In The Witch’s Bakery, a customer’s regret can appear as a cute creature floating beside them. Only someone with magical abilities can see it, and serving that customer means more than handing over a croissant: heart witch Lunne can enter their heart and remove the pain they’re carrying. The resemblance to Kiki’s Delivery Service is easy to spot, but this cozy adventure makes emotional care something you actually play.
Sunny Lab’s debut game follows Lunne as she moves to Paris and opens a magical bake shop with Orio, her pink, cat-like companion. Even her braid looks like plaited bread. In his review, Polygon’s Austin Manchester describes the adventure as charming and heartfelt, with a relaxing routine that gives its heavier emotional stories room to unfold.
Monday through Saturday, work fills Lunne’s days. You prepare dough and infuse it with magic, then Orio handles the baking with their elemental magic. Serving customers earns money, though not everyone makes the job easy: some can’t decide what they want, while others are impatient. Manchester notes that those frustrations will feel familiar to anyone who’s worked in retail or food service.
Customers carrying visible regrets interrupt that shopkeeping routine. Lunne navigates a small maze inside their heart, finds the regret, and removes it to free them from past heartache. The obstacles give emotions a physical shape: waves of sadness push her backward, while fiery plumes of anger block her path. Manchester finds these encounters an enjoyable change of pace, and compares the soothing rhythm of ordinary shop duties to Tiny Bookshop, released last year.
That heart-healing work becomes more involved when Lunne meets Estelle early in the game. An accountant with an enormous regret hanging over her, Estelle also has skills Lunne needs: the witch is better with bread than numbers. Lunne spends time at Estelle’s office and home, hoping to get accounting help and free her new acquaintance from her regret, even if that second kind of help happens accidentally.
When Lunne gets pulled into Estelle’s Heart Palace, the modest mazes inside other customers give way to something much more imposing. Sadness becomes an ocean, and Estelle’s inner world resembles an underwater ruin. Puzzles ask you to connect points using cubes you can rearrange. Manchester says they’re never too difficult, but sometimes offer a fun challenge and a welcome shift in gameplay.
Some sections also require Lunne to avoid a lurking monster called a Torment. Estelle’s melancholy story takes multiple visits to her Heart Palace before Lunne can reach the root of her problems. For Manchester, this is the game’s emotional center: beneath the cute presentation is a story about untangling feelings that can be too frightening to confront directly.
Paris offers a different pace outside the bakery and those inner worlds. You explore its streets and views through 2D side-scrolling locations, which Manchester describes as beautiful. Lunne quickly makes friends, including a cinema-owning neighbor and a young witch still finding her way. You can invite friends to dinner or to see a play, or spend an evening reading a new book at a cafe while eating dessert that, for once, someone else has made.
The Kiki’s Delivery Service comparison isn’t just about a witch setting up shop. Manchester considers the connection earned by the game’s handling of difficult emotions, describing it as a Studio Ghibli film in video game form. There’s a direct musical connection, too: Cécile Corbel, who composed the soundtrack to The Secret World of Arrietty, is behind the opening song. Before learning who had created it, Manchester thought the song would fit alongside Ghibli’s films. He also calls Arrietty underrated.
Plenty of games invite Ghibli comparisons, including Into the Wind and Vivarium. Manchester argues that featuring talent connected to those films is much rarer, pointing to Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch as another example. His verdict on The Witch’s Bakery is warmly positive: he recommends it to players seeking their next cozy game for its relaxing loop, emotional stories, charming character designs, and Ghibli-like qualities.
The Witch’s Bakery is available now on Nintendo Switch, Switch 2, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X.
