cryptid coffeehouse
digital video game, ren'py, 2022
cryptid coffeehouse is a queer, slow burn, coffee shop themed dating simulator revolving around humanized nonbinary mothman. it was originally created for an independent game design study, and it was released on itch.io on january 14, 2022 and on steam on august 12, 2022. it's a direct spinoff of hot monsters (2021), which is a short cryptid dating simulator featuring mothman and bigfoot created for an introduction to game design class. it has undergone four versions so far: a beta pre-release version, version 1.2, version 2.0, and version 3.0.
shortly after hot monsters was completed, my game design professor at the time, katherine castiello jones, reached out to not only me but also my other group members, fiona harrell-duchaine and joey boudot, for the spring semester's class. she told us that she had loved our work in class over the course of the semester and wanted to offer us an opportunity to take an independent game design study with her either in the fall of 2021 or the spring of 2022. around this time, fiona, joey, and i had been talking about continuing hot monsters over the summer and fully developing it into something at a larger scale. this unfortunately never happened. we had also planned on taking the independent study during the same semester, but as i'm in a completely different program and college at the university than fiona and joey are, our schedules conflicted and we weren't able to do that either.
however, with more discussion with katherine, i decided that i was going to take the independent study with them, even if i was going to end up doing it on my own. now the dilemma was to figure out what on earth i was going to create in the duration of a semester. i had a couple ideas swimming around in my head, but hot monsters kept coming back to me. i've always loved dating simulation games, as dorky as that sounds. i played them a bunch in middle school and high school, and they're one of my favorite kinds of casual games to play. i've always loved the narratives that could be spun in a dating sim, all the characters that a player could meet and potentially romance, all the hidden endings and events one could encounter.
a plan for the early development of the game. most of what is pictured here was scrapped
during that summer in between semesters, i played many dating sims to pass the time: dream daddy, monster prom, our life: beginnings and always, and witches x warlocks just to name a few. i really cannot describe just how much i love dating sims, especially ones that have diverse casts, and during that summer, i couldn't stop thinking about how i could turn hot monsters into the dating sim of my dreams.
sticky note plans and organizational notes from a meeting with a game design alum, delong du
growing up, i had always wanted to make my own dating sim game. i played a lot of those low quality mid-2010s web browser anime dating simulation games on my school laptop during classes in high school. i was on scratch.mit.edu around that time, and a user i had looked up to created a dating sim that i was absolutely obsessed with (i would be lying if i said i don't think about it even now. i honestly think it's what started my love for dating sims. the creator of the dating sim was just a kid like me, but i was riveted).
after daydreaming and contemplating over the summer (and after logging 61 hours in just under two months on blush blush), i finally decided that i was going to make my own dating sim and it was going to be the best damn thing i had ever created in my entire life.
wireframe plans for the prologue and mothman route events #1, #2, #4, #5, #6, and #7
and so began the process of creating cryptid coffeehouse.
katherine and i structured the independent study so that we met once a week on wednesdays to go over my progress and discuss any thoughts or questions i had about what i was doing. creating this game while also taking a full 18 credit hour courseload and being employed part-time forced me to address places where i drastically overestimated how much i could get done, as the goal was to have a finished prototype of the game for the university's game lab showcase on the second week of december. after many late nights and hundreds of hours of sitting at my desk, cryptid coffeehouse v1.0 was completed just in time for the game lab showcase on december 8, 2021.
a speedpaint of the creation of odina davis' character sprite
cryptid coffeehouse had originally been a dating simulator with many different facets. it was supposed to have multiple love interests (this was scrapped very quickly), 24 individual side events to complement the main route, and also a completely functional coffee shop mechanism where the player could gain stats for other characters and unlock hidden events based off what drinks they picked. all of these plans were simply me overshooting what i could finish in a very short time period, so i've had to focus on what's most important: the mothman route.
this game focuses primarily on mothman, or artemis, as they're called in my game. the game takes place in an alternate version of an undisclosed midwestern state and in a world where humanoid hybrids of mythological and fantasy creatures run wild. just as an example, i have anthropomorphic versions of a jackalope, a gorgon, a goblin, and a thunderbird, among others, as characters in the game. despite all of these fantastical elements, the game is very casual and slice-of-life. it follows the player, who explores the town and gets to know artemis over the course of seven weeks.
the player has the opportunity to romance artemis during the game's timeframe. some other critical details and features of the first build are as follows:
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the mothman route is 7 events long. each event takes place on a separate game week.
