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8.0 excellent
Cathy was just another ditzy cruise ship tourist, until her passion for photography got her left behind when her cruise ship sailed without her. Now she's trapped in the strange world of the Caribbean and it's your job to help her survive as a beachside bartender.
Cathy's Caribbean Club is one of the popular group of "start a business serving drinks" games, such as Betty's Beer Bar and Wild West Wendy, also from Mystery Studios. The game is extremely easy to pick up - customers appear at the bar and ask for different kinds of drinks. They say things like "arub ububu" and "program" and "un chocolat." It may sound like they are asking for a chocolate, but what they really want are fruit smoothies. And lots of them. A quick look at the word balloons floating over their heads will reveal their orders. All Cathy has to do is select the correct glass and fruit combination, and the smoothie machine will shoot out a drink for her to take to that patron.
It sounds easy, and as in any customer service job, it would be easy, if it wasn't for those customers! They keep coming and coming! As part of Cathy's duties, she has to collect the empty glasses and return them to the sink. And she only has two hands. As a waitress, if both your hands are full (say you're taking fresh drinks to two customers), it's considered extremely bad form to set down a customer's fresh drink, and then pick up their previously drained glass with your now free hand. No way. In New York you'd be fired for that. You need one hand free to pick up the dirty glass first, and then you give the customer their fresh drink. Never is the new drink on the table/bar at the same time as the dirty glass. Luckily you can buy a tray later in the game and carry more than two drinks at a time.
Serve the customers quickly, and they will be happy. Happy customers tip more. Let them wait too long, and they may not tip. And if they get fed up waiting for you to serve them, they'll just leave. No money, and no tip.
Does Betty, I mean Cathy, want money? You bet she does. There are fifty levels, and each level has a required amount for her to collect before the bar closes for the day (as in most bars I've been to, closing time is signalled by a parrot flying by with a banner attached to it, and the sound of a ship's foghorn). Cathy starts in the Bimimi Bar, which is her beachside bar. She moves around the island, each day inching down the beach and collecting more money. From the looks of the map, it seems she even plans to move her bar into the water (perhaps wearing scuba gear), but I didn't play that far.
I have to stop here and say a word about the customers in the Caribbean isles. We never find out if Cathy is in Aruba or Jamaica or Puerto Rico... but wherever she is in the Caribbean, it's apparently a popular destination for movie stars. Cathy dreams of meeting movie stars. You probably do, too, unless you are a movie star yourself. I didn't see any movie stars in the first 10 levels of Cathy's Caribbean Club, but I did see Dracula, the Wolfman (or maybe a toothy ape, it was hard to tell), a pirate, Frankenstein's monster, and I almost [deleted] [deleted] when I saw a real live alien fade into view at the bar. Holy smokes!
The game screens and visuals in Cathy's Caribbean Club are regrettably a bit static. There's not a lot of explosion going on here. That's why it's a blessing Mystery Studio took a lot of time making such varied and interesting customers. No two look alike, unless they are special customers like Frankenstein's monster. There should have been more variation in the customers' voices, however. You can only hear "arub ububu" a few hundred times before you start gritting your teeth.
The islandesque music is lowkey and doesn't get annoying. You won't jump up and start dancing, unless maybe if you crank up the music volume, which by default is at its lowest setting.
There are a few misspellings, but overall the game is presented well and has a professional feel to it.
Cathy's bar starts out fairly mediocre. Really nothing distinguishes it from other bars on the beach. But by collecting tips (not dollars, but stars), you can upgrade the bar. Buy another smoothie machine, a serving tray, fancy pants decorations for the smoothie glasses, beach chairs to attract VIP customers, a bartender assistant, and even a trained parrot to collect dirty glasses. Yes way, a trained parrot.
Why use star tips? Why not use the money earned from drinks to buy upgrades, you may ask? No, no, no. I can tell you've never been to the Caribbean. Satisfied customers leave stars as tips, not dollars. And the bar upgrade shop only accepts stars. A tray costs eighty stars, for example. Yeah, I had the same reaction. What's the tray made of, diamonds??? Ha ha. But seriously, that's how much it costs, and you can't haggle. The trained parrot is five hundred stars. But that tray really makes things easier. And once you get a few lounge chairs out on the sand, you'll get more VIP customers (people way too cool to sit at the bar) who leave three or four star tips.
Cathy's Caribbean Club is an amusing game that challenges you to multitask and think ahead about the best way to tend drinks at a Caribbean bar. It has long-term value, but only if you like the "grow and expand a business" type of game.