Others - Secret Care Cafe [v0.8.46.3 Public] [Rare Alex]

I feel like this game is a high quality cup of tea, but I hate the flavor. I went from loving this game and paying to support it to giving up on the characters fairly quickly at a specific point in the plot, so this will be a wall of text as I try to figure out what went wrong (for me)!

I jumped into this one hoping for a slice of life maid/brothel management story about a couple open to a swinging lifestyle. The first 40 or so days in game were a blast, but the long grind gaining money/stats and doing the same repetitive tasks started to get old when there weren't as many new pictures and scenes to discover daily. Each small advance in plot required I sit there for 5 minutes and micromanage item handouts over and over, and I found myself taking breaks or stalling when I wrapped up my daily tasks and knew I had to sit for another 5 minute maid-sim cycle. The building of the cafe is really cool, but it didn't feel like there were enough new scenes and story to justify the amount of grinding required to get them. I often found myself confused about what exactly I needed to do to move the story forward, or if there was any more to expect at the end of each day. Still, the promise of the early game’s story and the fun intros for each of the girls kept me happily moving through this grind.

Around day 80-ish I finally handed out Cynthia's number enough times to Ricky to see his scenes… and oh boy, I quickly realized that this is not written as a fun swinging netorase story. I was very attracted to Cynthia at the start, because she appeared to be my ideal type of love interest in these games. Sexually experienced, promiscuous, and creatively kinky. But she also (seemed) to be able to maintain self control and was loyal to the MC's interests. This game is in the ballpark of netorase, in that the author will have the LI ask if she can "go on a date" and "have some fun after" with a guy (or group of guys), and the LI won't go on the date if you say no. This game is in the ballpark of NTR, in that if you let her go on a date the LI will fail to send any of the agreed update texts or pictures (except demanding to be picked up afterwards), loses all self control upon receiving slight sexual pressure or seeing a big dick, will let the guy(s) raw dog her immediately and cum inside only to lie about how it happened after, will squirt for the first time in her life 2min into fucking big NPC dick and then tell NPC how her boyfriend has never made her do that, will let NPC turn her into a fuck sleeve for dozens of rounds staying out later than agreed, promises to go on follow up dates without confirming the MC is OK with it, maintains close private relationships with NPCs after encounters, and will even be ready to fuck random delivery guys as a tip on the orders of the NPC without ever consulting MC. Then afterwards the MC hears about (almost) everything that happens and how the girl feels super bad about what a dumb whore she was and then the MC always says something like "heh... yeah that's what I wanted and I knew all along lul... c'mon I'll go buy you a Plan B pill cause I'm a chad right!? RIGHT? Oh okay I’ll take some pictures of your vag to send to NPC before we leave. Can you stop texting him while I’m talking to you?"

I think that Cyn scene led to my fastest "Join Patreon, Leave Patreon" turnaround among all the projects I've supported. The author tries to convert these otherwise pure NTR scenes after the fact into netorase or some type of loving “I’m doing this for you” situation by having Sergil reiterate how much he loves his girls becoming mindless free use whores after each scene. Instead, the writing converts Sergil into a coping sub cuck in an NTR story where some of the sharp edges have been smoothed over. The first pin scenes with Cynthia soured me on the entire relationship because of this, she became immediately undesirable for any self-respecting swinger (I see this sometimes referred to as being an “alpha cuck” – willing to share a partner but not be disrespected). She is written as the epitome of the whore that you’re not gonna turn into a housewife, unless you embrace being a sub cuckold. Sergil went from being an alpha male running a cafe, a magnet for loyal and kinky maids, to a spineless cuck waiter serving groups of men who clearly don't respect him or his girls and get away with every gross advance, no matter how disrespectful it is. Player options here are "NO DATING ALLOWED (incomplete vanilla slice of life story)" or "CUCK CITY (you're the actual maid serving cake to the boyfriends of your free use whores)."

