High Times Cooking-Dating Sim Launches July 23 on Switch, Switch 2, PS5, Xbox
Filipino indie studio Yangyang Mobile has released High Times – Dating/Cooking Sim, sending its mood-altering donuts to Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and PC simultaneously. The narrative cafe-management title launched on July 23, and a fresh trailer is now doing the rounds to mark the occasion.
The Manila-based developer celebrated the release of the “highly anticipated narrative cooking and dating simulator” as it went live across all five platforms at once, according to the studio’s official press materials. It’s a rare same-day, cross-platform launch for a game of this scale from a small independent team.
Donut Therapy Turns Pastries Into Emotional First Aid
Featuring a hand-drawn comic-book art style, the game puts players in the shoes of a customizable protagonist managing a quirky, high-stakes cafe where the food prepared can directly alter customers’ emotions, moods and desires. The developer has branded the core loop “Donut Therapy,” in which players pick ingredients at precise moments to brew up treats aimed at specific feelings.
The idea isn’t just about making a snack — by carefully selecting ingredients at the proper moment, players can turn a simple donut into a salve for what ails their customers, as detailed on Nintendo Everything. Depending on what a visitor needs, that might mean a dose of courage, a dash of comfort, or something to mend a broken heart.
More Than 30 Customers, Six Romance Options
The game includes more than 30 customers, each with their own storylines and outcomes, and six of them are romanceable, with a system the developer calls “donut woo” forming part of the relationship mechanics, according to MonsterVine’s coverage of the launch. Every regular who walks through the door of the cafe carries their own arc that can shift based on what’s served and said to them.
The right ingredients can calm stress, repair emotional damage, or push a character toward new ideas, and choices can change how each customer’s story ends, meaning reading people is treated as just as important as nailing the cooking mini-games. Earlier promotional material for the title also framed it as something of a “closure simulator,” since several of the cafe’s regulars turn out to be exes the protagonist has to face down over the counter.
Yangyang Mobile’s Track Record With Narrative Games
Yangyang Mobile is an indie studio based in the Philippines, founded by couple John and Danni Pineda in 2015, and the pair have focused on narrative games, previously releasing four titles including The Letter and Love Esquire. That background in story-first design shows up clearly in High Times, which leans on full voice acting for every character bar the player-created lead.
The studio has also highlighted its commitment to diversity, noting that nearly half its staff are women and/or members of the LGBTQIA community, a detail reflected in the game’s cast of characters and the range of relationships on offer at the fictional town of San Mazo.
Early Reviews Praise the Writing Over the Cooking
Critical response gathered on OpenCritic since launch has been broadly positive, though reviewers are split on where the game’s strengths lie. One outlet described it as delivering “a deeply personal, heart-to-heart narrative loop, turning a cozy donut shop into a haven for healing and second chances.”
Another review noted that “the actual cooking mechanics of the game are simple to the point of being repetitive, but the visual novel and dating simulator side of the game is well written and engaging enough to make up for that repetition.” That pattern lines up with how the game has been pitched from the start: cooking as the hook, but relationships and choice-driven storytelling as the main course.
For Australian and New Zealand players, High Times is available to download immediately through the regional Nintendo eShop alongside its PlayStation, Xbox and Steam listings, with no reported regional delay tied to the July 23 global release. Given the game’s heavy dialogue and voice-acting focus, it’s one to check file size and storage space for before diving in on Switch or Switch 2.
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