Yangyang Mobile’s upcoming visual novel High Times introduces a fresh twist on dating sims by putting players behind the counter of a donut shop that’s far from ordinary. Instead of serving typical treats, you craft mood-enhancing donuts that influence customers’ emotions, adding a unique layer to character interactions and decisions.
In High Times, you play as a barista running a donut shop where each donut triggers specific emotions in customers. Whether aiming to make someone happy, sad, or super focused, your choice of donut affects how characters respond and engage with you, emphasizing an emotional gameplay loop not often seen in this genre.
Customers arrive with varying requests: sometimes they ask for a specific donut recipe, other times simply for a particular mood, or even give you vague, complex hints. This demands a bit of creative thinking and experimentation as you figure out how to best meet their emotional needs through your ever-growing donut menu.
Having experimented with both the public and press demos, I appreciated how the game eases players into its mechanics. The early game restricts your ingredient and recipe options, allowing you to learn the basics. Later, with full access to flavors and recipes, the challenge becomes mastering how to interpret customer desires and craft the perfect donut.
Flipping through the extensive recipe book and having to decide which donut to make based on a customer’s emotional request was genuinely engaging. With dozens of recipes to try, it’s far more than simply following instructions — it’s about choosing the right combination to evoke the exact feeling your customer wants.
This isn’t a game of rigid recipe execution. If a customer like Emmete asks for something sweet with two toppings, focusing on the mood behind the order is more important than matching precise ingredients. This encourages experimentation and personalized playstyles, rewarding players who understand the emotional targets over mechanical accuracy.
High Times also adds more hands-on donut preparation than similar games in this barista-dating sim niche. Instead of just selecting ingredients from a menu, you manually remove dough, glaze it, and apply toppings and fillings, which makes each creation feel personalized rather than a simple inventory choice.
This tactile approach adds a satisfying depth, letting you take pride in how you finish each donut. You can carefully perfect the glaze or hastily assemble a barely acceptable treat. This subtle control makes serving customers feel like a craft rather than a transaction.
Though the game allows players to partially glaze or top a donut to fit certain recipes, most will likely prefer fully covering their creations. This pride in craftsmanship is part of the appeal, though it raises questions about how this attention to detail will affect gameplay as progress continues.
There’s also an economic trade-off: the more time and resources you spend perfecting donuts, the more it cuts into your profits. During the press demo, some days ended with barely any earnings. Players might have to weigh whether cutting corners can boost income at the cost of customer satisfaction.
At the moment, both demos provide enough money to indulge in crafting fully detailed donuts without pressure. It remains to be seen if financial management becomes a more critical factor later in the full game, but early on, indulgence in perfect donut-making feels rewarding.
One minor drawback is the lack of unique reactions for serving the wrong emotional donut. Instead of characters displaying incorrect moods, you simply get a generic “This isn’t what I ordered” message. While understandable from a writing perspective, it slightly detracts from the immersion.
Shifting focus to the characters you’ll meet, High Times presents a vibrant and diverse cast that truly stands out. Most characters are expressive and unreserved, quickly revealing their personalities through their appearance and interactions, setting the tone for a lively visual novel experience.
The character designs are striking and colorful, perfectly matching their bombastic traits. These visual cues make it easy to grasp who each character is within moments, reinforcing their unique stories and connections to the player’s donut shop.
The art style and illustrations impressively capture the cast’s essence. Although some animations during customer reactions can look a bit odd, overall the visuals complement the game’s playful and exaggerated style.
The humor and dialogue lean heavily into pop culture references and outrageous banter, which might not land for everyone. This comedic style shapes the personality of High Times, making it feel fresh and energetic — if you enjoy this tone, it will become a highlight.
Among the cast members, characters like Lucy and the cheerleader twins Emma and Emmette left a strong impression, as did Riri, the foreign girl in a chicken suit. Their distinct hooks drew me in and sparked curiosity about how their stories unfold in the main game.
Conversely, the male characters felt more subdued and less memorable. While not poorly written, their designs and storylines seemed generic compared to the colorful female cast, making them less compelling dating options.
This contrast could simply reflect my personal tastes, but characters like Connor came across as bland when compared to the vibrant personalities of Lucy or Riri. It’s notable that only Harry among the male characters makes it onto the title screen, hinting at his standout role.
Overall, the cast strikes a mixed balance. The women typically shine with distinct personalities and charm, whereas most male characters feel too plain. This disparity could affect player engagement depending on who they connect with during their playthrough.
Despite some mixed feelings about certain characters, the High Times demos offered an enjoyable experience that mixes compelling gameplay with quirky storytelling. The full game arrives on July 23, 2026, across PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S|X, Nintendo Switch, and Steam, offering players a unique blend of confectionery creativity and dating sim drama.