I feel that the kinky/sharing approach is basically dead at this point with the pin scenes because a lack of nuanced writing leads to a forced cuck POV in almost every non-vanilla situation. Why is my loyal, kinky, experienced whore girlfriend immediately mind broken when seeing a big cock on an overconfident doofus? Why is Cyn not riding Ricky like a porn star, putting him in his place and shutting him up, taking everything he throws at her and giggling thinking it's cute while video calling the MC asking for tips on how to get off while fucking loser dick? There's zero empowerment options in these scenes for the main pair, and the author often goes out of their way to make the opposite experience happen for the reader. How about at least adding an option that lets Cyn say something like "Hey put a condom on and don't nut in me raw because I think that's gross for a rando guy to do" or "Wait let me call my BF to see if I should answer the door naked covered in cum and fuck the delivery guy as a tip." It would even be fun to grind for this, let Sergil build a "training room" to teach these fickle girls how to act when they're being loaned out! I know this spineless sub/cuck POV is likely a specific fetish the author is going for, but it's not netorase in my opinion and I see this on a lot of “this is a great netorase story” review lists. Let Sergil embody the actual Pimp he’s been set up as, not a helpless cuck totally out of control and lacking any respect outside of empty and forced-feeling “oh yea you’re totally the best though” comments from love interests.

I get that a lot of people love this sub/cuck POV, and I absolutely respect that, but the "NTR haters" group that I sometimes fall into is many times complaining about exactly this lack of nuance in love interest behavior. Empowered sharing/swapping is a thing too – and it’s often overlooked or written in a style that inelegantly tries to gloss over what are otherwise pure NTR scenes. Netorase, to me, is in part about the LI being able to follow established rules of engagement and maintaining control/respect for herself and her lover from the beginning to the end of sexual encounters. It evokes a feeling of empowerment in the MC when their love "passes the tests" and proves their loyalty, proves that they love the MC more than the often powerful draw of their carnal instincts. Confidence in this rule following and boundary setting is what lets some sharing couples have fun in a swinging/sharing environment, shifts in behavior and tone can quickly shatter enjoyment for either party. Ultimately, I feel there isn't enough content here to carry either a "pure" or "non-depraved swinging" route for people who don't want to read a story from a disrespected cuck's POV, but for those into that fetish there is a lot to love here!

[Warning. I focus entirely on the story in this review.]

Fuck man I don't think I can continue playing this game... I mean it looks fun, it has the bright colours, the poppy characters and the somewhat exaggerated sex-scenes but every time I make a choice it feels like I'm driving this fucking guy (Sergil) further into fucking ruin. The scenes that come after to literally show you the despair the character feels, I now it sounds stupid but seeing his despair after every choice breaks my fucking heart. Especially since I'm the one pushing the buttons. Suddenly the responsibility is mine even though I didn't ask for it. I'm just some random asshole trying to get his rocks off and now I'm the cause of all the demons in his life. I am not fucking joking I literally feel physically sick to my stomach just remembering the scenes. I actually fucking gagged at it today. And I didn't even mention whatever the hell is going on with Ame. I've played and watched and read NTR before and never have I reacted this way.

So in a way I actually want to commend the Devs behind this. I genuinely want to praise, applaud and congratulate you for writing a rousing and compelling story thats truly heart wrenching.
I'm also personally saddened by just how fucking tragic this story is to the point I feel uncomfortable playing it. But in my opinion: That's one hell of a fucking achievement. Rarely has any piece of media evoked such feeling in me. Never have I ever felt such deep caring for a video game character and their wellbeing. Only once before have I ever been so heartbroken over the tragedy pertaining to the character that I'm actually left in tears over what happened.

Fucking Kudos to all of you.

If you have a stronger gut and bigger balls than me I implore you to try out this game and unlike other people look past the gameplay (that while a little grindy is still pretty fun) and not see the sex as just sex and actually focus on the words on the screen when a character talks, listen to the music and it's changes when scenes advance.
And if you do decide to play this game I also implore you to think about getting it straight from the source and support the talented sociopaths behind this game.

I like the game so far, it is a bit grindy but so far I haven't minded it. Probably about half way through maxing everything (unless there is a steep curve at the end). Overall I'm enjoying it. I like the constant progression, and I don't think I've seen a duplicate cutscene yet. There is a ton of different after work events.

