A little alley appears at the bottom of your screen

Start it up and a small window settles in along the bottom of your screen. It won't jump in front of you, won't ping you with notifications.

It's just there. While you work, while you watch something, the alley gets through its day all on its own.

A customer comes walking up.

Stops right in front of an eatery they like, opens the door, slips inside and takes a seat.

When the dish comes out they dig in, pay up, and head back out looking pleased with themselves.

Meanwhile morning turns to afternoon, the sun goes down, night rolls in. And the alley is still right there.

More and more to look at

• 15 eateries — start with a little toast stand and work up to cafes, burgers, ramen, pizza, sushi, curry, dumplings, pancakes.

• 45 dishes — every eatery has its own cooking, and every customer has their own favorite

• 18 kinds of customers — each with their own regular haunt and their own budget.

• Morning to night — the alley changes color with the hour, and so does who walks by

If you feel like digging deeper

The whole alley shares one 8x8 pantry. Every ingredient for every eatery comes out of that one place.

And if something runs out? The customer just sits there and waits. Forever. That seat is tied up until you sort it out.

• Where to put your 54 ingredients — once you start seeing which eatery eats what, and how fast, the answer shows up

• 20 wisps to summon — place one in the pantry and it works on every ingredient within its range. Finding where those ranges overlap is the best part

• Unlock more slots, open more eateries, and redo your layout — grow your alley and find the setup that works best.

  Your alley runs just fine on its own. But a smart setup makes it noticeably faster.

A good fit if you

• like keeping something cute running in the corner of your screen

• want an idle game without the endless clicking

• enjoy staring at numbers until a layout falls into place

Good to know

• Time only passes while the game is running. There's no offline progress.

• Fully single-player. No connection, no account needed.

• Saves sync through Steam Cloud.