High Times donut shop romance preview shows a stylish new dating sim twist

Imagine a world where, instead of coffee or alcohol, the hot new controlled substance is the mood-altering chemical compounds in various donut ingredients. Now imagine this world is full of cute anime people constantly drifting through your donut shop to chat, flirt, and have their emotions temporarily altered by frosting, sprinkles, and dough. That’s the world of High Times, an upcoming visual novel dating game from Filipino studio Yangyang Mobile that’s due out this May.

At PAX East 2026, Yangyang’s colorful and splashy booth showcased both High Times and Spirit Rancher, a sort of fusion between Stardew Valley and Pokémon. In my time playing the High Times demo (now available on Steam), I was struck by both its inherent charm — and its horniness. High Times is inspired by similar visual novel dating games where you play as a vendor, like VA-11 Hall-A, but the tone and aesthetics are very Scott Pilgrim, complete with a league of not-so-evil exes with bright hair of every color.

Your fully customizable Mood Confectioner works at The Hotbox, a new donut shop licensed to sell mood-enhancing donuts. Chatter from early customers indicates that this is a relatively new phenomenon in this near-future world, so you get a mix of skeptics and donut-curious folks wandering through. More importantly, your public-facing job gives you a chance to reconnect with your various charming exes.

In my time playing, I was able to flirt with basically every character that walked through the door — except the really depressed guy with five o’clock shadow who needed some cheering up. The fact that everybody was fully-voiced made things that much more engaging. Flirting with every person isn’t a necessity, but the game established your character as canonically bisexual. As a young man named “Khorri” with neon blue hair, I reconnected with my wild punk rocker ex-girlfriend MJ Hayes (Nola Klop), caffeine-obsessed cheerleading sensation Emmette Meine (Ciarán Strange), and Mood Confectioner rival Harry Yen (Johnny Yong Bosch).

As a Mood Confectioner, you’re getting paid to make and sell donuts and also serve as an amateur therapist. Donut flavors have different effects beyond simply making people happy. Blueberry makes them more sincere and chocolate makes them more focused, whereas white berry makes them open up about their true feelings. You can use these to your advantage in terms of the romance, but you’re meant to talk to these people about their problems, offering advice and mood enhancements accordingly. Sometimes, that means giving them something they didn’t even ask for, because you know it will be good for them.

You start High Times with a devastating nerf: the business owner went AWOL on a honeymoon and sold all of the expensive donut ingredients to pay for the trip, leaving you to manage the shop with just plain vanilla. As you chat with new patrons and earn a bit of money, you gradually get access to more ingredients.

Making the donuts initially feels like a brainless ASMR treat. With a single button push, you can roll out the dough then cut out the donut before dropping it in the sizzling oil. Then you drizzle on the frosting and sprinkle on other toppings. After every day in business, I found that I was losing money. That’s when I realized if you hold down the button to frost the donut, you layer more and more on top — while draining your bank account. It’s more advantageous, then, to get a bit sloppy with it rather than smother every little spot on the donut. All this to say that actually crafting the donuts is an easy activity that’s deceptively challenging to master.

In addition to all the visual panache, High Times has some truly entertaining writing. Dialogue options offer an interesting mix of trolling or negging if flirting is your goal. Emmette doesn’t even remember you, so your dialogue options include silly lies like you being a wanted criminal or a porn star. Regardless of your choice, she laughs it off, but you can feel the intimacy building.

One of my favorite writing choices has to do with how High Times renames familiar websites and social media platforms in-game. MJ is obsessed with getting her fix of Starducks coffee. Once you earn enough revenue, you’re able to buy additional donut ingredients from Hamazon. In addition to texting various characters while on break, your player character also checks for any Facenook notifications. Stacy Ortiz (Aife) is the number-one social media influencer on Pentagram. Had High Times done this naming convention to just one real-world app or company, it might have felt hamfisted, but instead it does a full-court press of cheeky rebrands. When a character talked about how their favorite movie is Rock School starring Black Jack, I burst out laughing. It makes this strange world feel that much more realistic in its own way.

Image: Yangyang Mobile

High Times works best when it leans into the tension at the center of its premise: you’re not just flirting with customers, you’re manipulating how they feel. Even in this lighthearted, pastel-colored world full of jokes about Starducks and Hamazon, there’s something a little uncanny about being able to decide whether someone should be more honest, more focused, or more vulnerable — and then baking that into a donut. It’s messy, a little unethical, and surprisingly compelling. If the full game can balance that tension with its humor and heart, High Times might be more than just another horny but easygoing dating sim. It could be a genuinely thoughtful gaming experience that investigates how we try (and fail) to fix each other.

Also, the donuts are very pretty to look at. Just don’t play High Times on an empty stomach.