I do wish I knew you needed to put the pins on earlier. I kept wondering why my upgrades didn't make any changes.

The one thing that I really think the game needs, like said in another review, is some kind of automation for the cafe portion. It's a bit tedious to move the girls around and then fill orders. Maybe a "conveyor belt" to automate delivering food (Automatically fill in x seconds after order is placed). Also maybe a "Hostess Tablet" or something to automatically assign maids. By design you'll take a hit on efficiency and lose the ability to juggle girls around (just ignoring the 4th customer?), but it would definitely help make it easier to grind a few day's of cash or popularity without having to be micromanaging every detail. If you really want to min/max, you'll have to do that manually.

Really a good one. I liked the idea but I also need some guidance how to automotize the cafe girl service. It seems really slow to collect money with more development and updating the cafe. Please keep up the good work and more updates though!

Outside of the gameplay which can get a bit repetitive (would be nice to have a few more keyboard shortcuts to speed things up) I don't have any complaints about this game; the animations and scenes are very well done, the characters are all pleasant and look great, the dialogue isn't boring to read through and the game's setting works well in both the vanilla and netorase side.

I like the art style, but that's about it for me. There's just too much bland soup of repetitiveness. It's not bad by any definition, but I can't really recommend it for most people.

Gameplay summary: You run a cafe and you're trying to corrupt your employees, one of whom happens to be your GF. You can buy upgrades and you need to keep the cafe stocked with beverages and snacks. Every working day involves assigning girls to tables and clicking the right snack or beverage. This happens realtime and things can sometimes get hectic even though you can set the speed from 0.5x to 3x. Tip: Enable keyboard shortcut display, so you don't have to drag & drop. You can also pin the beverage, girl and action panel. Between days, there's a story scene and you can additioanlly talk to girls, and you need to restock the shop, buy more upgrades, items/gifts to raise lewdness and all that jazz. Rinse, repeat, far too many times. The game is comparable to Mystwood Manor, for folks who played that.

The main issue with this game: The core cafe gameplay loop is overdone to death and beyond. It looks nice in screenshots, and is why I tried the game in the first place but sadly, I can't emphasise this enough: There's no way to play this game without cheating (edit the save file) because you make so little money.
We're not even close to having the gameplay depth required for the amount of times you'll need to repeat the same tired old stuff. Every. Single. Day. 10-20 days of game time would be fine, but we're looking at at least >200 for a legit playthrough (I don't know if someone who has actually done one could chime in here). I happen to think some grind is essential to corruption games, but the level of boring repetition in this game is just ridiculous. I don't know what the dev must be smoking to believe this gameplay loop comes even close being good enough to pull this off. It also has annoyance issues beyond just being endlessly repetitive. For one, whenever you have a girl interact with a customer, a cartoon panel (eventually containing sexy times) pops up and blocks the entire damn interface, when you really need to move someone to a table or assign a beverage or whatever. It's infuriating when you would like to look at the smut, but you also really need to get that fucking panel out of the way. It's stupid and added greatly to my dislike for the game.

The intermission text, characters and scenes are also just... supremely bland... There's a lot of scenes to be sure, but I ended up just holding CTRL through multiple intermissions and even sex scenes. It's not badly written per se, but none of the girls, nor the main character, really have any true personality and so I didn't give a shit about anyone. Another issue is the game just ticks along and the grind doesn't feel like YOU are actively working toward a goal, you're just along for the linear ride. As far as I can tell, the only choice is NTR or not.. As a result, the corruption stuff was just boring to me.

This gameplay is quite fun, for me anyways. This is one of those where you're managing time, but you've got some interesting things you can do in terms of the interactions between the girls which give you some nice little scenes.

I really like the variance in the gameplay. I like how you really do feel like you're corrupting these girls. I think there are a lot of customization options that I haven't really even begun to scratch the surface of after 15 hours or so in the game.

The art is really good. I like it a lot. This game is constantly being updated, too, so there will be even more than is already here.

