Game Review: Barista Life (Mobile – Free to Play)

Get ready to prepare some coffee! Your customers are in need of your coffee, so hop in and make some coffee for them! Experience the life of a barista.

Rollic Games continue their trend of uninspired ‘job’ games with your chance to serve customers in your very own coffee shop! You’ll have to make their drinks exactly as they demand while expanding your menu, serving food and eying up bigger premises.

A very simple premise as always. Customers arrive and make their order ranging from simple expressos to low-fat vanilla Soya lattes and a side-salad. Once you’ve confirmed their order, it’s time to get it ready with a few straight-forward touch commands.

Fill the expresso cup to the line, pour the milk in, heat it to the right temperature by stopping the indicator in the green area, squirt some flavour in and so on. Some have one or two steps; others have several but we’re not talking about complex stuff here.

The same goes for preparing salads, sandwiches, donuts or cake and after a short while the feeling of repetition will start to sink in.

To try and extend the life of the game, there are many new items on your menu to unlock as you play along but most are just variations on what you already have. Such as different types of milk, salads, cakes etc. It does make each order that more varied but doesn’t change gameplay in anyway, aside from when you do manage to unlock a new item for the first time.

It won’t take too long for most players to have everything unlocked as the money comes in from paying customers. Aside from the odd item that requires you watch an ad, something that would be far more reasonable if the game wasn’t a complete and utter ad-spam elsewhere.

Yes, unsurprisingly Barista Life sticks solidly to the current free to play model of hitting you with as many ads as possible before you realise the game has the depth of a puddle and give up.

There’s nothing here to get excited about. This style of gameplay is getting old really quickly and the diminishing results are clear to all who regularly check these kinds of games out.