So I'm in my room surrounded by vanilla cough drop wrappers and crumpled Kleenex, and I'm looking through the Steam Next Fest charts for a demo to play. My chest is aching, my throat feels like I've been eating tree bark, and my snot – well, I won't get into it, but it's not good. I'm sick, OK? And the kinds of bullet hell, roguelite purgatory, and hack-and-slash heaven I usually like to play in aren't good for being sick. You see, I had no choice but to put my misgivings about anime catgirls aside and download Kemono Teatime
What can I say? Respiratory infection makes me feel vulnerable. Listening to kitty cat waifus whisper ASMR, as you do in Kemono Teatime, isn't a go-to hobby of mine, but I just microwaved macaroni and cheese. I'm on my third cup of lavender tea, and I still sound like a walrusgirl. You have to put your pride aside in moments like these.
And I'm glad I did. Kemono Teatime, intriguingly, appears just as skeptical as I am about the genres it's inspired by – cafe sims with their aggressive calm and visual novels, with their cherry blossom blushing anime girls.
It's almost immediately apparent. I spent my 40 minutes with the Kemono demo opening Cafe K, a tea and dessert shop run by the human girl Tarte and her little sister Macaron, who recently grew a tail. Though the inviting shop is located in the seemingly picturesque commune La Bête, a haven for kemonomimi humans with animal ears, something sinister clearly lurks under the community's sweet surface.
As I served healing teas with herbs – a process illustrated by soft, sensory bubbling and stirring – cafe guests would reveal glossary terms I could then refer back to in my menu. By doing this, I learned that Kemono Teatime's universe had spent the last year plunged in a pandemic, which caused governmental collapse worldwide and dwindled the human population down to 20%.
"Various rumors about the virus' origins have cropped up," in-game text says. "While some say that it was a spontaneous act of nature, others believe it to be a biohazard created by pharmaceutical companies." Stranger, then, is the fact that Cafe K's customers pay in blue-and-white pills. All of La Bête's residents seem so preoccupied with death…
I am, too; after all, I'm sick. So, because of my, let's say, fragile disposition right now, I don't think the best thing about the Kemono Teatime demo is its sugary plates of cookies or pantries full of chocolate and cream cheese (which you buy with pills!). Though, the game's pixelated art style certainly makes all of its sim elements delightful.
I'm more intrigued by Kemono Teatime's clever ability to demonstrate that fear can pop up anywhere, in anything – even in a fuzzy pair of kitty ears.
