Chris: Joining me today are the two lead devs of Nitro Brew Games. They're working on Cosmic Latte, a dating sim-style space adventure. Would you two like to introduce yourself?
Canni: Yeah! I'm CannibalBlue. I have no previous video game creating experience at all. But, um, I decided one day that I wanted to make a dating sim, and I knew that Eric was pretty good with coding. And so, I reached out to him to see if he wanted to work on it with me and it kind of just took off from there.
Eric. Hi guys. I'm Leif, a.k.a. Eric. I've been doing programming on and off for... maybe eight-ish years or so. Canni has been my friend for a while, and they they approached me one day and said, "Hey I have this idea for a really ambitious project. It's a dating sim. Would you like to help out?" And I said, "Absolutely I would." And it's all started from there for me.
Chris: I know you have had this idea in your mind for a while. What actually inspired you to go through with making this game, Canni?
Canni: So, I saw someone on Twitter who was working on a visual novel, and they were showing updates of what it looked like. And, you know... I thought to myself. I was like, "Well I can make 2D art." It just seemed easy enough. I really love story writing. I run a lot of Dungeons and Dragons campaigns. So I'm all on board with world building, and you know, character development and everything. So I was like, this is definitely something that I could do. I've always wanted to make a game. That's kind of just where it took off.
Chris: I mean it's actually quite amazing that you actually went through with starting to work on it, and getting Eric involved. And not just letting it sit in your head. I have a feeling, like every single person in the world just has this idea for some type of story. But never takes the initiative type thing, you know what I mean?
Canni: Yeah. And honestly, Eric is kind of the mastermind behind all of it too. I'll come with him with a really ambitious idea and I'll just be like, "Hey Eric, is this possible?" And he's like, "Well, I'm not sure, but let me try." And then he gets in there and does his coding stuff, and it works. And I'm just, it's like magic.
Chris: Speaking about all the different ideas he comes up with, I know that the game is primarily a visual novel. I guess this is for a question for both of you. What would you say the game is actually about? With all these different systems... like you mentioned crafting, and traveling to different universes, and all that sorts of stuff. Do you just label it as a visual novel, a dating sim, or something else?
Eric: I mean, I think when you think of it the first thought is definitely that it's a dating sim. But you know, it has a lot of RPG elements too. Like you mentioned, we do have a crafting system. There's a currency and shop system. You can build up stats, in relation to your strength and the affection that you build towards the different characters. So it is a dating sim, but it has a lot of elements of, you know, things like RPGs and other games that we love to play. Just different elements of different genres.
Canni: Yeah, we definitely wanted to make it as interactive as we possibly could. I know that a lot of people, myself included, when I'm playing visual novels or dating sims I'm just like... "Okay. Click, click." It's a lot of dialogue. It's a lot of clicking. And we wanted to add in a couple of elements that break that up a little bit, so that you feel like you're doing something. And so that you feel like you've actually got to put a little bit of work into, you know, building a relationship with these characters.
Chris: When you say it's a RPG... I know this probably isn't the case, but all that comes to mind is like there's gonna be some sort of secret, hidden boss with ten faces. And I just can't get the idea out of my mind, even though I know it's more of a dating sim.
Eric: I would say, like, RPG elements. But maybe the the whole battling mechanic of RPGs, not so much.
Chris: Darn, I can't use mana and all that stuff? Okay. Canni, why did you decide on a dating sim, versus any other genre? Was that just the style of game you knew you wanted to have made, or was it something you decided over time?
Canni: So initially, that was actually right out the gate. I was like, I want to make a dating sim. I really love Monster Prom. I really loved Doki Doki [Literature Club], there's so many that I could go on about that I really like to play. And when I saw other people working on their dating sims I was like, "This seems like something that I could do." I really love building characters in a way that makes them feel very well-rounded. And like, you understand who they are. That comes with the territory of working on Dungeons and Dragons campaigns. So I really wanted to take that element of my writing and put that into a dating sim.
