Finally, a good remake.

This game goes nasty for a good 10 hours, but after that the swirling of the yogurt starts to make you question why you're even alive on this planet.

After about my 406th customer, I turned it off and got a job.

tbh i still enjoy the papa's games (i have a few on my phone) and while i know there are ways to play old flash games it was nice to just simply purchase a game and have it on my computer. plus it has the extra features of the newer games that the original freezeria doesn't have. it's definitely one of those games that ill play a lot in multiple sessions and then put it off for a while, but thats simply the way i play open-ended games like these. its real easy to get into the rhythm of things and it's a lot of fun to see how quickly you can get an order done while also striving for 100% perfection. obviously a lot of buyers are people who played the original games but i do think its fun on its own without the nostalgia factor :D

Papa's Freezeria Deluxe, an otherwise charming game about managing a frozen treat shop, descended into sheer madness during my playthrough. While the core gameplay is centered around crafting delightful ice cream sundaes for customers, my experience took an unexpected turn.

Firstly, an enraged customer, apparently unsatisfied with her order, issued a rather extreme threat. She pledged to hunt down an unfortunate employee who had the audacity to serve her an "Insta Purple Death Goo Supreme Surprise Sundae" without receiving an adequate tip. It's safe to say this customer's anger management issues are far from resolved, and her melodramatic outburst cast a dark shadow over my time in the ice cream parlor.

As if that weren't enough, things spiraled out of control when another employee, going by the name of "Rivers Cuomo," went on a bizarre rampage. Within a mere seven minutes of the shop's grand opening, this deranged worker decided to combine every ingredient in the shop into a single milkshake intended for an innocent skater woman. This act of culinary terrorism resulted in the immediate shutdown of Weezer's Freezeria, and Rivers Cuomo is now facing a potential prison sentence that rivals the lifespan of a bristlecone pine tree.

Lastly, among the chaos and confusion, a "Venom poster" made an appearance. While I can only assume this was an attempt to add some semblance of normalcy to the situation, it felt entirely out of place and did little to mitigate the mayhem unfolding in the shop.

In the end, Papa's Freezeria Deluxe left me with more questions than answers. The gameplay itself, when not overshadowed by threats and criminal antics, is quite enjoyable, but the absurdity of my experience cannot be ignored. For those seeking a peaceful ice cream parlor management simulation, I would suggest looking elsewhere. This game is a prime example of how things can quickly go awry when customers and employees alike lose their grip on reality.

Score: 3/10

You push the button. Ice cream is dispensed. It's the same animation you've seen play over two-hundred times in the last ten hours, the color its only deviation from the first time to the last time.

This game is not a nostalgic dream; make no mistake, Papa's Freezeria is a dive into a nightmare hellscape that serves as a glimpse into a capitalistic void.

As the player you work under the titular Papa; a man with a friendly enough appearance, goofy and innocent in nature, but he is unmistakably the villain of the title. He is an emperor playing the fool, the head of an empire that exploits minimum wage workers whilst he charades as a working class citizen himself under the guise of a chef's hat and coat. He is not your friend. It's as soon as he hires you he leaves to go on a cruise with his undoubtedly vast fortune before even bothering to train you to do your job. You're left with an empty shop, hardly any ingredients, and no direction.

You proceed to work; far beyond what anyone should be expected to work. Seven days a week, holidays, from sun up to sundown. You are spared no breaks as an endless trickle of customers waltz through the door and scream their orders at you. This is your only human interaction on the daily; where not you as an individual but rather the quality of your work is evaluated by people who determine your worth through arbitrary means and dictate the amount they tip solely off of these metrics alone. They are a cruel people, often making abstract remarks such as "the center cherry was slightly too far to the left" and docking the difference from the amount of pocket change they toss at you as a result.

And with this money? You're expected - borderline required - to reinvest in the business. You have to buy the furniture and your own uniforms from the hard-earned cash in your tip jar. After all, where else? This is the only place you spend your every waking hour in, day after day. You slave away for a full year straight in this way until Papa's return; and your reward?

