Working on Sugarplum Cafe, a game about running a dessert cafe and serving fashionable customers inspired by sweets.
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Sugarplum Cafe Newsletter: December 2024
Published 6 months ago • 7 min read
Sugarplum Cafe Updates
Congratulations! You get the inaugural Sugarplum Cafe newsletter!
Welcome to the first edition of the Sugarplum Cafe newsletter! If you're receiving this, you've signed up for my mailing list. Thank you so much for your interest in my little cafe game. I'm hoping to send this at the end of each month, we'll see how that goes!
In this month's newsletter we'll cover the following:
What is Sugarplum Cafe?
Some character intros
This month's happenings: Game announcement + Ursa Major showcase
Just in case you haven't already seen this before: Sugarplum Cafe is a merge crafting game where you run a dessert cafe and serve sweets to fashionable ladies. I really wanted to make a game with pretty, shoujo-inspired aesthetics, with lots of frills and pastels...and yes, there will be tea parties! The goal is to get this on PC, Mac, and mobile, but PC will be first.
To craft desserts, I was inspired by merge-3 mobile games where you combine 3 or more items to make more complex items. So you can merge ingredients into desserts, then merge those desserts into more complex desserts, and so on. As some Ursa Major playtesters know, this won't be the only way to craft - but we're getting ahead of ourselves so let's save that for a future newsletter!
Alt text: Screenshot of a game set in a cafe, with a currency counter on the top right and a cameo-shaped UI on the top left. Next to the cameo, some text reads "Next guest at 10 Cameos". The walls are white with pastel pink and teal color accents and gold filigree. In the foreground, three customers (one wearing mint, one wearing chocolate, and one wearing vanilla) have speech bubbles over their heads indicating what desserts they would like to order. In the bottom right corner, there is a grid with some desserts. There is also a display window in the background with more desserts.
Notably, there are no time limits in this game. Most cafe games have customers who get impatient if you don't fulfill their orders in a certain amount of time, but not at Sugarplum Cafe! Here, the guests will wait as long as you want - your cafe has a lot of hype and they know that your sweets are worth the wait. Good thing desserts don't go stale in this world...
Meet the Guests
The goal of Sugarplum Cafe is to meet as many characters in the game as possible. Every guest is inspired by a different dessert flavor, and serving each one for the first time will grant you a unique Cameo. However, it's up to you to figure out how to get them to visit your cafe - different guests have different tastes, after all.
I'm super excited to design lots of fashionable Ladies for this game (before trying my hand at gamedev, I drew a lot of fashion designs), so let's talk about some of the first guests you'll meet!
Alt text: A graphic showing four different colored cameo brooches. Each brooch has a different lady featured on it and is accompanied with the name of the lady. From left to right: Lady Vanilla (yellow), Lady Strawberry (pink), Lady Chocolate (brown), Lady Mint (mint). There is text on the graphic, with "Cameos" as the title and additional text that reads: "In Sugarplum Cafe, your goal is to collect Cameos by meeting customers! Every unique customer grants you a Cameo the first time you serve them."
There are two types of customers. The first are Ladies, who sport a variety of different fashion styles that represent their favorite flavors and personalities.
Lady Vanilla is a longtime patron of Sugarplum Cafe, and she's excited to see what you have in store as the new patissier.
Lady Vanilla, The Patron. Favorite Flavor: Vanilla. Intro Quote: "Nice to meet you!"
Lady Chocolate is the star performer of her dance troupe. Unlike Lady Vanilla, she's more skeptical of your skills, but I'm sure you'll meet her high expectations!
Lady Chocolate, The Dancer. Favorite Flavor: Milk Chocolate. Intro Quote: "Hmm...I suppose this will do."
Lady Strawberry always keeps up with the latest fashion trends and has millions of followers on every platform. She loves how aesthetically pleasing your desserts are - good thing they also taste great!
Lady Strawberry, The Influencer. Favorite Flavor: Strawberry. Intro Quote: "Anything for the aesthetic!"
Lady Mint is a little nerdy and thinks very practically. Sometimes this means she comes off as blunt, but don't let her cool demeanor (heh) put you off - she's quite friendly, just in her own way.
Lady Mint, The Academic. Favorite Flavor: Spearmint. Intro Quote: "If you've got good wifi, that's all that matters."
Then there are the Madelines - schoolgirls at the local academy. When they're not in school, Madelines are fangirling over their favorite Ladies. Once their favorite Lady visits the cafe, they’ll visit in droves.
Alt text: Four girls with bob hairstyles wearing uniforms with scalloped edges. They look identical except for variationas in their hairstyles, their color palettes, and the ingredient badge pinned to their chest. From left to right: Vanilla Madeline in yellow and a poofy bob, Chocolate Madeline in brown and a poofy bob, Strawberry Madeline in pink and a curly bob, and Mint Madeline in mint green and a straight bob. There is text on the graphic that reads: "Madelines - When they're not in school, they hang out at Sugarplum Cafe fangirling over their favorite Ladies."