Canni: You know, building off of that a little bit... I have, from the very beginning of working on Cosmic Latte, been very passionate and very vocal about wanting these characters to not just be very 2D in how they feel when you interact with them. I wanted them to have flaws. I wanted them to have ambitions, I wanted them to have fears. They're gonna have character traits that the player might not even like very much. But it makes them feel like a more real character, rather than just a cookie-cutter romance character.
Chris: When you say character traits people won't like... what exactly do you mean by that? Do you mean like, "oh this type of food," like many other dating games? Or, what do you mean?
Canni: No, it goes a little bit deeper than that. We have characters that have trauma. We have characters that have flaws in terms of how they interact socially and emotionally. Some characters are a lot more off-putting and a lot more cold because of their past, and we have these backstories that we're writing for them that really reflect why they act the way that they do. But, yeah, it goes more than just that they like they like a food, or they dislike a food, or something. They are real, with raw character traits and character flaws. We have a whole roster. I believe we have nine romance characters, all with very different traits, very different sexualities, very different identities. We wanted to be as inclusive as we possibly could. We've got bisexual characters, we have an ace character. We have two trans characters. One of them isn't romanceable. But we did want to put, you know, as much inclusivity as we possibly could in there. Our dev team is an array of different people with different stories, and so we wanted to reflect that in the game that we were making.
Chris: Would you say a lot of the characters you guys designed, you can sort of see yourselves in?
Canni: Oh, absolutely. We have several developers that are working on it that identify as ace, or trans. Bisexual, myself. Non-binary. So I wanted to make sure that as we write these stories, we get their input on what would be the best way to write them, so that it came from their experiences. Granted, we are still in the infancy of the writing process. We have the characters laid out and outlined, but we're still working through that. But as we continue the writing process, we are getting a lot of input from these different people with different experiences so that we can have an accurate depiction of these different walks of life.
Chris: When did you guys actually start working on this? It sounds like there's been a lot of time and consideration put into it. When did you guys actually start?
Eric: I think it was about a year ago that I joined. I think that was pretty early on, when Canni was just coming up with the initial ideas for it. So I would say it's been about a year of development so far, on and off. There's been periods where, you know, our lives are busy and we haven't been able to work on it as much. Every once in a while we get back together and we push and add some more things to the game. It's just been a cycle of on and off development over the past year.
Chris: Well I will say, it does look very polished. And on the better side of really early game development type stuff. I'm sort of surprised to only hear that it's been only a year.
Canni: It has been very on and off. It's been snippets of like, three months of working on it, and then three months of not working on it. Like Eric was saying, we get really busy. We've also been very transparent with each other, about how we have no expectations of how quickly we work on this. So everybody is kind of just working at their own pace and working on what they can, when they can.
Chris: It's only been about a year since you started the process of making the game. I guess you had to decide on the setting and all that. What made you decide to do a space adventure in a... café? And, what made you decide on the name Cosmic Latte?
Canni: I could take this question. So, the game itself doesn't actually take place in a coffee shop. There are coffee shop elements, like, just a very cozy coffee shop-type vibe. I don't know if you've ever played the game "Coffee Talk", but I love that atmosphere. So it's sprinkled in a little bit. The game actually takes place on a the first ever Intergalactic College space station. So, the space station is anchored just outside of a solar system that we have completely made up ourselves. It's called S19-- Solar System 19-- and the spaceship is called Elysium. So the actual setting of the game is more of a college, school-type setting. But as far as the space theme, I guess it was just something that I hadn't seen done yet. And I really love space. It also has a cyberpunk kind of aesthetic as well. We've got a lot of characters with really cool, grungy-looking cybernetics. So it kind of teeters between sci-fi and cyberpunk in terms of the aesthetic.
Canni: The reason that I chose the name Cosmic Latte, it's kind of cheesy. I had a boyfriend a couple years back. We were talking about space, and existence, and everything. And he ended up saying something really cute to me that was like, "we're floating specks in a Cosmic Latte." So yeah, it was like this really cute little like romantic line that he had said to me, and I had this idea of adding that line into the game. So from there I was like, "Well actually, if we're gonna put the line into the game, we should totally name it Cosmic Latte just to kind of tie everything together."