I keep coming back to this one just to play, because its fun. I like the subject matter, and I really like the art. Really hope this game grows quite large. Keep up the good work

It may sound heretical to some, but what I liked the most is grind, that is management side of the game, cafe gameplay, upgrading skills, open glory hole scenes (thanks to new Sergil's invite skill it's not that grindy as before), VIP room though need some work, in this state it’s redundant.

Dialogs are good, characters are interesting, client events… eh, okayish? First time I played this game I dropped it after first event due to difference between tones of the main story and events. But after some time started with different mindset and was able to enjoy them.
It’s good time killer.

Such a unique game which I have not seen before, this does, however, contain NTR. Nonetheless, we have an anime like graphics which I loved, and many hot scenes which play out as a story, on top of that what I love the most is an incorporated management system where you have to act as a manager of the shop and position these few girls on right stations in order to attain money.

Story is interesting and has many options to grow, replayability or simply just playing idly while doing stuff is a big +. I haven't encountered any bugs and the renders/animation are delightful. Plenty of content in the main game loop with some extra story scenes on top to move things along. The only downside is that I need more of it, but it's the way of life. 5*

I agree with most others here. As long as you're willing to edit the savefile (it's stored in plaintext so not hard as long as you can locate the file) to reduce the grind, this is a solid game. The gameplay portion is fun for a while, but gets boring later on, which is where the ability to skip the grind becomes more important. There's a fair number of vanilla scenes that are triggered through the 'chat' events, making the extremely grindy (you initially only had one chance per week but in a recent update you can increase this to 3, which still feels a little low). The NTR events are fairly hard to get, you need to interact with the character with the maids abilities a decent number of times and then you actually activate the event through the maid's menu (different button from their 'chat' button).

The events themselves are pretty well done and the girls are pretty likeable. I especially like that Cynthia (the mc's girlfriend) doesn't want to actually cheat without permission.

It's interesting but it's quite bugged which breaks the experience quite a bit, not to mention the huge grind it's almost mandatory to edit the save which is clearly something a good game shouldn't make you do, I won't say much in terms of story construction Since it's an incomplete game, I'll just say that I'm not convinced at the moment.

The only thing that has convinced me about the game are its scenes since it fulfills its objective as a porn game, that is if the content is quite uneven so if you don't like to share you will have little to do in comparison.

This is a review for v0.8.4 Public. I am hoping that later versions will be more balanced.
At the moment, I think the average score for this game is too high. If you read through the reviews, you'll see that this is because many people will break the game to give themselves extra money. This goes a long way toward solving the game's problems, but I'm reviewing the game as it is.

First the positives:
The idea of the game is cool and original. The maid cafe concept is fun, and from an NTR standpoint, it is exciting to send out your harem to flirt with the customers and develop their lewd stats.
The actual gameplay of managing the cafe is fun too. There's a good bit of strategy involved in who you send out to the street (which determines which clients come in) and how to serve them. It is nice to play a game like this that isn't a glorified VN. There is real game play.

Now the negatives:
The game play is engaging, but you must play through a lot before you start to unlock any of the scenes with clients. It is, in other words, incredibly grindy. To illustrate: you must pay for an ability where your maid gives her number to a client. She can only do this once per day (until it is upgraded again) and then only once per client. To unlock a scene, you must give your phone number to that specific client 11 times!
To make matters worse, you barely make any money day after day. Enough for maybe two upgrades and replenishing your stock.

As I said before, I enjoy the game play, but it becomes quite tedious when there are no rewards. H-scenes are few and far between. You may get lucky with one at the end of the day if you spend it with a maid you have a relationship with.

My final criticism is about the language. For the most part, the dialogue and scenarios are great. I particularly like the giant father-in-law. But for some reason, the dev has sprinkled in terrible Tik Tok clichés like "Couldn't be me" that take you out of the game and are not funny.

Ways to improve the game:
As a game works out its balance, it is better to be unbalanced toward the player. You need to get more money and it should be easier to get more actions per day for the MC.

One QoL upgrade that I was excited for was getting the food and drink replenished at the end of the day automatically. Re-buying my supplies really contributed to the grind. Unfortunately, the dev made the same mistake that other resource management games on this site make, which is that you set it to buy X supplies every day. This does not diminish resource management or grind because you don't sell a uniform set of goods every day, it fluctuates wildly. It would be far better if you could set how many cakes or hotdogs you wanted to have at the start of each day, and automatically buy enough to meet that number.

