Summer at Smile Café Controls and Settings

Left Click / Enter / Space: Advance text and confirm selections. Hold for auto-advance in supported scenes.

Right Click / Escape: Open the system menu (save, load, settings, return to title).

Mouse Wheel Up: Roll back to previous dialogue line (backlog). Limited rollback depth applies.

Mouse Wheel Down / Left Click: Advance to next line.

Tab: Toggle dialogue box visibility for viewing CG backgrounds without text overlay.

H: Hide the entire UI for screenshot purposes. Press again to restore.

These standard visual novel controls apply throughout all story scenes. Mini-games use different bindings described below.

Drawing mini-game: Left click and drag to draw strokes. Hold Shift for straight lines. Right click erases the last stroke. The scroll wheel adjusts brush size in advanced drawing modes.

Comment response: Left click to select a response option. Number keys 1-3 select choices quickly when available.

Café drink-making: Left click ingredients in the order shown on the recipe card. Drag completed drinks to the serving area.

Cleaning tasks: Click and drag across dirty surfaces until the progress bar fills.

For mini-game strategies beyond controls, see the mini-games guide and mini-games reference.

Access settings from the system menu (right-click or Escape during gameplay) or from the main title screen.

Text Settings: Adjust text display speed (instant to slow), auto-read speed, and skip-read-text speed for subsequent playthroughs. Enable "skip unread text" only after your first complete playthrough to avoid missing new content.

Audio Settings: Separate volume sliders for master, background music (BGM), sound effects (SE), and voice. Voice volume applies to Chinese and Japanese voice acting in the full release.

Display Settings: Windowed, borderless, or fullscreen modes. Resolution selection for windowed mode. Text box opacity adjustment (0-100%).

Language Settings: Interface language (English, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Russian). Voice language (Chinese/Japanese). Subtitle toggle.

Summer at Smile Café provides multiple save slots plus quick-save (F5) and quick-load (F7) functionality. Steam Cloud synchronizes saves across devices when enabled in Steam client settings.

Save recommendations: Create manual saves at the start of each in-game week and before major dialogue branches. Use distinct save slot names or memorize slot numbers for route-specific saves. The full story walkthrough flags critical save points.

Auto-save triggers at chapter transitions. Do not rely solely on auto-save for missable content recovery — manual saves before choice branches are essential for CG hunting described in the CG guide.

During mini-games (Patch Note 2+): Saving is disabled while any mini-game is in progress. Finish or exit the mini-game before saving.

v1.1.6 / Patch Note 3: The save button is disabled when map movement is locked. After the June save-compatibility patch, older save files may be incompatible — see the save compatibility guide and use F4 on the main menu to restore CG progress if needed.

The game runs on integrated graphics and does not require a dedicated GPU. If you experience slowdown during mini-games, switch to windowed mode at a lower resolution. Disable unnecessary background applications.

For reading comfort, increase text box opacity and reduce text speed. Auto-read mode with appropriate pacing works well for replay segments. See system requirements for hardware specifications.

Controller support is limited — the game is designed for mouse and keyboard. Steam Deck compatibility is verified for touch and trackpad input. Drawing mini-games on Steam Deck work best with the touch screen or an external mouse.