Sugarplum Cafe Updates

For those of you in the Bay Area, I will be showing off Sugarplum Cafe again in August - you can play the demo in person not once, but twice!

On Friday, August 1, I will be returning to the monthly MADE Showcase in Oakland! Entry is $15 for the evening, and proceeds go toward supporting game preservation and tech education for kids. You can RSVP here!

On Thursday, August 7, I will be attending GLITCHED in San Francisco which is a meetup specifically for women in gamedev. There will be a panel and showcase and Sugarplum Cafe is going to be part of that showcase! If you are a woman in the game industry, would love to see you there! You can RSVP here.

I plan to attend more showcases in September, including one in Fremont! Will share more details in next month's newsletter, but you can RSVP now if you're already interested.

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In this month's newsletter we'll cover the following:

• Lady Chocolate changes her name
• Style explorations

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Click here to read past newsletters!

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A couple of weeks ago, I posted this image on social media.

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For context, I've been referring to her as both "Lady Chocolate" and "Lady Milk Chocolate" interchangeably. In my head and in an ideal world, she would be introduced as "Lady Chocolate" but then once you meet her relatives White and Dark Chocolate you'll learn that her full name is "Lady Milk Chocolate". But even so, maybe it would be nice to pick one name for future merch, you know? (I am probably getting ahead of myself...)

So I posted polls on all my socials. It's entirely possible for folks to vote on multiple platforms since I can't track who voted for what on Tumblr and Twitter, but I figured if people feel that strongly about it, then who am I to stop them?

Anyways, here are the final votes!

As you can see, Milk Chocolate won - but by only 10 votes!

It's such a small margin that I'm hesitant to lock in her name as things currently are - I won't lie that I'm still attached to the "Chocolate first Milk Chocolate later" idea. But I'll refer to her as Lady Milk Chocolate for now, and I'm going to leave the door open for retcons - there's a certain game design mechanic I want to explore that might change things ;)

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By the way, do you like my new drawing of her? 👉👈

I've been wanting to make my digital art emulate traditional art for a while. I actually started as a traditional artist, but switched to digital because 1) I move around a lot and it was tiring to lug all my materials with me, and 2) I am a perfectionist who keeps finding errors in my old art and the ability to redraw and fix stuff digitally is nice.

This is actually part of a larger illustration to test out some brushes. Here's a sneak peek!

I'm really digging how soft and elegant this looks and I might redraw all the Sugarplum Cafe art to look like this, but I need to explore this style further before I commit...I really like this brush I'm using for lineart but it requires repetitive layering to produce this colored pencil effect and it might take way too much time. So we'll see!

(If redrawing all the Sugarplum Cafe art sounds drastic - I was already planning to do this near the end anyway! I'm still figuring out what I want my art style to be, so I'm always updating my old art to reflect my latest explorations. Would rather not try to finalize my art now when I'm probably going to hate it later and redraw it anyways. I did say I was a perfectionist! Haha)

I suspect these next few months my game updates will be light as due to the showcases I'll be prioritizing polishing the demo over adding new game mechanics, so I'll try to make up for it with some cool art!

Ending on a sweet note

I love talking about food, so I thought it'd be fun to end each newsletter with a different dessert. This month's sweet treat is from Mt. Kakigori, a shaved ice popup!

I have been craving shaved ice all summer, and I also love trying novel, unusual flavors (I like foods that confuse me...). Mt. Kakigori miraculously satisfies both cravings, offering creative flavors like sweet corn and melon prosciutto. Though it would be more appropriate to call them "creations" than just flavors - each variety comes with so many different components, lovingly depicted in their handdrawn menus. (I am a sucker for infographics.)

I was already going to order the corn kakigori because I don't see enough corn desserts, but as soon as I saw it came with a kohakutou garnish...you had me at edible crystals.

Each one costs $15, and the portion size is smaller than the shaved ice you could get at a boba or bingsu place. But for an incredibly creative shaved ice you won't find anywhere else, for me the experience was worth it. You can't tell from the photos, but there's a lot of hidden goodies inside (like frosted flakes and cream) to keep it interesting! I will also say, every kohakutou I've had had a weird aftertaste except these.

Mt. Kakigori pops up at different events and locations, usually in SF or East Bay. Check their Instagram for their schedule!

(I'm also going to shout out Onigiri Em who was selling onigiri at the same popup market. If you are ever in San Francisco and they're around, the uni butter onigiri is an experience! But any of them are really good.)