It would be great if there were more H-scenes, and if flirting did something more than just show a lewd picture. It would also be nice if you could pause to telescope in to a customer interaction, rather than imagine what the flirt imagination might imply as you desperately get a client their cookies.

It would also be nice if you could somehow preview what the rooms will do for you. They are very capital intensive and I don't want to put anything toward the rooms if they don't do anything useful or exciting.

tl;dr
Fun gameplay and great concept, but the grind makes the ratio of actions to H-scenes pretty awful.
With more QoL improvements and ways to spy on the maids, this would be an S-tier NTR game, but without some kind of re-balancing it is below average.

Easily one of the best of it's kind. It's a bit slow to get going but its super worth it. Well written characters & scenes, I dont know if they're asset store models or custom but either way they're really cute. Playing it is super intuitive too.

Review is for several hours in version 0.8.2.

As far as H games go, there's a lot to like here, especially if you like swinging/netorase, corruption, harem, and interesting characters and dialogue. The amount of build up is great and all of the netorase content is disabled by default if it's not your thing, although it seems to make up a large amount of the H content in this game. The four main heroines have a lot of personality and the events are well written and well illustrated/animated. There's a lot of variety of in content, and much of the game is very unique.

The actual BrothelCafe management system and day-to-day gameplay is pretty unique and addicting. Remembering hotkeys for different food and drink items provides a bit of a learning curve but adds to the fun. There's a bit of strategy involved in regards to using your maid's abilities in order to efficiently serve customers and unlock client events. Upgrade paths for abilities require a bit of planning as well.

That being said, there is plenty to not like here as well. Secret Care Cafe is extremely grindy. There is a lot you have to do in order to unlock the content in this game. Upgrades require ridiculous amounts of money and stats to the point where editing your game save file is almost necessary if you don't want to go through hours of padded content to get to the good stuff.

I personally edited my saves because I ultimately think that the game needs a bit of rebalancing-- possibly a bit of rethinking too. I'm not sure what a good balance between believability or pacing and pushing past slog would be, but either more events, adding more time after each day to go through events, more types of clients and CGs during the day, or something along these lines would be good. The backrooms is a good start, but I feel like some of the rooms need a bit more depth.

At the end of the day, this is game is very good-- borderline fantastic. There's something fresh and fun here and I can't wait until this game is done. However, until then, I think this game has to be played with cheats in order to get through some of the slow pacing and balance issues.

Edit:
Version 0.8.3 added an ability that lets you do more than one action after work. Balance is a bit better now and I think it deserves that extra star.

Great game, love the fast paced gameplay and very frequent updates.
CG's look great plus most of them are animated.
Game is very engaging. I played multiple hours over many days.
Art 5/5
Story 5/5
Gameplay 4/5
Fapability 5/5
Music 5/5
DevSupport 5/5
Originality 5/5

The developer seems to be operating under some kind of misunderstanding as to the appeal of managing a maid cafe in a porn game. Clearly, he thinks, we're all here for the extremely tedious stock taking and number-crunching. Massively over-inflated content gates ensure you don't miss a single second of the exciting restocking action. as half your daily profits vanish down the drain for the vital hot dog fund.

But you can at least get to know your employees! Barely, because your actions between days are extremely limited so as to make sure you don't spend too much time away from manually stuffing cake down some dude's gullet.

While the game's scenes supposedly cater to a vareity of tastes, in reality is hits the ol' "tries to please everyone and ends up being a whole lot of nothing" sweet spot. Whatever fetish you're into, this game is experly-crafted to ensure you're not satisfied with any of them. Unless your fetish is restocking shelves.

As for positives: uhh some of the models/animations are cute, I guess? A good premise that just goes nowhere., you hate to see it.

