Pokémon Café Mix is the latest Pokémon game to grace our phones, and it takes its cues primarily from Pokémon Shuffle. Much like in that puzzling predecessor, you’ll swipe your finger around the screen to match a bunch of floating Pokémon heads, scoring points and power-ups in the process.
While playing Pokémon Shuffle, we always wished you could just nudge that irritating sole Pikachu out of the way, so we could continue our perfect run of Charmander head matches. Well, that’s what Pokémon Café Mix introduces. This time you can swirl your Pokémon heads together, matching literally every single identical head in one round for a massive score.
That doesn’t mean it’s easy though; far from it. We were actually surprised by the level of challenge from the get-go, as you really have to pay close attention to the Pokémon you choose to serve the various beverages and food on offer, as well as how you use your precious few power-ups. It’s a good thing we’re here with this Pokémon Café Mix guide then, isn’t it? You can also find out what we think of it by checking out our Pokémon Café Mix review.
Everything in our Pokémon Café Mix guide:
What is Pokémon Café Mix?
Pokémon Café Mix is the latest mobile game by The Pokémon Company, which challenges you to match a bunch of Pokémon heads together to serve up a variety of food and beverages to your insatiable customers. Those customers are also Pokémon who, once you’ve served them enough stuff, decide they also want to work there and are surprisingly qualified.
How does Pokémon Café Mix work?
The gameplay portion of Pokémon Café Mix bears a lot of resemblance to Pokémon Shuffle in that you’re matching a bunch of Pokémon heads together to get a high score, trigger power-ups, and collect items. Where it differs, though, is in your ability to swirl your Pokémon together, rather than have them sitting in a set position. It’s like swirling together a big Pokémon cake mix.
Power-ups vary depending on the Pokémon you use, but primarily allow you to clear a bunch of Pokémon at once or collect items. Items include ingredients, like sugar cubes, whipped cream, and nuts, and the manner with which you collect them varies. You crack sugar cubes and nuts, and collect tomatoes by dropping them in a basket.
Power-ups can help with those things. You can use them to instantly pop Pokémon heads and collect certain items. Generally, they involve popping stuff in select directions, with the direction depending on the Pokémon you use to serve up the order.
That’s the other side of Pokémon Café Mix: as you befriend Pokémon who visit the café, you can recruit them. Each Pokémon has a specific speciality, like drinks, sweets, or food, so it’s worth checking the next order to pick the right Pokémon for the job.
Pokémon Café Mix guide
Now, let’s go over a few tips, tricks, and cheats that we picked up while playing, which should help you progress a lot faster throughout this experience.
Pick the Right ‘mon for the job
As you progress through Pokémon Café Mix, you’ll unlock a wide variety of Pokémon helpers, each with their own speciality and skill. You begin with Eevee, who doesn’t actually have a speciality, but quickly unlock further Pokémon, like Charmander, Minccino, and Snubbull.
Specialities versus skills
Specialities are basically the food or beverage that a particular Pokémon is best at making. Most Pokémon have a speciality, like drinks and sweets, while others don’t, like the first Pokémon staff member Eevee. Using a Pokémon that has the same speciality as the item ordered provides you with bonuses.
Skills, on the other hand, trigger after you match a certain number of Pokémon together, and provide you with a special bonus effect that typically involves bursting a bunch of Pokémon and items at once. The difference between each Pokémon’s skill is generally the direction and radius of the skill effect. Certain skills burst in a circle, while others burst above, beneath, or to either side.
Focus on accuracy over speed
Given that you only have a limited amount of time to match Pokémon heads together, your instinct will likely be to rush, grabbing up as many heads as quickly as possible. We’re going to advise you to resist this though, as we’ve found the faster we go, the more difficult it is to pull the Pokémon together.
Going slow keeps the heads compact, allowing you to carve a path between them efficiently. If you go fast, you’ll just end up flinging them apart, making it difficult to collect them all.
Save power-ups for when you’re struggling
Power-ups can be the difference between failing and succeeding in a level. So powerful are they, in fact, that they’re actually quite tough to come across, and even more so if you’re a free-to-player. So, with that in mind, we thoroughly recommend you try a level first, before resorting to using a power-up. You may just end up beating it without a struggle.
Complete challenge cards for bonus golden acorns
You can complete challenge cards, which task you with performing activities like using skills, performing combos, and hiring new staff. Each challenge card has three tasks associated with it, and if you beat all three of them you’ll earn a bunch of golden acorns. These are the premium currency in Pokémon Café Mix, and allow you to purchase power-ups and extra lives.
For more Pokémon goodness, you can learn how to evolve Primeape, how to evolve Pawmo, how to evolve Togepi, and how to evolve Riolu. We can also explain what the dark Pokémon weakness, ice Pokémon weakness, and fighting Pokémon weakness is.