Coffee with Cryptids
Summary
An isometric 3D café management sim where the customers are Cryptids. The game has a unique system where how the player customises their café, directly affects how likely it is for each Cryptid to visit based on their preferences.
The game was developed in Unreal Engine 4 over 9 months by Galacticrab Studio, a team of 15 that I formed with Lyra Shillabeer as part of my final year of university. The game was published on Itch.io in May 2022.
As a designer I focused on System Design, Technical Design and Narrative Design. I concepted multiple of the main characters and their storylines, and I designed many of the game’s systems which I later prototyped and programmed with Blueprints. I was also the team’s leading spokesman and closely involved with the planning and direction of the game’s production.
Cover Art by Jesse Hooson
Game Concept
The player is placed in charge of managing a café which caters to Cryptids and Ghosts. Their responsibilities include: Decorating the café, maintaining kitchen stock and equipment, choosing which drinks to sell and of course serving customers those drinks.
Each decision the player makes will influence the café amenities and vibe, which affects how much the Café appeals to each of the unique Cryptids and the likelihood they will visit. The player might often meet Gef the Talking Mongoose if they put up spooky decorations, but never see Mothman due to a lack of lamps.
The experience is intended to be casual and relaxing, with a hint of mystery as the player slowly gets to know each of the Cryptids and unravels their stories.
My Contribution
I contributed significantly to the game’s narrative, assisting in concepting and writing Character Sheets for many of the characters. I was also responsible for designing and programming the game’s dialogue system.
I designed, prototyped and programmed many of the game’s systems in UE4 with blueprints, including the Dialogue System, Customer AI System, NPC Preferences System and the Tutorial.
I worked frequently with Widget Blueprints in this project, as many of the systems were tied to or interacted with via menus.
I frequently led meetings and headed the organisation of the project’s sprints. I was in charge of presenting our game’s pitch to tutors, which graded a First.
Achievements and Challenges
Coffee with Cryptids pushed me into a technical role for the first time since working in games, and was also my first project using Unreal Engine. This definitely proved a challenge, but makes this project one of the most valuable that I’ve worked on. I personally found blueprints were an excellent tool for providing me a basic understanding of programming and the confidence to continue learning it. Programming and technical ability was my biggest weakness before this project, where I mainly focused on collaborating alongside the more technical members of my teams to produce the experiences I designed on paper. However since Coffee with Cryptids, I no longer need to rely on others to do this. I wouldn’t call myself a programmer, but I’m now able to put together prototypes and create my own games, which I couldn’t do before.
The Dialogue System was the main feature I was responsible for, and required a lot of iteration and updates as my skill with Unreal Engine improved, and the game’s concept developed. To begin with it just selected and presented a random dialogue from a list of available options, but over the course of the project I added: displaying dialogue over multiple text boxes, weighted dialogue selection, storing dialogue data through CSVs (which made it possible for dialogue to be written without opening the engine) and importantly setting up dialogue to respond to the player’s decisions in game (For example, characters commenting on the wallpaper the player decorated with).
I think it was extremely valuable learning to adapt the system as the project matured, driving me to expand upon my skillset massively and enhanced my approach to writing new systems with later additions in mind.
I discovered over the course of the year that I have an aptitude for guiding meetings and determining how best to approach upcoming work. I would often bring up concerns I had for the project in meetings to open up discussion and search for potential solutions. For example, I raised a concern that we lacked expertise in making animation state machines in Unreal Engine, leading to the team sourcing help from Alper Mimoglu who taught us the tool and assisted in getting the system to work with our unique characters.
I found that the team really appreciated this input, as it was really helpful for providing a direction to focus on, and from there it was easier to break down which tasks needed doing and who was most comfortable doing them. Over time I grew more comfortable in this role alongside my responsibilities as a designer and programmer. I would lead discussion in most of our meetings, and garner input from each member of the team in order to learn what should be prioritised in the game’s development and what options were available to help find solutions to obstacles the project faced.
A common problem we ran into whilst developing Coffee with Cryptids was balancing for a relaxing and chill experience. A large portion of the game mechanics, centred around managing a café and serving customers, could easily become stressful or even frustrating. For example, we wanted to add a system where customers leave a bigger tip if you serve them more quickly, as a reward for players who enjoyed optimising their business output. However this resulted in punishing slower players and players who weren’t interested in making money quickly.
We decided to lean the focus of the game more into non time sensitive choices and NPC interaction, and simplify or remove features around business operations such as the tip system and kitchen upgrades (which made serving drinks faster). This definitely helped to relax the game’s atmosphere, and still left the game with plenty of meaningful gameplay in catering to the Cryptid’s preferences in order to earn new dialogue interactions with them.
When concepting our next game, which was also a casual game, we aimed to design features which could better cater to players who enjoy optimising their experience (and increase overall replay value) without worsening the experience for casual players.