Coming from The Pokémon Company itself, Pokémon Café Mix is the latest puzzle game to hit Android and iOS devices as well as the Nintendo Switch. Pokémon Café Mix stands as one of the top trending games on Google Play and has quickly grabbed the #5 spot of the puzzle category on the App Store. The game may very well owe its explosive popularity to the franchise that everyone knows but its fresh take on the puzzle genre with its unique blend of challenge and excitement makes it a Pokémon game that everyone can easily pick up and enjoy.
Pokémon Café Mix sets you off on a different adventure as you start your very own café that caters exclusively to Pokémon. Instead of the usual match-3 style puzzle, you can link as many Pokémon icons as you can to prepare the various dishes and drinks ordered by guest Pokémon. As you continue to serve scrumptious treats to guests, old and new, you raise your friendship level with them and at some point, they will decide to help you out in your Pokémon Café. As you continue to serve customers and recruit more Pokémon, you will be able to expand your Café further and concoct new treats and delicacies as well as accommodate new Pokémon customers.
Pokémon Café Mix comes with simple enough game mechanics that players of all ages can pick up within a minute or two. All you need to do is to drag one Pokémon icon to similar ones and earn points based on the number of icons you successfully link. There are various side mechanics to make each puzzle more challenging but each Pokémon you have recruited has its own unique special ability to help you clear obstacles within the puzzles. There are also tons of unique power-ups you can use while solving puzzles but beyond all the helpful powers at your disposal, patience and strategy plays a very vital role.
Every new feature or mechanic in Pokémon Café Mix comes with a quick tutorial session you can easily follow. Pokémon Café Mix is very easy to learn but considerably hard to master. If you find yourself stuck in a particular order or simply looking for more efficient ways to make progress and expand your café, then check out our Pokémon Café Mix beginner’s guide! Our detailed guide comes with plenty of tips and strategies to help you beat every puzzle in the game!
1. Take As Much Time As You Need
The way to make progress in Pokémon Café Mix is by tending to orders of your Pokémon customers. As you prepare the treats and delicacies that each customer requests, you engage in solving unique puzzles to get the job done. There are practically no limits as to how many orders you can complete consecutively but if you fail to get the order right or solve the puzzle, then you will lose a heart.
The puzzle challenges in Pokémon Café Mix progress in difficulty over time. Initially, you will be able to make through the early levels without much patience or even strategy in mind. To be honest, it can be a fun experience to swirl those Pokémon icons around and just hope to link as many similar faces as possible to score big. While earning points do typically form part of the objectives you need to meet to clear a level, there will be more to it than just that especially at the latter puzzle challenges.
With move limitations being a constant part of every puzzle challenge, every bit of action you do should follow careful planning and execution. The good thing is that there are no time limits within which you must complete each puzzle. As soon as you touch anything, there is a countdown timer that you need to be mindful of as the as links or abilities will activate when the countdown ends. As you hold to link more Pokémon icons together or continue to hold down on an ability or power-up as you locate the best spot to activate them, you can choose to release their effect if you are ready even if the timer has not yet run out.
To ensure that each move you make is the best possible given the various scenarios and conditions, take a good look at the puzzle before you and try to mentally assimilate what the next move’s impact on it will be. There are actually a lot of factors to consider, with new ones that add up as you make progress and new elements are introduced in latter puzzle challenges.
For starters, you would want to make a rough count or estimate of the Pokémon icons on the level, particularly similar ones as you would want to link the most dominant one to score big and charge up your Pokémon helper’s special ability. Although your moves will not entirely be made of choosing to link the most number of Pokémon icons within each level, it will help you a great deal to be able to pick this skill up early on.
Linked Pokémon icons burst like bubbles when triggered and whenever they do, obstacles within their immediate vicinity can be damaged and destroyed. As eliminating these obstacles often form part of your objectives as well, you will need to always plan on executing some link combos that not just earn you points, but also help you in breaking down some blocks.
In essence, the rationale behind having to take as much time as you need goes well beyond just planning which move to make and how to go about it. Execution should likewise be planned and in most cases, should be done with care. A lot of the important puzzle pieces you need to eliminate are often strategically situated and shaking everything within the puzzle erratically will move them out of place.
While it can happen that some important items will be moved to a better location, an efficient strategy calls for non-reliance to luck or chance. As such, in addition to exercising patience and planning ahead, execute your planned moves as slow and steady as you can as well.
