Papa’s Mocharia To Go! Serves Content, Charm, and Challenge (2024)

When life gives you lemons, you make coffee and cannoli!

The Flash Player engine may be gone forever, but that won’t stop Flipline Studios from putting out more entries in the beloved Papa Louie series of restaurant-management games. The newest addition to the family, Papa’s Mocharia, was released on March 2, 2021, to the Apple App Store, Google Play, and Amazon Apps for $1.99. That’s already a good deal for an app game, but with over 100 unique customers to serve, 12 in-game holidays (each with its own unique ingredients and toppings), hundreds of thousands of possible coffee combinations, and decorations for your café, not to mention countless clothes and accessories for your character, it’s a borderline steal!

Mocharia’s main story is pretty standard as far as Papa Louie games are concerned: the player character (you can choose from either Akari or Allan, or you can create your own character) gets hired to work as a barista at the all-new Papa’s Mocharia, located in the fictional town of New Pepperton. It’s not until they sign the contract, however, that they realize that they will also be starring in a documentary about the new café that will debut at the Sugarplex Film Fest in a year’s time. So not only does the main character have to put together coffee and cannoli for their customers, they also have to deal with the fact that they are being filmed the entire time they’re doing it.

Following the opening cutscene, the player is thrust into the first day on the job, and right off the bat, we can’t help but think of how simply captivating the environment is, with tall stone buildings and plenty of people out and about. I don’t know if New Pepperton was inspired by a real-life location in the world and, if so, where exactly it is. But one thing is for sure: one look at this city and you’ll want to move in right away! Don’t get too absorbed, though, because trust me when I say that you will need to focus on the tutorial.

When a customer approaches your counter, you will copy their order down on a ticket, which is par for the course in this series. Mocharia’s ordering system is perhaps the most complex of any we’ve seen in the Papa Louie series up to this point, but it’s when you get to the Brew Station that things start to get tricky.

What do I mean? Just take a look at the following order ticket:

Regardless of whether you’re a Papa Louie veteran and have the skills and insight to write strategy guides on all the other games or you’re new to the series, you’re likely to be at least a little puzzled upon seeing this for the first time. It doesn’t subtract from the overall quality of the game, but it’s worth noting that up until Mocharia, most of the other Papa Louie games have had more straightforward ordering systems. In other words, if you aren’t well versed in this series, you could look at a ticket from, say, Papa’s Scooperia and still have a clear idea about what you need to do in order to fulfill the customer’s order.

But I digress.

For a start, you have to brew the coffee and froth the milk, both of which are done in the same station. However, the milk and the coffee have very different mechanics. After choosing how many shots of coffee to brew, the amount of time it takes to do so will depend largely on the number of shots (i.e., one shot is the fastest and three shots take the longest). The good news, however, is that after you hit the green area on the gauge afterward, you don’t have to pay attention to it until it’s completely filled and stops itself automatically. You don’t have the same luxury with the milk, though. You hold down the button until the milk reaches the first, second, or third fill line, and then the machine starts to froth it. But, unlike with the coffee, you do have to keep an eye on the milk, as it is possible for it to be overfrothed.

From there on, the rest of the process becomes significantly simpler. At the Build Station, arrange the glasses of coffee and milk in the order that the ticket indicates (i.e., coffee in the left tumbler, milk on the right), and just start adding the syrups and powders that the customer wants. Finally, the Topping/Cannoli Station, like the name suggests, has you topping the coffee drink with cream and various syrups and sprinkles and making the accompanying cannoli to go with the customer’s drink.

The way I’ve written all of this makes the game sound a bit overwhelming, doesn’t it? Don’t worry, though, because aside from fewer tips at the end of the day, there really is no penalty for practicing your barista skills until you get it down pat. Practice makes perfect, as they say. Plus, if you’re cut up about not getting a perfect score on a particular order, just tap the tab with the question mark at the top of the screen in the Pause menu. There, you’ll be given feedback on why that specific customer gave you a certain score.

I love this new mechanic because it outright tells you how you can do better with any given customer’s order and, in my opinion, balances out the complexity of the building system. And while it doesn’t take away from the aspects that make the Papa Louie series as a whole challenging, I really do hope that Flipline Studios brings it back for future installments.

So, if you’re willing to put in the time and effort toward mastering these new mechanics, Papa’s Mocharia is a hugely entertaining and rewarding game for all ages!