Chris: Also, to answer your question from earlier, I have played "Coffee Talk." It's been a while though. But that's pretty cool, and the name's not that cheesy actually. Not the craziest thing I've ever heard. So, Eric, I know you've been the lead on the coding side things. How has that been, just taking on a whole bunch of the coding for this? And tell me about your process.
Eric: Sure. It's been actually a lot of fun, because I hadn't had much experience with the game engine we're using. Which, by the way, is Ren'Py. It's a visual novel-oriented scripting language based on Python. It makes it really easy to do a lot of, I guess you would say "basic" visual novel interactions. Like the dialogue, and scene transitions, things like that are all pretty straightforward to implement. So it's been a lot of fun learning that, and learning all the features, and also learning on how to expand on it. Because it's based in Python, a lot of it is very easy to extend and add features to. A lot of the stuff as Canni was saying earlier, when they would come to me and be like, "Can this thing possibly be done in in this engine?" I go back to them like, "Yeah... I don't know, maybe. Let me look into it." But a lot of the time, it's possible, because internally it's just Python. So it's been a lot of fun trying to work out these little problems of how to add specific features when our team brainstorms new ideas and things.
Chris: Is Python your main language you've learned over the years? I know it's the "base" language everyone usually starts off with. But would you say it's your main language you like to use overall?
Eric: Definitely. It's definitely the easiest for me to quickly write stuff when I need to test things. [To me] it's a scripting language, which makes it very easy to do basic little scripts and things like that. So it's probably my default. Although, a lot of the classes I took in school were on C and C++. Which is, let's say... a lot more "fun" to use than Python. A lot more challenging.
Chris: I learned C++ with Visual Studio, it still hurts me to this day. Why did you decide on the engine you chose? I think I know somewhat, because I had this discussion with Canni earlier. But is is there any specific reasons why?
Canni: We chose Ren'Py-- well, mostly Eric chose Ren'Py. I told him I had this idea, but I had no idea how to execute it. He had brought it up to me that Ren'Py was a pretty commonly used engine for visual novels and dating sims. It was actually mentioned that the creators of Doki Doki [Literature Club] used it. So he had already known what it was, and kind of just threw the idea my way.
Chris: You guys have posted on Twitter in the past pictures of you testing the game on mobile. Would that have something to do with Ren'Py as well, or...?
Canni: I'll let Eric handle that question.
Eric: We had started this not really even thinking about porting it to mobile, or to console, or anything like that. But as we got more familiar with Ren'Py I started to look into it, just sort of out of curiosity. And out of the box, Ren'Py supports building games for for iOS, for Android, for PC, Mac, and Linux. So it's pretty cross-platform out of the box. It's a possibility down the road that we could release a mobile version, potentially a console version, things like that. It's always an option to us if we want to pursue that.
Chris: If you did do a mobile version, do you think you guys would have to cut anything out? Like, control interface-wise? Or do you think it would be on par with a computer version of the game?
Eric: I would try my best not to cut out any features. But it would probably need its own control scheme, yeah. You probably have to work around the touch screen and things like that. I mean, Ren'Py does have functions to deal with mobile-specific, touch screen things. But it would have to be separate development for that.
Chris: What are your guys' favorite development things that have happened so far? Like stories, or anything like that?
Canni: Okay so, one of my favorites-- and I keep bringing it up. Eric has an O.C. that he has made, her name is Ismay. We were testing DLC characters, because we would like to make DLC down the road, and he ended up putting Ismay in the code as a test DLC character. A few months down the road, we ended up actually adding Ismay as an NPC, because we love her. And I go into the game to like, test some stuff, and I see that the new test character's name is "Testmay." It's just a little joke between us that I thought that was really fun.
Eric: Yeah, I love putting little jokes in there. I probably need a second to think about what my answer would be.