2. Focus On The Win Conditions
It all sounds pretty basic for everyone, but Pokémon Café Mix’ puzzles are designed to captivate you to the fullest with colorful Pokémon icons within the puzzle in that you can easily get distracted away from the mission objectives. Before you make a move, and from time to time as well, be sure to take note and keep track of the Order and the objectives you need to meet to complete. It will be shown at the start of the challenge and will be posted at the left side of your screen once the level starts.
Be sure to tap on each other objective to see ways on how you can eliminate them. Some icons can be affected by link combinations next to it as well as using Pokémon skills or megaphones on them while some can only be extinguished using the latter two.
For the most part, reaching a certain amount of score is the easiest part of the challenge as you will continue to link those Pokémon icons at every opportunity and will earn points even if you do not intend to do so. As such, your priority ought to be centered around any of the other objectives first. Keep in mind as well that you should avoid initiating reckless combination links that displace other targets or make it more challenging for you to tend to them later.
What you would want is to eliminate some of the target objects but at the same time prepare the puzzle to make the next move equally productive as well. With Pokémon skills and megaphones having very limited reach, you should always try your best to keep the target ingredient icons close to one another. It can be a challenge to predict how the icons will roll down after your link combo pops but after some practice, you will be able to more or less have an idea how the remaining icons will sort themselves out.
3. Choose The Right Pokémon As Leader
Fans of the Pokémon franchise, especially the plethora of Pokémon games, naturally has their favorite Pokémon. As much as you can stick with 1 Pokémon to lead your team of helpers in preparing orders, each Pokémon in your roster has their own unique talent that makes them more efficient in particular puzzles.
To make it even easier for you to figure each one’s efficiency out, Pokémon that are a good fit to tend to the current order you need to serve is highlighted prior to starting the puzzle. More so, you can simply tap on one of the Pokémon highlighted as a good fit and if you have them, they will automatically be set as the team leader, which means their special skill will be available for you to utilize within the level.
For best results, you should try your best to have a good idea of how each Pokémon’s special skill works as you will constantly be prepping the puzzle in such a way that the Pokémon’s skill is utilized to its maximum effect every activation. You will easily earn Pokémon helpers that have abilities to clear icons and gimmicks in one direction while other Pokémon can clear surrounding icons and gimmicks with some having additional effects as well.
After you have recruited a Pokémon, serving similar Pokémon will raise your friendship with them and after reaching certain milestones, their star level will rank up, improving the one aspect of their quality. To know more, simply tap on the info button at the upper right side of the Pokémon’s window. You may want to take note of certain details like how many links it would take to activate their skill and how much time you have before the skill releases after you hold the skill icon.
There are various details to take note of as well like if they provide extra moves, better score multipliers, how often they can generate megaphones and how many megaphones appear per set of links made. You will be able to see the next level’s perks and keep in mind that each Pokémon will have different perks and perk boosts as they rank up their star level.
4. Consume Power-Ups Wisely
On top of your Pokémon helper’s special skill and the megaphones you can generate after some successful links, there are additional power-ups you have at your disposal to aid you in puzzles that are more challenging than the usual. These power-ups are very limited but can be earned following completion of certain challenges and can be earned through completing levels as well. Additional ones may also be purchased using golden acorns.
Before you click on the start button to engage an order, there are 3 power-ups you can choose to activate and each one has highly visible numbers on them to indicate how many of each item you still have in stock. You can choose to activate all 3 items at once but given their expensive nature, you may want to exercise utmost caution in expending them. The first item will grant you your Pokémon helper’s special skill at the start of the puzzle. The latter 2 will generate megaphones at the start of the level as well either pointed horizontally or vertically.
Pokémon Café Mix is designed in such a way that puzzles will not take you a lot of attempts to conquer each one. At the very least, you have 5 attempts to solve the puzzle and when you run out of lives, waiting for 30 minutes to replenish one life is not that hard. If you fail to complete a puzzle, then that should not be enough to push you to use power-ups on your second go. Instead, you should consider a different approach first and hold off on using special items until you are certain that you cannot win the round without extra help.
Beyond the power-ups that can be activated before the round starts, there are also other power-ups you can use within the stage. Once the level starts, you can see several icons lined up at the right side of the screen. Like the ones you can activate before the round, these items are limited as well so you should be a little thrifty when spending them. If you run out of any of these boosts, you can instantly purchase more using golden acorns but even the cheapest one can be very expensive so you should keep that in mind before choosing to activate any of these items.
