general knowledge on numerous pastries, desserts, beverages and Eastern mythology references. Background music, artworks and CGs are great with pleasant background music to match the main characters and settings in the game and nice chibi artwork on Sakura's pets and main characters. Highly recommended for those who like a medium-length(Between 10-30 hours) visual novel with stat management and dating simulator mechanics and random facts on a large variety of pastries, desserts, beverages and Eastern culture and mythology.

The game is also sometimes at discount with up to 90% off coupons being available from badge crafting, trading section of the game's discussion forums and from coupon gifting Steam groups(eg. Coupon Dumpster) at the time of this review.

I'm enjoying the gameplay, but the writing is terrible. I would happily help the developers with the writing FOR FREE. This game would be SO much more enjoyable without the horrible grammar; it's so jarring and distracting. Developers, PM me - I will help you guys at no cost.

OK. So I was really looking forward to this game, and it was well worth it, to be honest I can't believe its only $4.99 and thats when its not on sale!! so if you love otomes like; Dandelion-wishes brought to you-, and Backstage Pass, or even Blood Code, this is a must have for your collection!!

-Pros :)-
*Awesome character designs
*Nice story/plot
*Lots of locations and options
*Has well managable goals and stat building
*They give you a heads up about saves ' like hey you MIGHT want to save here lol
*All this and more for less than $5, thats less than my grande carmal mocha latte!!

-Cons :(-
*English translation is a bit choppy but its not unbearable, I did have to look up what childe meant cause I was like huh what why they calling him a kid..
*Could use more save slots for reals especially if you want to save at the the story branching moments.
*Its not really a con but I wish once you get to campus they give you a heads up about which location has what stats to earn and where you are most likely to bump into people but again thats not really a con about the game per say ;)

Honestly if you like Otomes & VN, I believe you won't regret this purchase :)

Pastry Lovers is a short and replayable otome that is stress-free. There is stat-raising, but it's not too difficult to work out over. Depending on your choices in game, you can raise a stat or stats 3-5 times in one day.

Pros:
-Casual and relaxing
-Cute Art
-Simple and not dark or heart-breaking as ~some~ otomes
-Relaxing soundtrack
-Cheap
-Trading Cards

Cons:
-Proofreading errors (in my opinion, it makes the game funnier to play. for ex: there is a female headmistress being introduced to and the guy who talks to her calls her Mister) The errors do not deter the sense of meaning or understanding of the game and you can still tell what is going on.
-Only 800x600 windowed mode is available if you like multi-tasking
-Not very clear tutorials for some parts