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there was originally going to be a function in which the player would be able to "go to work," but this was removed. instead, the work function is already built into the game. players will receive a fluctuating allowance every game week and the money earned can be used for certain choices later in the game. originally, this was a way to incentivize using the coffee shop mechanism, but now that that's been scrapped, this new function seems to flow more seamlessly.
some images of what the game looked like during the first build
i had initially planned to put the game together in unity, but after talking to an alum, we both thought it would be best to put everything together in ren'py. this proved to be a godsend, because i think that if i had tried to tackle learning unity and putting together a game in that engine simultaneously, i would probably lose my mind.
when the fall semester had ended, i was left with a complete game, but it wasn't exactly what i wanted. i wanted to release a prettier version of the game online sometime during or just after winter break, so i used my time out of school to completely re-envision the game user interface as well as change some other things such as music, backgrounds, and typos. i wanted to create something cute and fun, and i think i succeeded!
some parts of the updated game user interface in version 1.2!
in the spring semester, i took up cryptid coffeehouse once again for an eep (experiential exploration program), which is an alternate option to a co-op at the university of cincinnati. the plan was to further develop cryptid coffeehouse, adding new story events, new visuals and cgs, and doing various bug testing. after about four months of hard work, cryptid coffeehouse v2.0 was released online on itch.io on april 30, 2022, just over three months after the original release date.
the new features for build v2.0 include:
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three new story events that further develop the player's relationship with artemis
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these events total just over 35,000 words, pushing the game's word count to over 88,000 words. this is about the length of the average young adult novel
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imagemaps (images as choice menus rather than text) and other various in-game visuals
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two new cgs, as well as a cg library to view all cgs unlocked during the game
you can read more about what the new build includes in the devlog that i posted on itch.io on the day of release.
new visual elements of the game in version 2.0
as for the game's release on itch.io, things have been going exceedingly well.
in the first 24 hours of the original release, cryptid coffeehouse was downloaded 100+ times and added to more than 40 collections. 12 hours later, the game was downloaded about 100 more times and added to 25 more collections.
in the 5 months after the new release of version 2.0, the game was downloaded over 4100 times. prior to the new release, i would average about 5-10 downloads a day, maybe 15 on a good day. now, i'm averaging 25-40 downloads a day. the game continuously climbs higher in the searches by the day. over 96% of the game's reviews are 5 stars.
above are the analytics from april 10th, 2023, to may 9th, 2023
i've slowly been building a community of players and fans, which is also kind of blowing my mind. over the past several months, i've obtained a large amount of twitter followers as well as been tagged in everything from fanart, playlists, speedpaints, and recently fanfiction as well.
there have even been inquiries on whether i'll be making physical merch for players to potentially buy and own, something that i'm currently working on. on august 12th, i put out a small, limited merch drop on my etsy. i plan on working on and releasing more merchandise later in the semester, and i'll hopefully have that dropped in late december or early january.
for the small merchandise drop, i released a modest selection of prints and stickers in an attempt to figure out what fans were interested in and wanted to buy. i also created a special, limited edition artemis photocard (meant to emulate the kinds of photocards included in k-pop albums) that was shipped out in hand-decorated toploaders by me! these photocards were exclusive gifts to fans who not only bought from my etsy store, but also were members of my discord. i wanted to find a way to express my thanks for them, and i did discover that some fans were more interested in owning the photocard than any of the other merch— they would buy from the store just to receive the photocard! i think this is a sign for me to do similar things in the future as well.
the merchandise featured in the august 12th etsy drop, as well as the promo image i created for twitter
cryptid coffeehouse was additionally selected and featured in the 2022 game developers of color expo and was featured in indiecade's 2022 steam showcase in october. on august 12th, the game was released on steam. on august 22nd, the third and final version of cryptid coffeehouse began development. twenty months later, on january 26th, 2024, cryptid coffeehouse v3.0 was released on itch.io and steam. this final build includes the following:
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new and redesigned character sprites, plus new outfits and hairstyles for specific events to match the script and add a bit of fun
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redrawn cgs to align with the new character sprites
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new in-game art and visual assets— a new ending cg, new visual choice menus, backgrounds, and supplemental visual materials to further set the tone of the game and to allow players to see items that the characters are talking about
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custom typeface to assist with branding and general vibes
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edits to the game user interface to make it not only more intuitive, but also more accessible (different font choices, font sizes, brightness and contrast toggles, text box transparency options, text beep volume sliders, etc.)
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64,000 words worth of new story content, which includes 3 new story events and modified parts of the existing narrative
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original music done by chicago-based musician mello jupiter
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partial voice acting done by a diverse cast of voice actors, all intended to reflect the ethnicities, races, and nationalities of my characters
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grammar and typo fixes
the final version of the game clocks in at about 152,000 words and has a playtime of 7-9 hours.
images of the final script in celtx and the new sprites for the v3.0 build in various states of completion
after version 3.0's release, some bugs and typos were brought to my attention. i had additionally finished my undergrad thesis game demo, kurou connect, which is a visual novel that focuses on one of artemis' friends, kurou hasegawa. kurou connect was a game that included all-original assets and i really wanted to get that point with cryptid coffeehouse. i'd learned a lot during the crunch of making kurou connect, and i felt like there was a still a little more to be done with cryptid coffeehouse to truly wrap it up neatly. every time i had released a build, i had axed things for the sake of time, but now that i was graduated and had more time on my hands, i didn't have that restriction. on november 15, 2024, artemis' birthday, cryptid coffeehouse version 3.1 was released. this build included:
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improved accessibility, including a more navigable user interface and edits to ren'py's self-voicing capability rollback was enabled and a back button was added to the in-game quick menu
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fixed bugs and corrected typos
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a new character initialization screen, which replaced the system of choices and text inputs that occurred at the beginning of the game to set up the player character
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original songs for the in-game bands, point pleasant and system five. during my thesis semester, i met gnommen in a 3d modeling class and became very good friends with him. he did the soundtrack for kurou connect and i wanted to bring him on to do the band songs for cryptid coffeehouse, as my other soundtrack producer, mello jupiter, was unable to do those.
