secret project: january update (Patreon)

Monthly update for my game Sugarplum Cafe!

Prototype feedback and future plans

Thank you to everyone who played the December prototype and sent me feedback! You can still send me feedback if you like, but I think I have a good idea of what needs to be improved now ^^

Between Patreon backers and personal friends, 14 people received a link to the prototype and 8 people sent me feedback. Overall the consensus was that the game and characters were really pretty, which was a huge goal of mine so I'm happy with that ^^

Critiques and bug reports I received: 

• A lot of players said they would prefer that clicking the basket would spawn all the ingredients at once rather than one at a time, so I've fixed this for the next build. 
• Some players also said they'd prefer to have the Shop and Catalog in separate locations because the difference between the two wasn't clear. I agree with this and I'll work on separating them. 
• There seemed to be some sort of bug when fulfilling orders. I *think* I found and fixed the issue but we'll see in the next build.

Most everyone said the gameplay was intuitive and straightforward, so it's cool to know they could figure out how to play without a super in-depth tutorial. I do feel like I need to make the game more fun though, which to me means making the world of Sugarplum Cafe more immersive and interactive. I have a lot of ideas for this, but I also have to make sure I don't get too ambitious. For now, I know I want to update the art so that you see more of the cafe. So hopefully I will have some neat screenshots to share in next month's update!

I hope you all will continue to help me playtest future versions, thank you again! It was all really helpful <33

I can now work on this game without getting fired

As some of you may know, my fulltime job is also in gaming so behind the scenes I've been working to get approval to work on this game in my free time, since it might be a conflict of interest. Thankfully my company is pretty lenient about employees making their own games, as long as they don't conflict with the company's games. And since my game isn't a first person shooter, I'm pretty much good to go 😆 So a week ago I signed a contract that waives the "no conflict of interest" part of my job for this particular project and I'm happy to announce that I can now officially work on Sugarplum Cafe without getting fired!

The contract only allows me to make revenue up to 30% of my annual salary; if I exceed that then we have to renegotiate and make a new contract. I did hesitate on this clause at first, but after speaking to some friends who know their legal stuff I think it won't be an issue. While making millions from this game is the dream, honestly I have to be realistic and expect that I won't make a lot of money from my first game. I just want to make more money than I made from my merch, and I think I've made like 7 sales max so the bar is REALLY low lol

Found a composer but...

After my arduous search for a composer, I think I've found the perfect composer for Sugarplum Cafe: dark_cat! 

He was actually my original pick when I came across his music on Soundcloud a few years ago, his music totally gives me "magical girl" vibes so he was a perfect fit. At the time I wasn't sure if he was interested in composing for a game, but I saw recently on social media that he was open to projects so I finally reached out to him a few weeks ago. 

The good news is that he's down to compose music AND sfx, his rates are pretty reasonable, and from our emails back and forth it seems like we'd work really well together. However his rates, while reasonable, make more sense for an indie game that's going to sell well and less sense for an indie game with 5 players max if that makes sense? It makes me worry that I'm getting cocky and thinking this game is hotter shit than it actually is.

I'll be opening commissions casually to raise funds to hire him. I say "casually" because I'm not in dire need of money, and I also don't want to take on commissions I'm not interested in or inspired by - I can't guarantee high quality work if I can't come up with good inspiration for a design. If any backers are interested, it'll be easier for me to draw portraits and existing designs as opposed to coming up with brand new designs ^^

I also will need to announce the game publicly sometime this year to see if people are interested in it, but while I have a few ideas I don't really have a game plan on how to do this yet. I think it will be easier once I draw some nice art, so I'll work on that first.

I'm open to feedback on all of this. Right now I think I'm willing to make the investment because I like his work and I want to support him. Worst case scenario, if the game flops I could always use the music for something else.

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Thanks for reading! Apologies for the text-heavy post, I will try to have some neat art in next month's update.