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: May 2025
Published about 1 month agoย โขย 5 min read
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, Oakland โWhen: Friday, June 6, 5-8:30pm โAdmission: $15/person (it goes towards games preservation!)
I'll be there, so come say hi! It's the day before my birthday, so I'd really appreciate it ๐๐
In this month's newsletter we'll cover the following:
Why I didn't send a newsletter in April
Some new art
Quality of life improvements (including some newsletter exclusives!)
Yeah, so April was pretty jam packed with job interviews, and I wasn't able to work on my game because I had to prioritize interview prep. But it's finally over, which means this month I was able to get back into gamedev!
I'd really love to get to the point where I can work on this game fulltime, but realistically I'm not there yet. You can help me get there by supporting me on Patreon, but please don't feel obligated to as I am not financially dependent on Patreon at this time. But that said, you get to play the game if you do!
Sugarplum Art
On social media, I shared some of the Tea Sets you can discover in the game. Every Tea Party in Sugarplum Cafe has a dedicated Tea Set to match its theme! You can learn more about the Tea Party mechanic here.
I chose not to reveal the themes because that's part of the game, but it shouldn't be hard to guess most of these themes and which Ladies would enjoy them!
A set of four tea sets, each with a teapot, saucer, and three-tiered dessert tray. From top left clockwise: a pastel floral teaset, a mint teaset with brown doodly decoration, a white teaset with black borders, and a dark brown teaset with white swirls.
I also thought about adding a drive thru to Sugarplum Cafe, but I decided against it for some reason...
55 MADELEINES 55 MACARONS 55 PETIT FOURS 55 CAKES AND 155 CUPS OF TEA
Based on the feedback I received from Ursa Major and GDC, I've been able to make several QoL improvements to the game!
Some of these I've shared on socials, and others are exclusive premieres only to my Patreon and newsletter members, as in you're seeing them before my followers! Consider yourself lucky ๐
UI
This corner used to only track a collectathon element, but now it also shows all quests and tasks you receive. Hoping this helps guide players better and makes game progression easier.
During playtests I noticed people often weren't sure what to do next and got stuck, so this is one of the steps I'm implementing to help prevent that! When you complete a quest, the next available quest will take its place so you'll always have something to do!
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Shop Tablet
The counter is no longer empty! I've added a tablet that directs you to the in-game shop, where you can buy ingredients and tools to craft desserts. Yeah, technology exists in this world, sorta!
I wanted to add some in-world way to access the shop (previously you could only access via menu or keyboard shortcuts), but it had to match the Sugarplum aesthetic.
I tried cash registers, phones, catalogs...currently I'm into this filigree tablet stand, but we'll see!
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Completed Quests (Newsletter Exclusive!)
Previously, completing Quests and claiming their rewards would cause them to disappear, and you wouldn't be able to revisit them. Some players expressed a desire to see the completed Quests and I think this makes sense, especially if you completed a Quest by accident and need to reread the instructions to replicate the task.
Hmm...I should probably increase the margin between the scrollbar and the list of quests. I'm too lazy to take a new screenshot, but just know I'm changing it.
Scrollbars (Newsletter Exclusive!)
THEY'RE FINALLY HERE. I know this doesn't seem like a big deal, but previously they were invisible which would make navigation difficult for players. I've been trying to add them in for ages and it was harder to implement than I thought. (It wasn't actually that difficult. I just procrastinate and I'm not very smart)
Oh yeah, if you haven't played the game I think this is your first time seeing the Cameos in-game!
And here are some more improvements I'm working on that I cannot share yet, because screenshots either spoil future characters or have extremely placeholder art that is not presentable to the public lol. You can see most of these on my Patreon now, or at least very soon (I have a post planned for next week).
The ability to change keyboard controls
An extended Pantry so you can have multiple rows of ingredients instead of scrolling through a single row
A Cookbook to track all the recipes you've discovered
Even frillier, fancier UI elements
Thank you so much to the players whose feedback helped me improve the game experience! I'm excited to share more on these with you in future months!
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 actually an assortment of sweets from the spring afternoon tea at Four Seasons Otemachi, Tokyo!
Savories in top row: Green pea cream with bacon pannacotta, "jambon persille" yellow mustard with soymilk cream, smoked salmon with cabbage coleslaw sandwich, onion bavarois with sakura shrimp and cherry blossom crunch. Sweets in second row: Blackcurrant mousse, pistachio and blood orange mousse cake, lemon cake, mandarin charlotte Sweets in third row: Pound cake and palmier. There was also a scone on the tray, but you can't see it from here. โ
Another view which includes a strawberry-rhubarb-rose mousse cake for my friends instead of a lemon cake, with pink sakura petals made of white chocolate. On the plate is an additional sweet (kumquat and chamomile diplomat) that everyone got. We all also got an additional savory (chicken, mushroom, and white asparagaus vol-au-vent) served on separate plates. It didn't cost extra so I'm not sure why these were served separately, maybe because they were larger than the others?
Yeah, I did the thing where everyone is traveling to Japan right now because the dollar is strong and the yen is weak lol. But one thing I've always wanted to try is a really fancy hotel afternoon tea (and a themed one at that), and I'm so glad I finally got the chance.
I'd really recommend this place! They provided a menu with pictures that we could look at alongside our food which is something I really love - I want to know what I'm eating, you know? The food was solid, but the best thing was surprisingly the magenta tea mocktail on the bottom left - it was shiso based which I've never had in a sweet drink before, but I ended up getting two or three of these. This was definitely worth the price of $80-90 USD - where I live, most hotel afternoon teas are over $100 with more mediocre food.
Oh, and if you're wondering why there are surprisingly few sakura items for a spring afternoon tea...there were several sakura-themed afternoon teas at other hotels, but most of the items have strawberries in them and (takes deep breath) I don't like strawberries. I apologize to strawberry lovers, but that means more for you, right?
That's it for this month. Thanks as always for your support, and it's good to be back!
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 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...
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...
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