Sugarplum Cafe Newsletter: March 2025


Sugarplum Cafe Updates

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!

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

  • Rounding up every character introduced so far
  • Talking about fanart
  • Recapping GDC

Character roundup

This month was a little light on social media updates, but I did put together graphics of every Sugarplum Cafe character I've introduced so far - complete with full body references so you can see their outfits from head to toe!

To recap, there will only be one Lady for each flavor, but there can be multiple Madelines who like the same flavor. Madelines are schoolgirls who like to model themselves after their favorite Ladies!

I want to introduce all the Ladies SO badly, but I gotta save some for the full game, after all. But you can meet them early by joining my Patreon! Not only can paid members play an early build of Sugarplum Cafe, but you can also meet 10 new Ladies who have yet to be officially revealed!

Y'ALL I GOT FANART

I also received my first public fanart from the lovely ButterflyLatte on Bluesky and Tumblr! AAAAAHHHHHHHHH

A Discord friend did draw fanart of a character in the Patreon build who I haven't officially revealed yet, but this is my first public fanart and I appreciate both SO SO MUCH. Look how cute she is!!!

So please, fanart and cosplay is always welcome and I want to share it all!!

Let's talk GDC!

GDC stands for Game Developers Conference, and this was my first time attending. And my gosh what a week! I've made lots of new friends, got to meet some internet friends in person, and even got to meet some people whose work I've admired from afar. I'm still starstruck...

I expected the mood to be sad because of all the gaming layoffs lately (I kid you not, someone got laid off while attending GDC) but I think everyone was just tired of being sad about the state of the games industry and the world, so the atmosphere was full of love. It's like we all decided to just enjoy the moment of being around like-minded individuals and have a little week of escapism.

And the best part was, I got to show Sugarplum Cafe to people and some people even playtested it! Everyone was so nice and complimented the visuals and the core gameplay (the latter was extra validating because I don't know a lot of people who enjoy merge games), but I also received very helpful feedback. For instance, I noticed that some players had trouble figuring out what exactly to do next, which is really good to know!

One of the highlights this week was meeting the Innersloth devs (who made Among Us) and having them try out my game! Two Innersloth artists were following me on Twitter/Bluesky because I drew high fashion Among Us fanart long ago, and not only did we finally get to meet up in person, but they wanted to play my game and even brought some new friends to play too!

I'm super grateful to not just the Innersloth team, but to everyone who made time to play my game ;w;

I definitely want to go next year, but personally, I don't think I will buy a ticket for GDC. I spent maybe 3 hours out of the entire week in the actual venue, although I will admit I got some good stuff out of it - including discovering a mystery narrative game called No Case Should Remain Unsolved. I love games that tell stories through creative gameplay, and despite the ominous atmosphere it is actually quite sweet.

That said, for me the real value of GDC is meeting people, and it turns out that everyone just hangs in the gardens outside the venue which you don't need a ticket for! But I'm lucky that I have people in the industry that I can talk to, both from work experience and social media. I think if you don't have that, whether you should buy a ticket depends on whether you can find group meetups outside of GDC that are relevant to you in terms of demographics, preferred genres, and job roles. Thankfully there are plenty to choose from. If you find some, maybe you don't need one; if not, then give actual GDC a shot!

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 the citrus olive oil cake from Vio Pastry!

Vio actually makes cake donuts mainly and has flavors like Mexican Hot Chocolate and Brown Butter Sea Salt, but I love this cake! It has sort of a cornbread-like consistency and I love cornbread. You can't really taste the olive oil, but you can definitely taste the citrus - I think it's lemon with a hint of orange. If you like savories, their beef curry turnover is also a must get.

Vio Pastry sells their goods at farmer's markets in SF, Berkeley, San Mateo, Burlingame, and Vallejo!

thelettergii

Working on Sugarplum Cafe, a game about running a dessert cafe and serving fashionable customers inspired by sweets.

Read more from thelettergii

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 Heads up - next month I'll be at GDC! This is a huge game developer's conference in SF from March 15-23 and it means I'm bringing the Sugarplum Cafe demo with me. If anyone is gonna be around the city during that time and would like to help me test the game and look for bugs, please reach out to me at thelettergii@gmail.com! You don't need a GDC pass - we can probably set something up at a cafe or park. In this month's newsletter we'll cover the following: The Tea Room...