Cathy's Crafts Collector's Edition

Not many people have a soft spot for time management games, mainly because they can be pretty demanding, especially when you consider their target audience. Hence, casual gamers do not have the necessary patience to replay the same level a couple of times just to be able to pass it. On the other hand, the gimmick can work if the gameplay is rewarding and fun in other ways.

Cathy's Crafts is a time management game in which you have to take care of a hardware shop and serve customers as quickly as possible in order to make a profit and take care of the business until your parents come back from their trip. It’s not at all a new formula, but there are a couple of interesting additions that might make you give it a chance, even if you are not a huge time management fan.

The main character’s name is Cathy, although you can switch between avatars and pose as a few other characters along the way. Cathy’s story is the most interesting, on the other hand, because she ends up with a passion for crafting, which prompts her to open up a special shop and share her gift with the world, in exchange for money of course.

As always, most of your time is spent taking orders from customers and serving them as quickly as possible with the requested products. Some are more patient than others, and it’s also mandatory that you handcraft a couple of the products sometimes. You can increase their patience using a variety of tricks, such as decorating your shop with nicer furniture, or by letting the cat roam freely.

The graphics are nothing to write home about, especially since you have to play from the same perspective at all times and you cannot rotate or zoom it. Hence, even if the shop is pretty detailed and colorful, it gets very boring after a while, especially since you’ll inevitably fail to accomplish your goals more than once and have to replay the same stages over and over again.

In the end, Cathy's Crafts is not a revolutionary game, but then again it doesn’t try to be either. Hence, if you know what to expect from time management games then this one shouldn’t surprise you in any way, but it’s still a fun way to spend a few hours.

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