Canni: There's another spot in the game where we're testing add-ons, there's a whole add-on menu Eric had put in. We're both really big Twilight fans. I just opened up the game, and had no idea what he put in, but the dialogue for one of the buttons was the opening to Twilight! And I just loved that.
Eric: Yeah. So, because when you add the dialogue and script for the game you have to go into the code, Canni and I do sometimes sneak in little inside jokes between us. Or we put them in little messages when things get added to GitHub, or just places that one of us will find it and just not expect to see some joke there. It's just a funny thing we do back and forth.
Canni: I really love it.
Chris: So just a whole bunch of inside jokes going on all the time without being known.
Canni: Yeah. Like, I sent a commit the other day to our GitHub. And I just titled it, "Bella! Where the hell have you been, loca?"
Chris: Recently Canni I've seen you online on Discord, or and do not disturb on Discord, playing Cosmic Latte. Is it in the early test phases, or would you say it's getting closer to a finished product? Because I see it more and more commonly.
Canni: It's kind of a double reason, there's two reasons why you'll see me playing it. So, the main reason why you'll see it open is because I am testing things. I'm writing in a lot of dialogue and stuff, and then I'm going through and and actually playing through the dialogue and making sure that the pacing feels comfortable and not rushed, or not really sluggish. So you'll see me doing that. But I also sometimes will just leave it up because I want other people to be like, "Cosmic Latte? What's that? What's Canni playing?" So I just thought it would be a little fun thing that people can see that I'm playing, that gets the name out there a little bit. So it's kind of two reasons.
Canni: As far as how polished and done the game is... I would say that a really large portion of the game mechanically is done. We have all the inner workings of the stats, and the characters. And all of the character art is done, several of the backgrounds. Definitely still have a lot more to go. What we're really working on now is the writing. Coming with more mechanics and things that we need to put in. At face value it looks done, we just have to finish the story. Which is huge, for having nine different characters with nine different stories and branches. It's gonna take us quite a while to finish the the story writing aspect of it.
Chris: I would assume a visual novel would require a lot of variety.
Canni: Oh, absolutely. And then you have to take that writing... you know, I'll write it in OneNote or Google Docs, and then I've got to take that writing and put it into Ren'Py. I use the "Atom" editor, I don't think that's the one Eric uses, but that's the one I use. And then I've got to put it in there. I did not know a single lick of Python prior to this, literally nothing. Eric has been really patient with me. And he's gotten on several calls with me and basically showed me how to... mostly just add lines of dialogue, but how to change scenes. How to add pauses, labels. There's so much that I've learned over the last year when it comes to just coding this visual novel/dating sim.
Chris: It sounds like it's been quite the learning experience, for both of you I'm assuming. Eric, what has it been like teaching Canni how to use some basic Python?
Eric: It's really fun for me. I just love programming. So I love, like, being able to show other people how to do little things. And I can see Canni getting better every week. It's just been a lot of fun for me to learn how to use Ren'Py and then be able to pass on how to do some of the more fancy, advanced stuff to Canni. And see their knowledge on it grow as well. So it's been fun.
Canni: We have a bug report channel, where if one of us launches the game and we get hit with an error, we can basically copy the markdown for Discord and post it in there. And it's at least once a week where I'm like, "Eric...? I broke it. What did I do?" And it's always something really silly that I just had glanced over. And I think that's the biggest thing that I've learned from learning Python with Eric, most of it is just some really small thing that you would think is very insignificant that the game just gets hung up on.
Chris: You forgot the semicolon. You forgot the parenthesis.
Canni: Exactly, exactly.
Eric: I think the main thing you've learned is that computers are not forgiving in that way. They're not understanding of your needs.
Canni: Yeah it can't interpret... it's very exact in in how it reads the code, so I've got to make sure that I'm very exact and how I'm writing it.
Chris: Syntax can be everyone's worst nightmare when it comes to that type of stuff. I know this isn't very set in stone at the moment. But Canni, when were you looking to have this game out?