Madelines also love to gossip with each other about what their idols are up to, maybe that will be relevant in a future newsletter...? They are named after both the storybook schoolgirl and the shell-shaped “madeleine” cakes - I designed their uniform to have scalloped edges as an homage to the madeleine shape.
And of course, there will be more than four flavors in this game - which means there will be even more Ladies and Madelines!
This month's happenings
On December 1 Sugarplum Cafe was finally announced to the public, hence this inaugural newsletter! For a bit of history, I had built up a following through drawing art and fashion on social media, but I'd always wanted to do more with my outfit designs than just post them online. So since I knew how to code, I decided to make a game that I could put my designs in!
I've been working on this game for quite some time now but I had only been sharing updates with friends and Patreon supporters, and basically went silent on my art accounts. It took a few rounds of prototyping and many versions of the game were scrapped, but this year I finally got the game loop to a good point, I think. So I decided it was finally time to share this with my followers!
Since there is no trailer or Steam page yet, I consider this a soft launch. Originally I just wanted to let my followers know what I've been up to after a long hiatus, but then another opportunity fell into my lap...
Showcase at Ursa Major
Ursa Major is a J-Fashion convention with a focus on lolita fashion, a style known for poofy dresses and lots of frills. Basically, the perfect aesthetic for Sugarplum Cafe, right?
Earlier this year I'd met Ursa Major's organizer at an unrelated party, and she'd said she sorely needed volunteers to help out, and I immediately said yes because I love working behind the scenes at events. But right around the time where I decided Sugarplum was ready to announce, I learned that Ursa Major would have a Game Lounge where people could play games together to pass time, and even bring their own games if they wanted. So I thought hey...could I bring this game that I made myself?
I reached out to the staff with some screenshots of the game and asked if I could bring a demo, and they said yes! They even offered to project gameplay onto a big screen in the Game Lounge so people could watch. I wish I had taken photos of people playing - I'll have to remember this for future showcases!
I'm so grateful that this opportunity fell into my lap. Thank you again to the lolita community and Ursa Major staff for not only letting me plug Sugarplum Cafe, but also reaffirming that other people would enjoy this game besides me. I'd been working on my own for so long, sometimes you just get in your head about these things!
How do I play this game?
If you'd like to play this yourself and you weren't able to play the Ursa Major demo, you can support me on Patreon for as low as $2/month to play an early version of Sugarplum Cafe.
Paid members will get a version with even more content than the Ursa Major demo - the Ursa major version has about 1 hour of gameplay while the Patreon version has 3 hours. There are also more characters and gameplay mechanics in the Patreon build to test out!
No worries if you can't join my Patreon right now - the best way to support me for free would be to spread the word about Sugarplum Cafe! Share my social media posts or tell your friends about the game if you think they might be interested!
I'm also looking at more opportunities for showcases and playtests next year around the Bay Area, and will let you know if those come to fruition.
Ending on a sweet note
I love talking about food, so I thought it'd be fun to end these newsletters with a different dessert. This month's sweet treat is Pandan Honeycomb Cake, also known as bánh bò nướng!
It's a Vietnamese cake made with tapioca and rice flour, which not only gives the cake its signature "honeycomb" interior but also makes it spongier and more moist than a typical cake. My friend made me some for Christmas and it's so good - it's one of my favorite cakes because of its unique texture. I devoured it before I could take photos haha, but there are photos in the recipe link above!
That's it for this month. Thanks for coming along with me on this journey, and I hope you all have a Happy New Year!
Sugarplum Cafe Updates In this month's newsletter we'll cover the following: How the Oakland showcase went UI updates (newsletter exclusive!) Click here to read past newsletters! Click here to follow my socials! The MADE Showcase If you saw my previous newsletter, I got to show off Sugarplum Cafe at an indie game showcase in Oakland, hosted by the Museum of Art and Digital Entertainment. This was the first time people have been able to play my game in person since Ursa Major in December. I...
Sugarplum Cafe Updates Hello, and apologies for not sending a newsletter last month! Before I explain why, I have some exciting news for East Bay folks - you can play my game next week! I will be showing off Sugarplum Cafe at the MADE in Oakland at their indie dev showcase. Come play my demo alongside many other demos and maybe even some retro games - they have tons of vintage consoles you can play with! Where: Museum of Art and Digital Entertainment, 921 Washington St, OaklandWhen: Friday,...
Sugarplum Cafe Updates Click here to read past newsletters! If you're not getting this newsletter straight to your main inbox, and it keeps going to your spam/promotions folder, here's how you can change that on Gmail! Find any of my past newsletters and right click > Label as > Uncheck all boxes. I circled "Promotions" here because that's where I found my newsletters, but you wanna make sure all boxes are unchecked. This way, future newsletters should go straight to your Primary inbox! A...
