That’s right, folks! My Retro Rewind series has been resurrected! I’ve noticed that tons of games from yesteryear have been making their way onto Steam in droves for quite a while now. I decided to use that as an excuse to revive the Retro Rewind series by discussing any of those older games I can get my hands on. I thought I’d ease myself back into the Retro Rewind groove by starting with a particularly “chill” game, namely Papa’s Freezeria Deluxe. Grab your favorite ice cream sundae and get comfortable as I turn back the clock and speed up the blenders.

According to my research, Papa’s Freezeria Deluxe and its “sibling” (for lack of a better word), Papa’s Pizzeria Deluxe, both started out as free browser-based games from the early 2010s. The “deluxe” editions of both games are remastered versions made by the original developers, Flipline Studios, that have been made available on Steam for $5.99 each. In Papa’s Freezeria, you get hired at an ice cream sundae shop on Calypso Island that’s owned by the titular “Papa” Louie. Immediately after you’re hired, Louie hurriedly departs on his yacht and leaves you to run the shop entirely by yourself.

So, you’ve essentially been thrown into the thick of things, and you’re in for a lot of on-the-job training. You start by taking a customer’s order, during which they’ll tell you the following: what size sundae they want, how thoroughly blended they want it, what they want their sundae to contain, and any toppings they want added as the finishing touches. Each order is written on an order card. Order cards, when read from the bottom up, will remind you of everything each customer wants, organized by the usual sundae assembly process. Having these reminders close by is handy in my experience.

You start by selecting the appropriate size sundae cup each customer wants, then filling the cup with vanilla ice cream as a base. For most steps of this process, you’ll have to click a button when a moving arrow is as close to the center of a bar as possible to add appropriate amounts of ice cream and fillings. The more accurately you do that, the higher your performance rating will be. Once you’ve added the ice cream and fillings, you’ll then take the sundae to the blenders for the next step of the usual process.

You’ll have to leave each sundae in the blending station until the meter on the blender matches each customer’s order card. The blending stage usually takes quite a while, though you can eventually purchase buttons that speed up each of your four available blenders when you hold left-click on them. Then comes the final stage, where you’ll add any toppings the customer wants. Toppings include various flavors of whipped cream and syrup, different kinds of sprinkles, and things like fruits and cookies. This is where you “put the cherry on top” in the most literal sense.

Then you click and drag the customer’s order card onto the finished sundae to serve it. Your performance will be graded on the following: How quickly you served each customer’s order, how close you were to adding the perfect amounts of ice cream and fillings, how close you were to blending the sundae exactly how the customer wanted it, and how neatly you added all their requested toppings. If you didn’t quite get everything totally right — if you spilled any whipped cream or sprinkles during the topping stage, for example — these ratings will reflect those mistakes accordingly.

As you probably expect, you want to get all four of these ratings as close to 100% as consistently as possible. The better your performance, the higher your customer satisfaction ratings will be. In turn, the more satisfied your customers are, the more money they’ll give you as a tip. Your income from tips, as well as the paycheck you earn every few in-game days, can then be spent on upgrades for your shop and new clothes for your character. Doing your job well each day will also increase your overall performance rank, which proportionally raises your weekly pay.

You also earn tickets by doing your job well. You’ll have the option of spending these tickets after the shop closes each day to play one of a variety of minigames. Doing well at these minigames can unlock cosmetics, like different flooring options for your shop and new clothes for your character. This is handy for helping you unlock cosmetics you’d otherwise have to buy in the in-game shop. Only one minigame is available on any given day, but you can play it as many times as you want until you run out of tickets, or skip playing it entirely.

My only concern about recommending Papa’s Freezeria Deluxe is that its entirely mouse-controlled gameplay could present accessibility issues for some players. If you have any degree of difficulty making precise mouse movements, then you’ll probably run into trouble playing Papa’s Freezeria Deluxe. This includes left- or right-clicking at a particular instant, or clicking and holding a mouse button for any length of time. As far as I can tell, gamepads aren’t supported, and the control scheme probably wouldn’t work well on something like a Steam Deck. Outside of those concerns, Papa’s Freezeria Deluxe is a “cool” way to spend $6 and get your money’s worth several times over.

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