Calico is a silly, adorable, chill game in which you run a cafe in a town full of magical girls and friendly animals. Choose what treats to serve, decorate your cafe and home, adopt and interact with all sort of cute animals, customize your character, unlock new clothes and designs, and help out the townsfolk!

Official Description:

Calico is a day-in-the-life community sim game where you are given an important and adorable task: rebuild the town’s cat café and fill it with cute and cuddly creatures! Build up your café by filling it with cute furniture, fun decorations, yummy pastries, and get it bustling with animals again!

Calico is meant to make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside. The gameplay reflects that with a laid back, low stress creative environment to explore and play in.

More Info:

You can get more info and download the game here on Steam or here on the official website!

Long Review:

This game disappointed me when I first started playing because it wasn’t quite what I expected, and I had some difficulties. But then I kept playing, and it grew on me, and I played some more, and it grew on me some more, and in the end, I really had a good time! I do still have some complaints, but it’s a really chill, adorable game that brought me a lot of smiles.

Likes:

– The premise is very cute and chill. Completely stress-free. You just decorate a little cafe, bake treats, befriend animals and townspeople, and do some little quests that usually consist of delivering things or bringing messages to people.

– So many adorable animals, big and small! And you can pet them all! And I love their little animations and how they follow you around, cock their heads to the side, etc.

– The game is delightfully weird. You can wear cats on your head. You can make the larger animals wear cats on their heads. You can ride around on a large animal with a cat on its head while you also have a cat on your head. You can weightlift polar bears, make giant capybaras, make tiny horses, have a giant cat floating in the air behind you everywhere you go, and hold animals in your outstretched arms like they’re Simba. And the physics engine makes everything even funnier because the animals wiggle and sway back and forth when you lift them. There’s more silliness and weirdness, including potions and other magical things, but I’ll let you discover it yourself.

– You get to furnish your cafe, upstairs bedroom, and yard. Furnishing/decorating is fun, and the furniture is all so cute!

– There’s clothes and accessories (including things like animal ears and tails) and designs to unlock and get from the other townspeople, and I had fun dressing up my character in various different ways. You can also put accessories on animals! Ever wanted a crow with a flower crown? Now you can have one! (I gave all my animals flower crowns.)

Dislikes:

– Movement is clunky and controls are confusing. But that could be just me since 1) I was using a keyboard rather than controller, and 2) I don’t normally play 3D games with this kind of movement + camera control (3rd person, you control both camera angle/zoom and character movement separately) and no ability to grab/place things with a mouse. At one point, I got stuck in a chair and it took me like a whole minute to figure out how to stand up again. I almost got stuck in the river once. It did get easier with practice, but it definitely took me some getting used to and memorizing. And there’s also a potion (with unlimited uses) that will take you back home if you get stuck somewhere.

– You have to do a lot of running around. It’s tedious. It takes time. But I have some advice for this! When you finish the main quest, you get a flying broomstick and can also get a potion to make birds big and able to fly with you on their backs, and that’s great because you can fly directly over the town rather than traveling along paths, and it’s sooooooo much faster. Also more fun! So I suggest doing the main quest first, then do the little side quests (if that’s possible).

– I just don’t really like the “flat comic book style graphics in a 3D world” look. I also find the lack of clear outlines or proper lighting/shadows somewhat headache/nausea-inducing if I play for too long, especially combined with all the movement. However, that’s obviously very subjective, and, ignoring my issues, the landscapes and colors and everything are lovely.

– The character creator isn’t as customizable as it’s advertised to be. It has lots of options, including super specific things like eyelashes and how far your chin sticks out, but somehow it also doesn’t have enough, and my character always sort of looked the same no matter what I did (unless I completely changed body and hair to be not me at all anymore). If you’re hoping to make a masculine or even androgynous character, it might be hard.

Overall:

It took me 11 hours to complete the main quest and I think most of the side quests, but I also took my time making different outfits and playing around with animals. I feel like, what’s the point of playing this if you don’t? That’s truly the fun of this game. The weird and silly stuff.

Overall, I really did enjoy this in the end. It definitely grew on me, and the smiles it gave me with its silliness were worth it!

Source/Cost: I played this on Utomik with a monthly subscription.

Short Review:

– Chill and stress-free
– So many cute animals to interact with
– So much delightful weirdness
– Cute furnishings/decor
– Customizable clothes and accessories
– Lots of running around
– Clunky controls that took some getting used to
– Sort of flat graphics in a 3D world, with pretty landscapes and colors
– Overall a game that grew on me because of how silly and adorable it was!

Accessibility:

(May not include everything)
– Not accessible for blind / visually impaired players.

Miscellaneous:

I'm trying out @CalicoGame, and this game is so delightfully weird! I'm just wearing cats on my head, weightlifting polar bears, and having animal cult meetings in my bedroom 😁 pic.twitter.com/ZGHkKFYbg4

— Kit (Metaphors and Moonlight) (@KitTheNameless) March 26, 2022

I'm looking through my Calico screenshots to decide which ones to use in my review, and these are just really funny to me 😂 pic.twitter.com/yQlLgQq2xr

— Kit (Metaphors and Moonlight) (@KitTheNameless) June 13, 2022