What makes Coffee Talk different from other visual novels out there? The immersive coffee-making experience, of course.
In Coffee Talk, you will play the role of a barista, who run your own cafe that opens at night. There, you will meet people (mostly non-human) and serve them warm drinks — just like what you would expect in a coffee shop. As you help them soothe their souls with a cup of warm drink or two, stories will be unveiled.
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In Coffee Talk’s initial stage of development, there has been a continuous debate about how players should enjoy the game. Unlike other games from Toge Productions that are mechanics-heavy, Coffee Talk’s prototype was a straight-up visual novel with minimum gameplay. To make it become more of a “game”, the team then experimented more on the game mechanics.
Before, the branching and brewing mechanics were pretty straightforward with predetermined combinations, and players were not able to see whether they made the right drink or not before serving it. However, in the newer version, the game automatically generates the name, visuals, and stats of the beverages, which then became the key to the branching mechanism — it will be further covered in this log.
Read more about the history of Coffee Talk here: Devlog #1: How the game came to be - The seed, the anxiety, and the belief of design by subtraction
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Prototype Version vs. Newer Version
Even until today, the gameplay mechanics are still being improved. To understand more about that matter, we are going to need the experts in the field. For that reason, I invited Fredrik Lauwrensius and Jovan Anggara, the programmers of Coffee Talk as the special guests for this development log!
Both of them joined the team at a different time. While Jovan has been involved ever since the making of the prototype version — which was during the 2017 game jam, Fredrik came aboard about 1–2 weeks later, after some intense discussion about the game mechanism, direction, and so forth. There were many questions lingering for quite some time about Coffee Talk’s game mechanics when this log is still in draft form. Due to me being a complete noob on programming stuff, they are luckily kind enough to explain in a simple way.
Jovan told me that in the game jam version, players can freely add any ingredients for a drink. However, it resulted in a massive amount of beverages combinations that could be made, with most of it categorized as “failed” drinks. The team then decided that there should be no failed drink, and therefore tried to limit the possibility of combinations by determining certain ingredients to be used at certain times.
Other than that, players were also able to make cold drinks by adding ice before. The feature was eliminated and a brand new drink statistics was set up. Now the barista will only serve warm drinks containing these 4 statuses: warm/cool/sweet/bitter — because some drinks can tastes sweet and bitter at the same time, and the sensations of warmness and coolness can be experienced at just split seconds apart. The statistics, according to Fredrik and Jovan, affects the branching mechanics where it could cause not only changes in dialogue but also in the later parts of the game.
Sneak peek: the newest brewing UI that is currently under development
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Art in a Cup: Additional yet Significant Feature
What is it that could complement a nice, warm drink? We are thinking that latte art would be a nice touch. In Coffee Talk, in addition to serving drinks, players can also add their own latte art for milk-based beverages (or any beverages that use milk as an ingredient). The idea of the feature first came from our beloved CEO, Kris Antoni. It was not long after I joined Toge Productions that I saw the whole studio burst with enthusiasm toward this particular feature.
Frederik and Jovan said that it took them about a week to make that feature from scratch. Initially, they paid more attention to what the players can do in the development, such as pouring the milk and etching, until they studied the real latte art… from youtube videos. As time goes by, after many trials, they realized that they should also pay attention to fluid simulation — in short, the consistency and the flow of milk when it is poured.
“The biggest challenge would be to find the right configuration between the consistency of both the drink and the milk,” they said to me after thinking for quite some time. “Aside from it, we also need to think about optimization for this feature because it takes up loads of performance.”
The game mechanics and latte art feature have been revamped several times until today, even the programmers have lost count. You can give support to the developers by playing the demo and adding it to your wishlist here:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/914800/Coffee_Talk/
Also, don't forget to follow Coffee Talk’s twitter for more updates!
Thank you for reading! ☕