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custom sound effects, ui sounds, and text beeps. these were done by gnommen as well, with the text beeps of the main cast being pulled from kurou connect for continuity across games.
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new supplemental images. these took the form of polaroids that were placed in two specific spots: two where artemis talks about their younger sister diana for the first time, and three when you go to artemis' childhood home and are looking around their room. i had always wanted to draw these polaroids to give the game better depth and never had the chance to.
images of some of the updates included in v3.1
with the addition of gnommen's band tracks to the game, the game's soundtrack was finally in a state of total completion. at this point, i decided to work with both gnommen and mello jupiter to put the full soundtrack on streaming services. at midnight on november 15th, the official cryptid coffeehouse game soundtrack was available on spotify for streaming and on bandcamp for digital download.
now that the true final version of cryptid coffeehouse was released, it was time to work on something i'd been planning for the past several years: console releases. currently, i'm working with ireland-based porting house viridian software to bring cryptid coffeehouse to xbox, playstation 4 & 5, and nintendo switch. the plan is to have an xbox release in q1 2025 and playstation + nintendo switch releases in either q3 or q4 2025. in order for this to be successful, however, i had to make a couple of edits to the v3.1 build to make it more console friendly. version 3.1.1 was created and it includes the following:
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the scrolling heart background underlay that's used in the main menu and game menu was replaced with a tileable scrolling background sized 1920 x 1080, as the old background was twice the size and would overload some console screens
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brands were removed from the backgrounds to avoid copyright strikes during console certification
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the new character initialization screens were completely redone as i had to add a new selection for players' preferred relationship titles and overhaul the custom pronoun screen to make it more console friendly. i also was starting to find the old initialization screens a bit unattractive, so i was glad to have this chance.
version 3.1.1 is currently unreleased, but will most likely be released on steam and itch.io on the day of the xbox console release.
the v3.1.1 version of the character initialization screens
cryptid coffeehouse is now fully complete, but i felt like there was one last thing missing from artemis' story. over the years, i've gotten a lot of requests from players about a myriad of things, but one thing that's been asked of me repeatedly is if there will ever be a sexually intimate scene with artemis. initially, my answer had been no, as i hadn't seen a way to properly incorporate something like that into the mainline story, but now that the game as been extended into something much longer than it originally was, i now see a place for it. while sexual content in visual novels and dating simulators can often be a taboo subject, i find that it can be a very important and beautiful thing to include into a romance game if treated with the delicacy and care that it needs.
cryptid coffeehouse has an audience of mostly queer young adults and i created the game so that the writing would be comfortable for that audience. because being sexually intimate with someone needs such a high level of vulnerability, the writing for this scene would have to convey that. there would have to be an incredibly large wealth of choices, lots of consent checks and opportunities to stop, many different types of gendered language (or lack of it), and flexibility on part of artemis' character. creating a nsfw scene was not going to be an easy task and would most likely take a long time. however, i decided that i would embark on that journey for a variety of reasons:
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since it had been requested so many times already, i figured i might as well indulge the fans. i really like doing this (within reason) as it builds a good bond with my community and shows that i'm listening to the things they're telling me
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i intend to make this a paid dlc accessible on itch.io only because itch.io is my largest download market and i don't really make any profits from cryptid coffeehouse's release. it would be nice to make some money, as i know many players would be interested in something like this and would be willing to pay for it. additionally, the fact that it would be a paid dlc would prevent younger fans from easily accessing it.
the afterparty dlc, as i'm calling it, will take place directly after the events of the main game and will allow players to spend one last night with artemis. it will be released exclusively on itch.io in q2 2025 and will cost $10.99. i've outlined the prologue to the dlc, am now writing it, and have opened up an anonymous google form that allows players to submit requests for things they'd like to see in the dlc. because the game is played by so many different kinds of people, it's only natural that players would have differing tastes and preferences. catering to that will make the dlc successful!
there are active plans to create spinoff games that expand more on the cryptid coffeehouse world, but aren't centered around artemis. after the release of the afterparty dlc, i'll be working on kurou connect in earnest, most likely opening either a patreon or kickstarter to raise money for the game's expenses. after that, i am also interested in making games about taz (a barista at the coffee shop the player frequents), odina (the player's best friend), and also a game about artemis' band point pleasant 5-10 years after the events of cryptid coffeehouse, but these games will come later down the line.
regardless, now that cryptid coffeehouse is complete, i'm excited to see where it goes and what i'll be doing it from here on out, and i know i have a community of people out there who are excited too.