The Corner Café

• Grind the beans, lock the portafilter, and pull the shot. Keep the needle in the green: too little is watery, too much is bitter.
• Steam the milk without burning it, then pour milk and foam in the right proportions.
• Syrups, chocolate, ice, cream, cinnamon, and a blender for frappés.
• Turkish coffee in a cezve on hot sand: take it off before it boils over.
• 21 recipes, from espresso to salep. They unlock as the days go by or from the shop, and some are on the menu only in season.

Customers ask in their own words: the size, the shots, the milk, the foam, “the usual”, sometimes only a riddle. Didn’t catch it? Ask again, but their patience wears thin. Serve it well and they pay, tip and come back.

• 18 customers, eight of them regulars: a retired teacher, a young musician in headphones, a student cramming for an exam, a construction foreman, a doctor just off a shift, a motorbike courier, and more.
• Customers who leave happy first tell you their names, then their usual order. Your neighborhood book remembers it all for you.
• The regulars’ small stories unfold through the year, and your choices shape how they end.
• At the street festival you face Kaan in a coffee contest: the same drink, a jury of three.
• At year’s end you get one of three endings, depending on your bond with the neighborhood.

• A morning newspaper with the day’s headline, the weather, and what will sell.
• Four seasons with rain, heat waves and snow, all of which change what people want to drink.
• Stock and a wholesaler, daily rent; a shop full of machines, decor and new recipes; four renovations.
• Special days: a power cut, a surprise inspection, exam morning, the first snow, the last evening of the year.
• Impatient queues, cold milk, over-ground coffee… small mistakes don’t go unnoticed.