The Disney company was always built on fantasy. Walt Disney’s vision of Main Street USA was founded on his nostalgia for an idealized America that never truly existed. Despite the company’s leadership changing several times over the last hundred years, nothing has changed. They’ve rarely produced anything genuine that crystalizes a greater truth, which is ironic since Disney Villains Cursed Café is all about bad guys who can redeem themselves.
What can Disney fans expect from a visual novel that takes cues from VA-11 Hall-A? Is bartending inhumanly evil bad guys as fun as you’d think? Find out in Disney Villains Cursed Café review!
Disney Villains Cursed Café
Developer: Bloom Digital Media
Publisher: Disney
Platforms: Windows PC, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, Nintendo Switch (reviewed)
Release Date: March 27, 2025
Price: $14.99
Disney Villains Cursed Café is about you, the player, as a desperate millennial who’s hopelessly desperate for a job. The only job opening is at a creepy coffee shop and getting the job comes with some strings attached. While you’re given accommodations, you’re not sure who your manager is, and all responsibilities are on your shoulders.
A strange book, peppered with notes on it is endowed with power and functions as the establishment’s punch-clock. At the start of every day, the player character reads it, and the work begins, and the baddies show up, bringing their emotional baggage.
This opens a lot of questions because the first things that happen is the very grounded and real-world protagonist knows who all of the Disney villains are. The rules are unclear, but the implication is that these are fictional characters brought to our world.
Ursula, Jafar, Captain Hook, Queen Grimhilde, Maleficent, Gaston, and Cruella, are all regular patrons, with Magic Mirror functioning as a Siri-like assistant and Yzma as supplier. The villains have effectively failed, and the movies were events that actually happened.
The protagonist seemingly grew up watching the movies and some dialogue options allow them to geek out. I did my best to play as if I was in the situation, responding as indifferent and disaffected as possible. Interestingly, the game allows for this play style, and you can treat these villains mundanely.
The stories unfold in two ways: there are basic potions that require two ingredients which can help out a villain in a standard situation, and a story branching potion that requires three ingredients. Basic menu items are typically easy to figure out and getting it wrong can lead to some amusing results, but players can always take a do-over potion to try the day over again.
The story branching menu items are always character-specific and always come in two varieties: what the villain wants or what the villain needs. The character development for the villains is the player deciding on enabling their worst characteristics or giving them something they didn’t know they needed.
Giving a villain a potion that forces them to grow generally has no downsides and gives them an arc. The premise casts the bad guys in a weird modern day setting and they try to get back at what they’re good at in amusing ways. Seeing Maleficent turn her staff into a selfie-stick and try to become a TikTok influencer is genuinely funny, especially since she’s always acts like she did in her movie.
It’s too bad that the production values are pathetic. The Disney empire was built on a foundation of amazing animation and performance. Sady, the art in Disney Villains Cursed Café is static and characters have only a few poses. This game desperately needed the characters to be fully animated and voiced.
The lack of voices and production value is felt most with Gaston. He’s consistently hilarious; like an evil Johnny Bravo and if he was fully animated, the game would feel less like a fanfic project. The stories in Disney Villains Cursed Café are pretty funny if you’re familiar with the characters.
Most older people will know them, but my kids had no emotional connection to anything in this game. Animation and voice acting would’ve helped. The gameplay is paper thin and falls into a strict formula that lessens the impact of the story and emphasizes the game’s seams.
Apart from helping Jafar become a crypto bro and Ursula become a reality talent show star, there’s a driving mystery holding everything together. The potion mixing doesn’t factor into it, but it is enough to keep players guessing where the story goes. Admittedly, it isn’t hard to figure out the twist, but it’s something.
If you ever though VA-11 Hall-A needed to be more Disney-like, then Disney Villains Cursed Café will be what you’re looking for. The stories and dialogue got laughs out of me, an ardent Disney critic and naysayer, though it would have been cool if the characters were fully animated and voiced. It may be Disney fanfic, but it held my interest all the way to the end.
Disney Villains Cursed Café was reviewed on Nintendo Switch using a code provided by Disney. You can find additional information about Niche Gamer’s review/ethics policy here. Disney Villains Cursed Café is now available for PC (via Steam), Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X|S, and PlayStation 5.