Canni: Oh man, it's such a hard to tell thing. Because we do keep taking such big frequent breaks, it's hard to tell. And it's really hard to tell how much progress we've made, and how much more we have to go. But looking at the game where it is now, I truly and genuinely think that if we were to buckle down on the writing... We've taken on a couple of new writers recently. If we were to really buckle down on this writing, I think we could have it out by next year.
Chris: I would love to see it out by 2023. I'm not crossing my fingers or anything, because it can change at any moment.
Canni: Yeah. And we've also talked about a Patreon demo of the game as well. Or, we both are in the gaming community, the Twitch community. We have friends that stream. We've talked about having a mostly finished version, and having a couple of our friends beta test. Like a closed beta on stream or something, prior to it coming out.
Chris: So you said there's a whole bunch of other people working on this game. Has there been anyone on the project as long as the two of you?
Canni: Starting out it was pretty much just me and Eric. Logan did come on pretty early and said that he wanted to help work on the writing, however his position on that has changed because he's super busy with work. So he's mostly just been an idea guy. And he wanted to help with putting some dialogue in and stuff. But for the most part, everybody else kind of trickled in over the last year.
Chris: I mean everyone needs an idea guy.
Canni: That's Logan. A little too... really ambitious sometimes. He's like, "we should add combat into the game!" And I was like, "Logan, it's a cozy game."
Chris: Only blood makes me cozy.
Eric: Logan would be the one to come up with an idea for an epic final boss like you were saying.
Canni: Yeah, absolutely. But we also have a Discord for it with a few people who aren't actually working on the game. A couple of really close friends are in the Discord, and we're just kind of giving them little sneak peeks and updates on the game. As well as having an open suggestions channel. And in that suggestions channel we've also talked about Easter eggs and stuff like that, so we plan to add quite a few Easter eggs. Even some that are really special to each of the developers, that'll be kind of hidden in the game.
Chris: I heard you talk about a whole bunch of extra features, like the Easter eggs, and DLC. Would you say that after the game initially releases you plan on adding more content? Frequently, semi-frequently, not at all?
Canni: I guess that's what I'm trying to get at. I personally would love to see us add more content to the game. It really is going to depend on what launch looks like, and how the game ends up turning out once it's finished. We've bounced ideas off of each other about DLC. There are a lot of NPCs that are in the game right now that we were like, "You know, we could do a DLC later down the road where they're romanceable." We've also talked about in-game content for cosmetics. We have a cosmetic system for the characters, and so at the very least we do want to add some cosmetics and stuff. But depending on how it turns out, I would love to see some DLC and stuff. If we want to make other games, or try something else, it's just a passion project.
Eric: We also, as far as the add-on system and the DLC system... I'm trying my best to design it in a way that it would be very easy for people in the community to add their own mods and things, too. It's designed in such a way that it's sort of like a DLC/mod loader system, so community members could make all kinds of content for it too. Hopefully.
Canni: Yeah, we love mods. We would love to see people mod and add their own characters.
Chris: Mods are always great. One of the good old classics, like Thomas the Tank Engine [in Skyrim]. I love mods.
Canni: You guys heard that. We want to see Thomas the Tank Engine in Cosmic Latte.
Chris: I want to date Thomas the Tank Engine, there. Make it happen. Will there be achievements tied to it? I need to know.
Canni: Yes! We've talked about it. We plan to have Steam achievements, both silly and more serious ones. As well as some hidden achievements in the game that could change how the game looks a little bit. I don't want to give too much away, I think it'd be really exciting to discover.
Chris: So sort of like Cuphead, where when you complete everything on pacifist or S rank it adds a filter, or new audio option?
Canni: Along those lines, yeah. It'll definitely add things into the game once you you've passed certain achievements.
Chris: If the launch does well, could you guys see yourself working on more games in the future, or other projects? Or would you just stick to this one?
Eric: Definitely for me. I love working on games, I love programming, I love tinkering. So as long as it's a project that I'm passionate about, and the rest of the team is passionate about, I would I would definitely be open to making more stuff after this. It's just coming up with ideas that we would all be passionate about, I think.
