Sugarplum Cafe updates (Patreon)

Before I start - I'm finally selling prints on INPRNT! If you've wanted to buy my EEAAO fanart, my Pantone series, or my Steven Universe series in print form, now's the time! 

It looks like there's a 10% off sale sitewide, but I'm also offering an exclusive 15% discount for Patreon backers this month, as a thank you for supporting me for this long. You can use the code WVVW0JFJ at checkout from 4/30 to 5/30.

If there's something you'd like to see as prints that isn't in my shop, definitely let me know in the comments.

I've heard a lot of good things about INPRNT as an on-demand printing site, and it'll be nice not to have to worry about finding manufacturers. If I get enough print sales, I'll start pursuing other types of merch again.

With that, onto the update!

Redesigning drinks

Drinks were already a thing in the previous build, but one common crit I received was that the drinks looked very similar. So I'm playing around with different cup shapes for different drinks, and it's a good excuse for me to design something more ~aesthetic~ too.

(Old drinks on top, new drinks on bottom)

There are a couple of new drink types - Cafe Lattes and Milk Teas, which will require two beverage ingredients instead of just one.

The idea is that depending on the drink you choose, the color will change and so will the ingredient in the corner. I'm hoping the tiny ingredient will help colorblind folks tell apart the drinks better, without me having to design unique beverages for every possible flavor. NGL that would probably be gorgeous, but it's definitely too much work for a solo dev at this time 🤣

Upgrades

You can now purchase various upgrades for the cafe. Upgrades do not cost regular currency, but a special currency that resembles star-shaped konpeito candy.

These stars are earned by discovering new items and characters. There's a Catalog that documents everything you've discovered and have yet to discover, and you can collect stars whenever new entries appear in the Catalog. I'm hoping this encourages players to try making new desserts and meeting more characters.

Upgrades can be improvements to existing features like the Fridge and Trash from the previous update post, or purchasing new rooms with new mechanics. The Tea Room is one such room, where you can host the tea parties mentioned in the previous post. Another new room is an extension to the main room, which not only lets you serve more customers but also has a new mechanic: the display case.

Display Case

The Display Case lets you put desserts on display. The desserts you place in the Display Case will increase the chances of spawning guests with that flavor. This might be helpful if you're trying to beckon certain customers.

This is also a way to summon new customers with the combination cakes from the previous post. Some combination cakes will unlock a new "flavor" of character when you place them on display!

Desserts on display have a limited number of uses depending on their complexity. For example, a strawberry Macaron is a Stage 2 dessert in the merge chain, so it can summon a strawberry Lady or Madeline twice before it disappears. Oh yeah, and the more complex a dessert is, the more likely it is to summon a Lady over a Madeline!

I guess the characters are allowed to sample what's on display. Maybe "Free Samples" is a better name for this mechanic? 😄

I haven't figured out other motivations for trying to spawn specific guests yet, beyond unlocking cake-specific characters for the first time. Maybe some story-motivated reasons, or incentives for spawning each character a certain number of times?

Next steps

Bad news and good news - development on Sugarplum Cafe will be put on hold after this post. But the good news is, the reason for the delay is because I got a HUGE Sailor Moon commission, which is good news because getting paid to draw Sailor Moon fanart is like the dream for me.

(I also got a few other commissions but I can't really talk about them right now...but hopefully you'll see them sometime next year ;D)

I've done so much coding that most of what I have left to do for this Sugarplum update is art stuff, i.e. drawing new characters and desserts. But since I only have so much time when it comes to drawing, I'll be prioritizing my drawing time the Sailor Moon commission until it's done. I would like to finish the commission before June since that's when the new Sailor Moon Cosmos movie comes out, so that should be a good ETA of when I will resume Sugarplum development!