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Cafe Nigredo's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Artistic Style | #1 | 5.000 | 5.000 |
| Playability | #258 | 4.000 | 4.000 |
| Theme | #653 | 3.000 | 3.000 |
| Cleverness | #743 | 3.333 | 3.333 |
Ranked from 3 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Judge feedback
Judge feedback is anonymous and shown in a random order.
- Lovely art with funny hidden references, great management game. The art is really good. While I found it interesting, I couldn't find any theme related mechanics also brewing mechanics had the same loading bars as customers, so it got a bit confusing. Other then that I think at the moment besides customers waiting time there are no punishment, so adding a bit of restrictions on brewing would help. And windoe could be resizable it was bit difficult to read everything. Great try, will look forward for updates on this game.
- Cute game! I really enjoyed the art style. The "Night portion" of the game definitely threw me for a loop, though!
- Really enjoyed this game, would love to be able to resize it though!
Did you include your Game Design Document as a Google Drive link?
Yes, public viewing link in the Itch.io page description
Seriously... did you include your Game Design Document?
Yes
Is your game set to Public so we can see it?
Yes
Tell us about your game!
Cafe Nigredo is a time management cooking sim about invoking dark magic to solve your petty disagreements. We're gonna defeat that jerkwad Jerry and his frou-frou coffee shop through hard work and dedication, and also this spooky book we found!
By day you'll serve customers and make rent, and by night you'll grasp powers mankind was never meant to wield in order to improve this week's margins!
DAY CONTROLS:
QWER + Left Mouse Button
Click on customers to take their orders.
Follow the onscreen prompts to prepare their drink.
Click on them again to deliver the finished order.
NIGHT CONTROLS:
ZXCV + Left Mouse Button
Choose a ritual from the tome, and follow the onscreen prompts.
This initial version of the game includes 5 days of gameplay.
Note: This game is built for a window size of 640 X 480 and does not currently have the ability to be resized. If the browser either forces full-screen or expands the window size, manually adjust your browser window back to 640 X 480. Aim to line up with the main menu art on startup.
Extra Notes
First time game jam for many of the team members. We also all met on the LFG chat in the Pirate Software Discord
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Comments
Absolutely loved the art and audio in this! The gameloop was fun, addicting and relaxing at the same time and i love how there are variations to recipes as you progress. I love the way spells are cast at the end of each day and their modifiers too. I don't know if anyone encountered this but i got stuck at frothing milk and couldn't get out of it so i got evicted. Other than that loved the game! Very fun and relaxing^^
Thank you for taking the time to play our game, and your nice words too!
Noted on the frothing minigame, we didn't get to adding more feedback to that before the jam submission because of time constraints, will add that to the list.
Ahh brewing the dark magic we devs know as coffee. The art was fantastic and I like the little minigame, its a shame that it couldn't be put into full screen. I would have liked to have seen how much time I had left on the customers while I was in the side screen and maybe have it automatically switch back to the center screen once I finished brewing the drink. That's about all my criticism though, I really liked the magic summoning minigame that was very well done!
Lovely aesthetic to this game, I like the art and music, it makes me feel very comfy.
Sadly couldn't make it through day 5 :(
However I have quite a few issues that once solved would make this game so much more enjoyable:
Cute game! The music, the SFX, the art, it's all so great! I think the coffee shop part is a tad bit long, the coolest part of your game seems to be the night. If you added more ways to make coffee (like a laté, or matcha), I think you can justify it being this long, but with only 2 mechanics, focus on your cool ass night part!
Nice job :)
Thanks for your input! We actually do have 6 recipes during the day phase, but they're not all unlocked on the first day. More unlock as the days go on. Latte is actually one of them, haha!
Oh damn! I shouldn't have quit my job after night one then :p let me try again when I find time :)
Finally got to play this game and wow, is it charming!
Right off the bat, I love the artstyle! It's so exaggerated and expressive, it's right up my alley! The music is also super good. Has that sort of feel that you'd have of relaxing in a coffee house! I could definitely see myself putting the music on one of my playlists.
The sounds effects are also superb! Honestly, really incredible work there. The customer sounds, the cash register and the brewing noises in general are really satisfying to listen to.
One thing I noticed was that the popup for Hgtharr's Spiralling Obsession seems to be shown twice when you hover with your mouse over it.
I really enjoyed the night rituals and the different things you need to do for each one! It really gets you involved and feeling like you're actually doing the thing.
Out of my attempts, two runs were very important to me: one without magic, and the other one with magic. To be clear, the one with magic was way easier to pass the stages with, but for the run without, by the time you get to day 5, you've gotta be able to nail the minigames perfectly.
The biggest difference in the cash you get definitely came from not skipping the "Pour" part of each coffee. It turns out that the bar actually stops for a very short amount of time when it's completely filled up, and it's exactly in that time interval that you're meant to release the left click to get out of the Pouring part without tip losses. I see that there's a dimmed, transparent version of the bar, to give the player the reference of how long the bar is, but on the left side of the shop, I couldn't see it at all. I had to use one of the signs in the background as reference to know when to release left click because of that. Perhaps some sort of indicator that it's time to release the left click could help with that!
Being able to get the max tips is the key to those who want to get to day 5 without magic, and helps a lot those who are using magic. The ending is really funny and very unexpected!
Overall, I had a good time with this game! It felt really cozy to play, the art and character designs are lovely, the sounds are satisfying and the humor is really good. I really enjoyed this game!
Thank you so much for the feedback! There's a lot of stuff in here we hadn't heard anywhere else yet.
I have good news for you as well - Our composer has a Soundcloud!
The music for this game is very well done. Slow, easygoing, and quite fitting for the atmosphere of a coffee shop.