5. Push For Milestones To Attract New Pokémon
The primary determinant of your progress in Pokémon Café Mix can be attributed to how your café looks. It actually looks pretty decent right from the start but bare, as far as decorations go. New decorations or menu items, however, will be added every 5 puzzles you beat so expect some new designs after completing order #6, 11, 16, and so on.
Beyond new decorations, having new designs installed attracts a new Pokémon to your café. It may not necessarily mean that the succeeding orders will cater exclusively to the new customer as you will need to continue serving all your Pokémon customers, old and new. In any case, each new order is an opportunity to strengthen your friendship with a Pokémon so it just means that you will have more customers to cycle through as you reach new milestones. You can actually see the upcoming upgrades by clicking on the “Orders Left” icon at the lower right side of the main screen.
Relative to this, there are also gifts you can earn after completing every 10 puzzles. At the upper right of the main screen, you can take note of how close you are to achieving this and it will be even more noticeable if rewards are ready to be claimed.
6. Complete Challenges For Extra Rewards
Beyond the outright golden acorns you earn from every level completed and the additional bonuses you receive from accomplishing order puzzle milestones, Pokémon Café Mix offers café challenges daily that can earn you extra rewards. On the main screen, you can tap on the challenge icon at the upper left side to view 6 objectives divided between two challenge cards. You can accomplish these feats in whatever order you like but completing all 3 objectives within the same challenge card earns you huge amounts of golden acorns.
Overall, these objectives are relatively easy to accomplish considering that each one goes in line with the typical activities and achievements you meet if you regularly play the game. For best results, take a peek into these challenge cards as soon as you log in on the game and let the objectives serve as your guide towards making effort to achieve them as you solve some puzzles. Keep in mind that the expensive power-ups you can use within the puzzle challenges can be earned for free by completing these objectives.
7. Advanced Strategies That Beginners Can Use
Pokémon Café Mix may be very different from the more common match-3 puzzle games but it certainly holds loose similarities that make strategies on the latter be applicable to the puzzles in the game. One of these basic strategies is to hold off on the icon with most number of duplicates as you eliminate other icons to further shoot up its numbers in preparation for a more explosive link combo.
For instance, you have 8 Charmander icons, 7 Snubbull icons, and another 7 Munchlax icons. Instead of choosing to link Charmander icons first, you can instead go for either of the remaining icons and hope that more Charmander icons will replace the ones that you popped. Although we mentioned earlier that scoring points ought to be the least of your worries as far as solving puzzles is concerned, securing a higher link combo will also make it easier to get into harder to reach areas in case you need to pop a gimmick there.
Another strategy that advanced player typically employ is waiting for the best time to activate skills and megaphones. What you would mostly be itching to do once you see either one is to activate them and eliminate the gimmicks relative to your goals and with this, you are not likely to see even 2 skills or megaphones within the puzzle at one time.
By patiently holding off on the activation of megaphones and Pokémon skills, you can more easily set them up in such a way that using 2 consecutively will bear better results that activating one and everything else gets jumbled as you wait for the next one to arrive. Note as well that skills can also activate megaphones if the latter gets caught within the skill’s range, opening up more advanced strategies as well.
8. Be Careful When Spending Golden Acorns And Quitting
Golden acorns serve as the only currency in Pokémon Café Mix and you can earn 50 from solving each puzzle + 5 for every turn left after you complete the order. Though there are additional ways to earn golden acorns, these numbers alone should be enough to tell you just how challenging it can be to earn and save them. In addition to being able to use golden acorns to purchase power-ups, however, you can spend them to purchase extra turns on a puzzle that you have failed to complete.
Again, we suggest that you should try multiple times to solve a puzzle before resorting to power-ups or any sort of help, and with this, you should also only consider spending golden acorns if you cannot accomplish an order after multiple tries. Between power-ups and spending 900 golden acorns for an extra 3 turns, though, the latter one is cheaper. Just make sure that when you opt to pay for it, you are sure enough that the golden acorns you spent will ensure your victory.
Relative to this, if you choose to quit within the order stage if you feel like you will not make it all the way through, or if you suddenly realize that you need a different Pokémon, keep in mind that doing so will reduce your life by 1, just like failing to accomplish an order.
That is all we have for you as far as our Pokémon Café Mix tips and strategies are concerned. We hope that the tips and tricks we shared with you will help you get through all 100 orders in the game. We can certainly expect more levels, Pokémon, and features to be added in the game through future updates but we are confident that learning all the basics we mentioned in this guide should suffice to help you beat future challenges. If you have played Pokémon Café Mix extensively enough and have learned something we have not shared in this article, be sure to tell us about it and drop us a note in the comments!