Nothing. Papa becomes a customer who tips you just as poorly as any other. You will not be reimbursed for the fortune you poured into the business. You will not be compensated for your extended hardships. Though the name of the Freezeria is Papa's, its your essence that serves as oil for the machine. This is your life now.

But I like the jingle it makes when you get the money so I enjoyed my time honestly.

Papa's Freezeria provides the experience of a retail wage slave job from the comfort of you own home, minus the mental abuse you'd suffer from the customers and your coworkers alike. You'll spend the first hour or two learning the ropes, you'll get a few hours out of chasing stickers, and then you'll slowly realize the gameplay loop (7 customers a day! closers on a set loop! one amigo orders the special! [two with the board]) hasn't changed from maybe the third in game week so you largely go through the motions until you get full completion or quit. As someone who's currently unemployed, it was a fun enough time waster that scratched an itch and now I'm done with it probably forever.

Admittedly I initially picked this up purely for nostalgic value and also just to thank the devs for being a part of my childhood but oh my GOD this game is still fun and addicting as hell.

The story is extremely simple, but that's all it needs to be to set up the gameplay which is originally from a Flash game so of course that concept is also fairly simple.

That said, that makes the gameplay super fun to go through over and over again for both a good casual 15 minutes or an endurance round. I once stayed up all night playing this darn game. I finally get to relive my days of being a computer lab GOD and I am here for it. This game was made to be played over and over again and it shows.

Another cool thing is that this version of Freezeria comes with achievements and a super robust character creator! I've heard people say it's one of the better charactor creation menus they've seen in a while and I agree! Mii Channel be DAMNED! (Also bonus points for saying body type and not gender, we love u woke kings Matt and Tony).

I hadn't really touched the Gameria series since Scooperia, so I wasn't exactly sure what all was new for the Deluxe version which was definitely nice to see in game. I liked the free-play mode where I sat with a bunch of my friends as we concocted the most heinous combination of ingredients for some poor soul forced to consume. Or, for an extra bit of challenge, you could try and make an order that a regular customer has made to get them to show up. The fact that the game remembers each and every order a customer makes is insane.

This leads into one of my favorite parts of these games and that's how much they give detail to the characters. These aren't just randomly generated orders from a generic set of NPCs that repeat over and over, there is a whole roster of customers with their own unique orders, appearance, and lore. Seriously. Just look up the Flipline Wiki. The cult fanbase also has forums where you can find fan-art, fanfiction, and FREAKING RP. (Me personally, I headcanon Cooper as a big cis ally FIGHT ME.)

That's what makes the Gamerias so comforting in my opinion. It really makes me feel like I'm working at a local restaurant where familiar faces come in all the time and they seem like friends, even if you don't actually know them that well.

I do have a few criticisms about the gameplay. Maybe it's because I'm such an epic gamer girl (or this game is meant for actual children), but I found the game to maybe be too easy for me, especially once I got all the shop upgrades. As long as you don't be a doofus and take or serve an order right as another sundae is about finished blending, and your hand-eye coordination and multitasking abilities are fairly decent, then you won't have any trouble acing this game. Achievements offer some unique challenges for you to try and complete, but most of them are unlocked through playing the game as normal anyways. Also I somewhat share Poofesure's disappointment in not being able to make gravity-defying creations in this version but I suppose it can't be helped considering it's on a new engine and the fun of the game is supposed to come from, well, actually trying to get the orders right. Not gonna take points off for that.

Music is also extremely simple, pretty much consisting of a few simple tracks that play through over and over. Not annoying though unless you actively pay attention to it. I imagine they're not exactly planning on pulling out the big bucks over at Flipline Studios for an award-winning soundtrack either lol.

Also the game is weirdly demanding graphics-wise? I have my graphics settings down to medium and even that has some lag every now and then. I didn't think I would encounter this type of problem.

Still definitely worth the 5 USD I paid for. The infinite replay value and the amount of side content you can work towards easily justifies its price tag and helps make up for any flaws this game has. Fun for the whole family or for just easy playing!