The art is also nice and there are a few funny visual gags around the shop. (It seems our main character may have two left hands judging from the intro sequence. Perhaps this is another reason for being jealous of Jerry.)
On the gameplay side things are quite confusing (with a lot of text that's hard to read in a small window to play the game in). The brewing mechanic has red and orange indicators on the bar that fills up when you press 'Q' but for the life of me I haven't been able to figure out what this is for (no other buttons seem to stop it; I was under the impression I was trying to stop the brew on one of those colors). I'm told to click and hold after brewing to fill the cup but it seems I can do this with 'R' as well (I only found this out through experimenting). Additionally, it seems I can tap 'R' or just click to serve a minimally filled coffee with no penalty.
All of the mechanics I encountered seemed to boil down to just pressing or holding a key. For me this was not engaging. I can see the vision behind it, but I think there should be more elements added to spice the gameplay up (i.e. timing mechanics, turn it into a slower-paced Guitar (Coffee!) Hero, allow multi-tasking so I can brew one coffee somewhere and another elsewhere while waiting on one, etc.).
At night I was told to hover my cursor over some icons while pressing the "ZXCV" buttons (If these two modes are separate they should both use "QWER"). I tried to press the corresponding buttons, but nothing seemed to happen or progress. I tried to get to the ritual casting part again going through the game another time, but ended up at a screen of the coffee place at night where none of my controls worked anymore.
While there are is a lot wrong with the gameplay of this game, I do appreciate the effort. There was a vision here, and while not fully realized I don't think it's something to give up on. Keep up the work and I hope you can either turn this into a better game or use what you've learned here for future endeavors! Making video games is a difficult thing, so it's still really cool that you were able to make this (especially being given only two weeks)!
This is some quality feedback; thank you so much!
While I may not be able to sate your thirst for gameplay polish, I can at least answer some of the questions you might have:
Thanks again for giving our game a shot!
This game is visually stunning, the details in the environment are amazing, and the banner tho ahahahahha ! Every little thing around the workplace is amazing!
The evolving gameplay really shakes things up, and acting magic to improve the shop at night is genius! GG!
Fun concept! I would like it to be a bit more challenging. Maybe make it so you can brew things in the background and balance more orders at once to increase the difficulty.
Casting a spell was pretty fun too, very unique use of prompts. Prompt props. I was not sure what exactly I did though. Or why I would want the option to rest.
My only issue wasn't really an issue. On the "Click and hold to pour" screens, I could just click and be done with it. I didn't see any penalty or anything for rushing through.
All in all, great job! It's fun for sure and has great bones for expansion, and I hope you guys continue development!
There's a minor tip penalty for shortcutting pours, but we're in agreement that it's not very well communicated.
Thanks for playing though!
This is a really cute café game!
I love that it just explains on the screen how to make the coffee, made it so easy to just start and play. The game opened in the topleft corner of the play window, on safari and chrome (but you said that mac had issues so that might be it). I just zoomed in to play and had a great time! I could not figure out the night controls tho, I pressed Z, and something changed but then it said something about going east, but after that I could not do anything. Removing the timer could be an option there, because I really wanted it to work, but I didn't know how!
Very nice job on this game!
Thank you for playing our game and for your kind words! The resizing is something that we definitely will want to fix after the jam; same with improving some aspects of the night rituals.
Thank you again for taking your time and playing through.
I really like the game and gave me a good mini game vibe I use to grow up playing in the browser. The only downfall was the sound as it was a bit crackling and distorted playing. Otherwise great game.
If you're playing on Mac/Safari, the sound's unfortunately a known issue we didn't get the chance to look into.
Glad you enjoyed it, though!
This was pretty sick, I love the concept and the art is really unique!
the name choice is brilent! to be honest coffe is the closedt thing to the elexer of life we mortals can get to
I'll have to give this one another go when not on a Mac! The screen doesn't scale and is reaaaallllyyyy tiny :D
If you're tired of Mac never having feature parity with other platforms, I have good news!
It's tiny on every platform!
The art is so snazzy, and I loved all the little details in the surroundings, the √2% milk and the re-caff got me chucklin'. I really liked the variety in the minigames, circling with my cursor felt cute and silly, it's clear you all put a lot of thought and care into this game! Great work to you all 💚
Ooh, I've never had my work called "Snazzy" before! Glad you liked it!
I think my personal favourite has to be the double-decker espresso machine from the intro. It's the perfect balance of readable, yet stupid.
I'm ashamed to admit that as a tea-drinker I fully did not clock that it was irregular, but now that you've pointed it out it's so obvious ahaha. Stickin' in the little details that make us chuckle are the best parts of dev, I'm glad the project was as much fun to make as it was to play!
Really cute, once I got into the swing of things it was really fun managing everything, the messages to help you know if you were on the wrong screen were a GREAT UX decision ahhaha. I also really liked having a different set of controls for day/night, a nice little touch to make them feel distinct
I have to credit Sophia with the clever change to night controls. Quote:
"to have the ritual stuff use lower buttons as a subtle way to show how its underhanded"
The art looks phenomenal! I like the gameplay and the little alchemy minigame between days. Minor nitpick is that instead of holding to pour contents on a cup I just have to click once. Overall, I really enjoyed it, solid game.
High praise for art I made with my mouse, haha!
We were aware of the click-fill exploit; I think we ended up keeping it, but had a small penalty to your tips on delivery. It felt like a speedrun strat, which was fun.
Yeah as Nev says, that mechanic is supposed to reward you for a perfect pour and punish you for a pour that is too short or too long (there's a small audio queue associated with that) but it isn't obvious enough that you're getting punished. Thanks for the feedback!
really cool ideia with the coffee machine ^^
I'm not sure which one you mean, but thank you!