Pokémon Café Mix Is Now Available For Free On The Switch eShop

It's been available for half the day I think.

It's not bad, just don't expect much, just a cutesy game that kinda wants your money. The stamina system is punishing and they already locked a character ( a special pikachu, of course) behind a pay wall.

Free 2 Play, but In App purchase.
No thanks.
I prefer full paid game with all things inside one cartridge / disc.

I think you would have to pay me to play this.

Free-to-start != free.

It's a cute little game. There's already a character locked behind a $3.99 purchase, though. "Sweets" Pikachu which, while unquestionably cute as heck, it's not an attractive monetization scheme.

@Fath yeah i think its time for them to be banned from using free to play. and time for every store have a filter to filter out any game with micro transactions.

@Kalmaro Sounds similar to the Pokémon Picross stamina meter. Without paying anything, it took an extremely long time to finish all the puzzles. I don’t mind paying for a Picross game, but I think they wanted $30 to unlock everything in the game without having to wait.

@Fath @Anguspuss Rusty’s Real Deal Baseball was the best way to have a free-to-start game.

The game started working at 1am BST.
Seems very reminiscent of Pokémon Shuffle on the 3DS, though the microtransaction demand has definitely stepped up.

In Shuffle you could keep replaying old levels to gain coins and EXP; but in this you can't, the only choice is to do the next level.
Once a day, if you do an online check-in (days run 7am BST-7am BST, just like Shuffle) you get a party invite which lets you play two repeat levels to get a tiny amount of acorns/EXP, but that's it. (Of course, you can pay a weekly subscription to get a second invite per day.)

For anyone who is interested in trying it, there's also a different Pikachu exclusively for doing 5 online check-ins within the first 10 or so days.

Meh not for me. Duke Nukem has just come out

@bluesun thanks dude! I may have a little go. Pika free sounds good. Chu!

A cute, irritating experience that constantly nags for money? Sounds like installing a six-year-old on my phone. I'll pass thanks.

No thanks waiting for ninjala.

The game has JUMBO transactions exceeding $100 for in-game currency. Is that not evidence enough that crap like this is best avoided?

This really should have just been a full-fledged game free of in-app purchases and with perhaps a budget retail release.

Lets go announcement johto later plz

God forbid they ask for a few bucks on a free game that obviously hard work was put into it, rather oay 60 bucks for full game. Great logic =

Not into Pokemon but I'm enjoying this quite a bit.

@Quix have you seen some of the amount they are asking. its not a few bucks.

Not my cup of tea (no pun intended). The gameplay is very basic and it is infested with microtransactions yet again. It's definitely a mobile game.The artstyle is quite nice though, a shame they didn't make a "proper" full release with it.

I hate how people are complaining about the purchaseable pikachu. Calm down. It’s essentially a “skin” and not required to play. The game is FREE. Let people pay a bit of money if they want to, and let the developers make some money for goodness sake.

Played the game up to level 45 so far.
It’s not good.
The mechanic is a bit too finicky for my taste, you can’t always see where your icons are going or what they will touch. I think the gameplay is meant to be a bit random more than precise though, so it may just be on purpose.
Disappointed you don’t get to customize the cafe.. it just does what it wants.
It’s a nice game but not great.
Can see it being decent on smartphones during commute.

@TimboSlice Tehe issue is that they are trying to tempt you to pay in the first place. Sure, you can get the item for free of you want.

Technically, the entire game is free. That doesn't change the fact that they use the scummy tactic of "Create arbitrary problem (stamina, retry system, etc) and then make you pay to fix it."

I'd rather they just charge upfront.

I like it, it's a nice little thing to play late in the evening. Honestly, I wouldn't pay more than $10 for it, were it not free.
I get that some folks hate F2P, but it's starting to remind me of folks complaining that Sam's gives free samples of food in order to 'force' someone to buy the real deal.

@Kalmaro then don’t play it.
Millions of people play candy crush, and this is essentially that - available for your Switch.
If you like these games, have fun, if not, no need to bash it cause you think $5 is a big deal.
And just from my playing so far, stamina bars and such haven’t even come close to an issue. I don’t see this game needing any $ investment to enjoy fully.
Regarding the pikachu for purchase, you get another pikachu version for free on your 5th login day.

The game has the weirdest bug: it doesn’t open if my phone isn’t set to English. Apparently it’s an issue in both Android and iOS. I get that it’s not playable in Portuguese, but they could at least let me open the damn thing without changing my whole phone settings? This should be a simple fix, come on

@TimboSlice Why wouldn't I play it? I've been enjoying it since yesterday. I just think it's not that great. 3 out of 5 easily.

I've herd the stamana bar in this game ONLY GOES DOWN if you fail stages, so not seeing the stamana isssues here. I have yet to attempt it, but I put several hours in shuffle on 3DS...

@Musharna eventually you get to levels that are tricky, and made even harder by how finicky aiming the abilities can get at times... And your moves are on a timer so you don't get too long to aim.

Oh yeah? I'm totally sleeping on this.