Café Baras, Capybaras, and All the Fun of a Local Hangout
Create a cozy environment to serve up coffee, tea, and snacks to a variety of customers and regulars with Café Baras.
There are those times when I see a game isn’t designed for solo, and I know I’ll skip over it, even if it appeals to me in many other ways. Café Baras is one such example… Except it has a nice story! I discovered that an unofficial solo mode exists for it. While visiting family in Canada recently, I spotted a copy on the shelf and just knew it was time to run my own café!
Game Overview
Game Name: Café Baras
Publication Year: 2024
Designer: Roberta Taylor
Artist: Cindy Monroy
Publisher: KTBG
Solo Mode: Unofficial Solo Mode
Special guests offer general goals to work towards, while the focus is on building, brewing, and baking! Regular customers might show up with the right combination of food, drink, and decor. With adorable capybaras and the most delightful artwork, this is one café to remember!
First Play
June 19, 2025
Complexity
2
Latest Play
June 20, 2025
Expansions
0
Setup Time
Almost None
Lifetime Plays
4
Play Time
20 Minutes
High Score
79
Game Area
24" x 16"
Low Score
51
A World of Capybaras
It took me a moment to laugh at the wordplay with the game’s title and capybaras! Very clever and cute.
Gameplay is easy to understand with a very lightweight and breezy feeling. Coins are needed to add to the café, while it’s important to understand how to earn coins from customers.
The solo mode offers a nice challenge with the way adjacent market cards are discarded. Just enough extra to think about without being overwhelming in any way!
I loved flipping over cards to see the different items that might be found at the counter. So many lovely illustrations!
Regulars and Tables
Tea, coffee, and a variety of food categories make up a good portion of the cards. But that’s not all! Decor and other objects can be added for special bonuses, and regulars.
Multi-use cards mean that every card can be added or used as a customer with the chalkboard at the very bottom.
Standard customers pay for some of their favorites, yet don’t have every requirement met. They still pay coins!
Having everything will turn a customer into a regular. Victory points are helpful, yet it’s important to time the end of game trigger. Don’t get too many regulars too quickly!
All the Performers
Special guests provide additional scoring opportunities, and function sort of like overall goals. 5 of 10 are used with each play, so the variety is limited, but still creates a challenge.
This musically inclined capybara was looking for performers, and I delivered! A DJ and live music set the scene. Before long, there was an opening act to enjoy!
Just a lovely sort of ambiance. It was nice to appreciate the different drinks and foods, but those capybaras!
Each little scene brought the café to life a little bit more. I had a very cozy sort of time working through the puzzle.
Familiar Surroundings
Like the proper board game fan that I am, one play resulted in me stocking up a lounge with lots of games. A-ha! I knew the featured board game… Need to play it again soon!
The different kinds of decor were also nice to consider. Customers preferred a specific type between modern, retro, and rustic. And those added a little more to the scenery.
It took a little time to carefully think through the order of adding cards and meeting the customer requirements.
Some customers left slightly disappointed… But that was OK! I had a bunch of regulars and special guests. All good!
When Unofficial Solo Modes Work Out
I remember taking a look at this game a few times around its release, hopeful that it was just a typo that it didn’t include a solo mode. So I wrote it off, until I spotted a SGOYT post from someone who found out how to play it solo! It was lucky that I stopped in a game store while I was away, and I knew instantly that this was the right one to bring home with me.
Not every unofficial solo mode delivers a fun experience, often since the original designer isn’t involved in the development. But in this case, the rules are very simple and feel like they stay true to the core gameplay elements. The real test, at least for me, is whether I feel like I’m having fun and enjoying myself. Double check! Very happy I own this one!
The Best café
Gameplay wasn’t terribly difficult after a couple of plays, but I feel like this is a game designed to be cozy. Having a good chance of winning feels like a very capybara thing. Ha ha!
I was proud of this play when I had a lot of different tea varieties, plus a few snacks. And all the coffee!
A lot of duplicate cards became noticeable, although maybe I just wanted to see every type of café food possible. There were still interesting choices with the customer preferences.
This was a lot of fun! Although quite lightweight, it was just the sort of solo experience I hoped to find in the game.
Appeasing the Writer
Meeting the requirements of all 5 special guests was very tricky, and I might simply have that be a requirement for my victory conditions. Definitely more of a challenge!
This writer tripped me up for a moment when I thought he was only in need of all the coffee in the world… Wait! All that caffeine needed to be supplemented with cookie sugar.
Still got it right before the end. This was a happy capybara! And a messy one, but that comes with running a café.
Delightful! I didn’t expect some of the choices here, yet I also didn’t realize how much I needed capybaras in my life!
Session Overview
Play Number: 1-4
Solo Mode: Unofficial Solo Mode
Outcome: 62, 51, 79, 65 (1 Win & 3 Losses)
Success! It wasn’t hard to work out the strategies needed to reach the highest scoring tiers, although I wasn’t upset. This isn’t designed to be a punishing sort of challenge. Rather, it’s about smiling over hungry capybaras and making sure the café decor is in order. The multi-purpose cards worked out nicely, and I had plenty of choices to make during play! I’m glad I found out about this unofficial solo mode, and look forward to playing again in the future!
%
1 Play
Affordability
Price & Value
8
Functionality
Challenges & Mechanics
10
Originality
Design & Theme
7
Quality
Components & Rules
9
Reusability
Achievement & Enjoyment
7
Variability
Distinctness & Randomness
4
+ Pros (Positives)
- There is a wonderfully cozy and inviting vibe to the artwork that makes the play area feel very relaxing.
- Multi-purpose cards provide interesting decisions about adding features or serving customers for more coins.
- It takes very little effort to operate the solo mode, but the market discard element requires a little bit of thinking.
- Play time moves along very quickly with enough decisions to make it interesting, all with a familiar set of mechanics.
- Capybaras make the game stand out in a fun and quirky way, especially with all of the unique characters to see.
- Not all of the market cards are used during each play, adding a bit of variety and unpredictability around the choices.
– Cons (Negatives)
- The card variety is somewhat limited with a lot of duplicates and a fairly small number of special guest goals.
- Organizing the play area is left up to the player, but this can mean using a lot of play space to see every card’s artwork.
- Final scoring requires a lot of small sums that can take a little bit of time to calculate, especially with some cards.
- Some of the goals feel a little easier to complete than others, although this is a minor issue that helps with scoring.
Victory Conditions
Score 70+ Points & Attract All Special Guests
- Overall Goal Progress 67%
Goals and Milestones
Attract all 5 special guests in at least 1 game.
Score at least 70 points.
Score at least 80 points.
Continue the Conversation
What do you think of Café Baras? Have you been delighted by an official solo mode recently? I distinctly remember skipping over this one when it was announced and didn’t have a solo mode… Problem solved! This worked out nicely and was a very enjoyable experience. So glad I found a copy on my trip to Canada and got to hang out with some capybaras!
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