Ever since Pax East 2026, there’s a game that has been on my radar. One that I have been following closely and both my partner and I have been looking forward to. As a fan of visual novels and especially dating sims, I love sinking my teeth into a game that allows me to meet a variety of interesting characters with their own complexities and stories. High Times is one of those games. If you’ve been following the site and our YouTube channel, you may have been able to guess it. Between interviews with some of the team and our preview coverage, GSC has been keeping a close eye on High Times.
Now, after being just a bit patient without having to even eat a mood enhancing donut, we finally got to sink our teeth into the game.
Premise
The premise at first glance is pretty simple. You work at a donut shop but it isn’t your average Dunkin Donuts, Tim Horton’s, or insert any other donut shop here. Instead, these donuts are mood enhancing donuts. Yes, people come to the Hotbox in order to have their mood altered. We are the mood confectioner making sure our customers are safely enjoying our donuts and also getting to know their stories. But remember, this is a dating sim, so there’s more to it than that. While we have a variety of regulars that come in, six of them have romance options. Your choices in speaking with them, the donuts you sell them, and the emotions you evoke in them all lead to whether or not your relationship is rekindled or friendzoned.
On top of being found by all of your exes, the owner of the shop has also up and left leaving you in charge of the place. He’s also for some reason removed all of the ingredients from the shop with the exception of the most basic items. So as you navigate complicated relationships, you’ll also be navigating shop management and finances. Good luck!
Gameplay
The very basic core of game play is a customer comes in, you listen to them, and you sell them a donut to match their mood request. This is the bit of the game that can get the most repetitive although it is also relaxing. Choose the donut shape, glaze, filling, drizzle, and toppings to serve. You’ll do this for a few customers each night while also getting to learn a bit more about them. Some of them will be quicker to open up compared to others. The more they open up the easier it felt to achieve an ending with them overall.
In High Times, getting customers to your cafe is about serving good donuts but also attracting the customers. Not with your self per say, but with how you decorate the cafe. This is also meant to help certain characters appear more although it does seem to not always work as good as one would like. You can mix and match a variety of decor, some ranging from anime inspired to occult themes. Decorating the Hotbox is one of the fun pieces of the game. Give it your own flair as you like or focus on the customers, completely up to you.
Once the customers are there, be sure to feed them the donuts they are looking for. While the game does come with a variety of recipes, there isn’t always a recipe you need to satisfy the customer. In fact, there are times where freestyling will work a lot better. However, if you are following a recipe be sure that any images or stenciling are covered to the best of your ability. In times when I colored a bit too far outside of the lines the customer was quick to say I was off my game. I’m not off my game I’m just taking creative liberties!
Beyond your donuts you also choose conversational choices with the clients. This can help a customer be someone who gives you second chances or frequents your shop. Some choices will also impact other characters such as some of your choices with Zone impacting your relationship with her little sister MJ. Your choices will also impact how it goes with the romance characters. Will you be rejected by them? End up in the friendzone? Or can you make love happen again? Or if you’re romancing your best friend, love for the first time (and maybe the last time).
After the shop is closed you’ll be able to check your social media, shop on Hamazon, and decorate the cafe. Be sure not to go too broke shopping too much. Although early in the game you will need to shop on Hamazon pretty frequently to get new ingredients for the shop. Be sure to get to new ingredients for your cafe as well as different decor. You’ll also be answering text messages during this time for the people who show up to the cafe. The phone is your portal to the world outside of your shop so be sure to check it often, or really, each night.
Art & Music
High Times has a very vibrant art style. The colors pop off of the screen wonderfully and the world is vivid, even if your cafe decor is pretty dark. The character sprites are also very vibrant and give the characters a lot of personality. With the exception of our dear Mood Confectioner that is. With our main character being one that we can customize, there’s definitely a limitation on the sprites we see for our own reactions. Thankfully, that isn’t where the focus of the art should be.
Of course, the moments that the art really pops is when you get the special scenes of characters. Instead of just seeing the Hotbox as you’ve designed it, you’ll see the characters in a variety of scenes. Some of these feel like reading comic books right off the page and others may be a full screen image. These scenes will typically have some sort of movement and flow to them. They typically are also telling of some pivotal moment in the relationship growth of the characters.
There are also quite a few musical tracks in High Times. The game will come with some base tracks and others can be unlocked through purchasing them through Hamazon. Each of the tracks in the Hamazon menu seemingly correspond with some of your favorite clients. The romanceable characters have themes and you can purchase them to listen to as you like. At least, you can choose to play them after the work day in the jukebox section of the phone menu.
References for Days
One of the best parts of High Times is also noticing all the references to pop culture. It’s also a bit telling of who the developers are as some are very anime focused, some others may feel a little dated to younger players. For example, Ainsley is a basically a walking Avril Lavigne clone. Everything from her attire to how she speaks, the lyrics are unmistakable.
Anime fans will probably see the similarities between Jovan’s and Jojo’s. Brightly colored, overly stylized, and ridiculous names are abound in this parody. Jovan’s Strange Travels is actually one that pops up quite a bit so be sure to be caught up on your Jojo lore if you want to catch lots of silly yet fun references.
