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 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. So, 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.
+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. Yeah! And, hi guys. I'm LeifEricson, a.k.a. Eric. I've been doing programming on and off for, you know, like maybe eight-ish years or so. And uh, 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.
+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." And 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, you know, 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.
+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?
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 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 primarily 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.
+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.
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 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?
+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, but the game actually takes place on a the first ever Intergalactic College space station. So, the space station i 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: 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."
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 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 you pursue that.
+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?
+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.
+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.
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 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.
+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: 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, and it's just a funny thing we do back and forth.
+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.
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 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 it gets the name out there a little bit. So it's kind of two reasons.
+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.
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 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.
+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.
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 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 kind of 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.
+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.
+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 say that he wanted to help work out 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.
+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.
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 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.
+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.
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 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.
+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.
+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?
+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.
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 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 as your name?
+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?
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 Chris: Honestly, it's a great name. I won't lie.
-Canni: It kind of rolls off the tongue a little bit.
+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?
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 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 she's kind of away right now, but she's also 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.
+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?