I tried this as something off my normal style - I play almost exclusively "western-style 3d games" (non-cartoon), and was pleasantly surprised. While the artwork still isn't my first choice, that's certainly subjective - and the mechanical part of the gameplay is quite polished.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To anyone reading this, first off: This is a game. Unlike 90% of the site which are more visual novels described as games or visual novels with occassional mechanics, this is a game. If you're looking for porn gif segments, look elsewhere. If you want real gameplay, you're in luck!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Interface:

-UI/UX is quite polished. Abundant usage of hotkeys, good crisp guis, good on screen information. Unlike so many UIs that make the player feel like they're swimming in molasses, everything here is sharp, responsive.

Mechanics:

-Good leveling up/progression mechanic, with caveat it has same problem as many grind games - overly difficult early on, overly easy late game; once you're over that inflection point. This could be fixed by having things like more difficult orders late game (multi-items, etc), but then a more capable staff to compensate.

Artwork:

-As mentioned in the lede; it's really not my style, so I can't really factor it in the the review; my points score is simply a tally of other non-art categories.

Dialogue/story:

-Quite good, though the characters do have the typical harem/anime tropes, when you get past that - they're all pretty likable and have enough personality to tell them apart. One downside is things seem to get cut prematurely short, though I'm sure this will be a matter of time before game is more fleshed out.

I particularly liked Cynthia and her interactions with the MC - this is one of maybe 2-3 games on the entire site that actually does wifesharing/hotwifing right, mc's not jealous, there's no element of humiliation, and despite having tons of sex elsewhere she's still very much in love with the MC, so kudos to the dev/writer for this, too many wifesharing games feel like they're written by ntr lovers, not wifesharing lovers.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In summary, solid 4/5 - there are some hiccups that prevent a perfect score; story could be longer, some of the mid-late gameplay is unneccesarily grindy, needs more scenes overall, but those are offset by the fantastic UI, good core mechanical gameplay, and overall dialogue.

My honest opinion about the game.

The good:
- The writing is great, the characters are well written and their personalities are very distinguishable. The "bad" jokes are good, I had some great laughs in the 30 hours I played the game.
- The graphics are great, the character models are interesting and varied, the animations are well done and give life and dynamics to the game.
- The sex scenes are excellently written, very exciting and realistic, long enough for the player to have a pleasurable experience but short enough not to make the player bored from reading too much.
- The skins for the cafe are great, not only changing the look of the place but also the clothes and images of the maids when you use their special skills.
- NTR is optional! If you don't like it, you won't see NTR, but you'll be missing out on a good portion of the game's scenes.
- The gameplay loop is fun and dynamic, even challenging at times, and all gameplay pieces mesh together organically in almost all cases.

The bad:
- Little information about the mechanics of the game hurts the experience, especially for new players. For example, I still don't understand why and what some statuses are for and if they are already implemented. I only found out after 15 hours of gameplay that you can use keyboard shortcuts to choose food/drinks/skills/maids without having to drag the choice with the mouse (yes, I didn't press Esc even once while the cafe was open, in 15 hours of gameplay). I also didn't understand what the "Help in the Back" skill does exactly.
- You cannot select a menu without first closing the open menu, this seems like a small thing but it is extremely inconvenient and hurts the dynamic experience that other parts of the game give you.
- The game doesn't pause when you open the guest book while the cafe is open, and for someone who has reading issues like I do, this hurts the game experience a lot.
- Being limited to 3 spaces for maids to work in the cafe when you have access to 4 available maids and 4 tables to serve customers is too inconvenient, especially when some customers cannot remain unattended for 2 seconds.
- Customers ordering something that is not in stock over and over again without stopping ends up hurting progress a lot at the beginning of the game.

I'm giving 5 stars because even with the bad things I had a lot of fun and I know that in the future the developer will solve these problems.

That's all I remember about the game while writing this review.
Like, subscribe and hit the bells for more!

The game overall is great. Regularly updated throughout the month with new content and listens to feedback. Only issue I have is that the project is going in many directions too quickly. For example, Cookie only has one client-related event and there is no aftermath for it yet, whereas Cynthia and Rai have at least two each and they're fully completed. (I don't really count the gangbang with Cookie x Cynthia as a part of this because it's an additional aftermath to Cynthia's.)