There’s a few other small ones as well. For example, instead of Reddit, we have Breadit and some of your customers spend way too much time on there. Facebook is Facenook, Amazon is Hamazon, instead of Tinder we have Tender. There are lots of references to find and I’m almost sure after my 30+ hours, I still haven’t found them all. Even if I have, there may be some that I also just didn’t quite understand.
So many references in the game that I’m probably missing some. There’s also sexual innuendos that appear in the game as well. Most of these come in the form of the name of the donuts. A cream pie, a golden shower, blue balls, and more grace the menu. These are mixed in with more common names of donuts such as Boston Creme and Eclair.
Some of the references are also more about how the characters are quite open sexually and romantically. From chatter about their relationships to the kinks they like in bed, there is a lot of chatter but not in an overly done way. Thankfully, even when the characters don’t fully understand something, their reactions are all in an open, accepting, understanding way. This varies from those who appear to be the most vanilla of vanilla and all the way to murder fantasies.
The openness isn’t for shock value either, at least not always. Some of it is just seeing how well you get to know the characters. For example, some of the characters won’t reveal their age or interests (or sometimes lack of) until you get to know them a bit. Sometimes though, it isn’t that deep and just for a good laugh at an awkward moment. Or a way of breaking some of the awkwardness, you’ll see what I mean when you play.
Game Length
At times the game feels a bit long, it may be because the characters you are seeing are not the favorite characters you want to see. If you feel this happening more often than not, you can definitely work on some of the decorations you have within your cafe. Of course, just because the likelihood is higher, doesn’t mean they’ll appear as often as you like. Yes, I’m looking at you Harry Yen, with your 5X modifier and still making me wait. Rude. How was I to know your vacation would last for the better part of a year?
Either way, it’s also worth noting that each character has a variety of endings. So you’ll want to spend more time trying to get the variety of endings. Once you complete an ending for a romance character, you’ll get the chance to do a rewind on their story. For example, in the screenshot below, Connor was the first character I completed an ending with. Thankfully these two prove that guys and girls can in fact be just friends.
Worth noting though, and perhaps it was my choices, or my donuts that I served him, but it took a little over 21 hours to get an ending with Connor. So be sure to be patient. For me, there were still five more to go, one of which I was particularly gunning for. Learn from me, be ready to invest time in the characters that catch your eye. Perhaps just don’t try to power through the game all day each day.
Each character has different endings but just because their story has ended doesn’t mean they stop showing up. So characters with completed stories may still appear meaning you won’t only be focusing on characters who you are still working towards an ending with. Many characters have post-ending scenes causing them to still appear. There’s also plenty of reason for them to keep stopping by the Hotbox or for you to get in touch with them. Clearly these customers end up becoming your friends. Perhaps our main character should get out more.
Regardless of our character’s life outside of the hotbox, each of the characters you meet have a pretty satisfying if not silly story arc. So while the game length may feel long, the stories will resonate with players keeping the game rather enjoyable. Even if some of those feelings are being let down by friends or wondering why the hell there is a duck enjoying a musical performance at a donut shop.
Bugs
The game plays very smoothly, specifically on Steam, but there are a few bugs that still appear throughout the game. Thankfully, none of them are game breaking. There were two that came up somewhat often and were fairly noticeable. The first was when trying to look at Tender, especially early on, there would be times when I couldn’t see the full progress of my relationship arcs. Something resembling a string of code would appear instead of showing the relationship progress. Notably, this seemed to happen more early in game than later in game.
The other bug that happened was the voice acting suddenly disappearing. This happened primarily with Billie, one of the characters, but occasionally some of the voice work wouldn’t match the text on screen as well. Billie by far had the most lines missing, but again, not enough to break the game. Billie is quite a fun character so it’s a shame to see her be so silent at times.
The smaller nit picky things come with the text messages and occasional text boxes. At times there are spelling errors or grammar pieces that seem to be a bit off. The grammar wouldn’t normally be an issue, except that it was for characters that usually speak pretty well and clearly. It wasn’t characters that were particularly over the top or purposely capitalized random letters in their speaking. Yes, we’re talking about you “douchebag” who randomly capitalizes the middle of words… but that’s just his flair.
Final Thoughts
Overall, High Times was exactly what I thought I’d be getting into, although probably at a longer length than I expected. Of course, this could have been based on the donuts I served or perhaps I made some of the wrong choices, but it definitely took a bit before I got to the romance ending I was looking for. It feels as though the right way to play is not to try and power through, but to enjoy the journey just a bit at a time. This may have also helped the financial management aspect feel stronger but once I was safely within the $100 range, money never became an issue.
The joy in High Times comes from the story arcs and the references, even when the donut creation making becomes a bit repetitive. Sure, by day 125, I was feeling a bit over creating donuts and wished there was a way to just select the recipes and have it be automatically made. Of course, that isn’t the fault of the game, but probably some of my choices, and my marathon game play sessions that lasted for quite a few hours. High Times is enjoyed when you don’t over indulge but instead reward yourself with this sweet treat.
High Times releases July 23, 2026 on Steam, Itch, Epic Game Store, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S.
High Times was reviewed on Steam. Gamer Social Club would like to thank Yangyang Mobile and Not a Shark for the review code.
