Boba Heart

Boba Heart is a cozy pixel-art shop sim that runs on your phone's real clock. Open the app at 8 in the morning and it is the morning rush; open it at 9 at night and the night owls are in. You open with $5,000, one register, one milk tea, your manager and one helper on the floor. Everything after that is yours to build. The shop is open only while the app is open; nothing runs in the background, so you never come back to a mess.

Make it yours. Every tile is yours to decorate: hundreds of items, from counters and stations to tables, seating, plants, lights, rugs, wall art and holiday decorations that go on sale in season. Floors, wall colors and finishes to match, so the same room can be soft and pink, plain and woody, or dark and bold. Pick up, rotate, put away or sell anything; the queue snakes round whatever you put in its way.

Run the counter. Customers line up at the register, order, and collect at the pickup counter. Every drink and dish is made at its own station: milk tea, fruit tea, lattes, smoothies, snacks, pastries and meals. More registers mean more lines; more pickup counters mean shorter waits. When it gets busy, tap a worker and finish the job yourself in a quick mini-game.

Hire critters, train skills. Fresh candidates every visit. Name them, pin them to the stations you choose, and watch every skill level up from real work: the register, each station, customer service and cleaning. Pin someone to customer service and they work the room, saying hi to the guests who feel like a chat; a greeted guest is happier and tips more often. Someone drops a cup? Your cleaner wipes it up and walks it to the bin.

Grow the menu. Plenty of recipes to learn, each category with its own station, from milk tea, fruit tea, lattes and smoothies to snacks, pastries and meals, and midnight ramen and warm nightcaps for the night owls. Buy one and it is on sale; take it off the menu any time. Every item shows how long it takes to make.

Grow the room. Lease wider or deeper, one row at a time, until the starter room is a hall, and the crowd grows with the floor. Play in portrait or turn the phone sideways.

A town that shows up. Critters of every kind, from cats, bunnies and foxes to penguins, hedgehogs and lions, with moods of their own. Happy customers tip, add a treat and tell their friends. Foot traffic follows the size of your floor, the menu, the decor, the time of day, the weather and the holidays on the real calendar. Everything runs on the real clock: dawn, dusk, rain, snow, fog and heatwaves, and the crowd that each hour of the day brings.

Visit your friends. Add a friend by code, walk into their shop, order from their menu, leave a tip and wave. Their till keeps the money, and they see your visit when they open the game.

No energy meter, no timers to wait out. Free to play, with optional ads for discounts.