Jenn’s Cafe - A Personal Project for My Wife
A game project inspired by The Sims, Diner Dash, and Black and White, created to impress my wife. Featuring custom restaurant building and management mechanics.
I’ve detailed the development text a bit more in 2025! This project is still WIP/pending.
I started working on a game for my wife, Jennifer, inspired by a mix of The Sims, Diner Dash, and Black and White. The goal was to create something fun and personalized, but as development went on, I found myself getting caught up in the level editor and the customization options.
Jenn’s Cafe is a simulation and management game that gives players the ability to design and build their own restaurant. The customization is central to the experience, allowing players to freely place and stack objects, creating a highly personalized environment, much like The Sims and Diner Dash. There’s a level editor inspired by Sims 3/4, with an array of props and decorations that players can freely place within the space.
The game includes a save system, so players can preserve their restaurant layout and even track in-game currency, but due to incomplete systems, the progression mechanics aren’t functioning. A key feature—the customer AI—was never completed, so the core gameplay loop of feeding customers and managing the restaurant doesn’t exist yet. As a result, players can’t really progress, and the in-game finances don’t work as intended.
While the game lacks depth in its current state, there is still a fun building experience to be had. The focus was on giving players creative freedom, but I plan to revisit it when I feel ready to tackle the missing pieces, particularly the customer AI and financial systems. Once completed, Jenn’s Cafe could become a fully engaging restaurant management experience, and it’s something I look forward to finishing in the future.