Canni: Yeah, absolutely. I've thought about this a lot, because I'm like, "What's next once we finish this?" I would really love to see us work on an RPG or something. Like a pixel RPG, I love that stuff. And I think we totally could.
Chris: One of my favorite games of all time actually is a pixel RPG. It's a Nintendo property that not a lot of people know about, Golden Sun. So I love pixel RPGs, and that would be awesome to see.
Canni: Yeah, we'll just kind of have to see where where it goes. And how we're feeling once it's done.
Chris: So enough questions about the game. I have a question about your guys' name. How did you end up with "Nitro Brew Games"?
Canni: I think that... Eric, you were the one who came up with that, right?
Eric: Yeah. I think so. Initially we were gonna just call ourselves "Cosmic Latte Games," but I believe that name had already been taken. So we just started brainstorming related ideas to Cosmic Latte, all kinds of ideas, and I think "Nitro Brew" just kind of came to me. I suggested it, and everybody seemed to really like it, so that's what we went with.
Chris: Honestly, it's a great name. I won't lie.
Canni: It kind of rolls off the tongue a little bit!
Chris: I really like it. Other than the game, what are some side projects you guys have been wanting to work on and look forward to?
Canni: I guess for me, mostly Cosmic Latte has been my passion project. I'm also working on a Tarot deck that I'm really close to finishing, and that's been kind of my other passion project. But other than that, I've been really hyper focused on Cosmic Latte.
Chris: What about you, Eric?
Eric: I've been super into retro computing lately. In danger of getting too nerdy about it, I have a small little... circuit board basically, with a tiny computer roughly from the 80s era that I've been messing with. A lot of my extra spare time I've been making little programs for it and and tinkering with the hardware. So that's been my main side project lately.
Chris: You don't have to be worried about getting too nerdy about stuff like that. I love hearing about all sorts of computer work or anything like that, and it sounds like a lot of fun.
Eric: Yeah. The name of the the board is the the CPUVille Z80 Single Board Computer, if anybody is interested in looking into that. If anybody out there is into retro computing, I've had a lot of fun with this board, so definitely look into that.
Chris: I'm gonna have to look into that after this interview, see what it's all about. I haven't gotten into a lot of retro stuff. I'm more software side than the hardware side, I'll put it that way. Other than that, do you guys have anything else you want to say? Any other things you'd like to talk about?
Canni: I just wanted to give a shout out to everybody else who's working on the game really quickly, if that's okay.
Chris: That's completely fine.
Canni: Awesome. So on the writing spectrum of things, we have a really awesome group of writers, including: CelestialCalli, lex.vapor, HonnSolo, as well as xivMoonstone. I know that [Moonstone's] kind of away right now, but she's been helping us with that. And then on the art end of things: CanaMochi did the GUI, and ended up doing an absolute wonderful job at it. And then we just brought on a new artist, her name is Koda. She's going to be drawing all of our items and stuff in-game. And then Ravirheart, who is going to be adding dialogue. They've been kind of helping us with ideas and stuff as well, so they're helping with the writing as well as story building. But they're going to be adding our dialogue actually into the Ren'Py engine. And then of course Logan, who's doing a little bit of everything. His username is Oystahs. Shout out to all of them for helping us with this project.
Chris: Well it sounds like quite the good sized team. I honestly didn't know it was that big, but that's a decent amount of people working on it. What about you, Eric?
Eric: I'm just really excited to keep working on this. It's been something I've been super, super passionate about. So I hope that we can keep working on it. I hope that maybe next year this game will release, or at least we can release a demo. I'm just really excited that we got to talk about the game a little bit.
Canni: Yeah, thank you for hosting this Handi.
Chris: It's been amazing. I've been really excited for this, and looking forward to talking to you guys about it. Game development's fun, I'll put it that way.
Eric: It's challenging, and it's a lot of work, but it is a lot of fun.