Cafe Seventeen

Cafe Seventeen

Daniel Meng

Café Seventeen is a simulation-driven management game about running a small café in a near-future society where humans and “beastkin” live under the pressures of labor, survival, and social marginalization. On the surface, the project takes the form of a cute café management game: the player hires staff, arranges furniture, creates menus, serves customers, manages daily business hours, and tries to keep the café profitable. Beneath that surface, however, the game is built around some more complex questions: how can a management system make the player feel the tension between efficiency and care?

Café Seventeen is a simulation-driven management game about running a small café in a near-future society where humans and “beastkin” live under the pressures of labor, survival, and social marginalization. On the surface, the project takes the form of a cute café management game: the player hires staff, arranges furniture, creates menus, serves customers, manages daily business hours, and tries to keep the café profitable. Beneath that surface, however, the game is built around some more complex questions: how can a management system make the player feel the tension between efficiency and care?

The core structure of the game follows a day-by-day operational loop. During the end of each day, the player can make decisions or changes about staffing, schedules, menu design, etc. During business hours, employees move through the café space to complete tasks such as taking orders, preparing food, serving customers, cleaning tables, and resting when they are exhausted. By the end of day, the player reviews statistics of the café’s income, staff condition, and long-term progression.

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Game Feature

Daniel Meng

BFA design & technology
I am a game developer who enjoys telling stories through gameplay systems and rules. Rather than treating mechanics and narrative as separate parts, I like designing them so they shape and reinforce each other. My work often explores how player decisions, constraints, and repeated actions can reveal character, emotion, and worldbuilding. I aim to create games where the rules themselves become part of the storytelling.