Hello, it’s us with our second Dev Update! At our meeting this week we discussed multiple functionalities and UI changes in the game.

• We improved the dialogue screen a lot. The visuals and UI have been tweaked.
  
• You can see that UI in the screenshots below this update! The dialogue screens are a lot clearer now, they went a long way since the initial design.
  
• We changed the speech bubbles, the design of the “console” at the bottom of the screen, the location where Arthur’s dialogue appears – in the “console” instead of separate bubbles – and we added a new Arthur’s portrait.
  
• We talked about the Investigation UI and its functionalities. It’ll work in a better, more understandable way.
  
• The process of starting a new game has been improved. Previously, the database loading took a lot of time, now the loading screen lasts 2 seconds.
  
• Our Lead Artist continues drawing graphics and the Game Designer continues preparing briefs for the visuals for the last chapters of the gameplay.
  
• The coffee consumption in the office rises, as we implement all the improvements we decided on.
  
• After adding new functionalities, the coffee consumption grows even more, because we need to fix some game elements. Adding modified views, dividing the game into chapters and new functionalities have disturbed the balance of the game. Łukasz started remodeling variable influences, prices and multipliers in his excel sheets, so that the game economy would be sensible and balanced again… He has a PhD in economics, so we hope he knows what he’s doing.
  
• We also thought a lot about UX of new in-game windows, some of which we’ve already shown in our social media.

This is the old design of our dialogue UI:



This is the new design of our dialogue UI:



That is all for this week. Let us know if you like the changes in the dialogue screen!

The Lead Artist continues her work on Arthur's office. Here's a work in progress sketch of the computer and items on his desk.

The computer is inspired by mechanical calculators from the 50's (see the examples below the sketch). Are you excited to manage your business with it?



...and some examples of mechanical calculators:

We decided today that we will post weekly Dev Updates for you! We will write about our current work, what we have completed and what we are working on. Yes, every week! Of course, we’ll still publish Dev Blogs as well.

• Recently, we talked a lot about priorities: should we all focus on creating assets, new comic boards and graphics, or on interface and various game mechanics, which work independently from the graphic assets. We decided to slow down with our work on the content of the second part of the game while polishing technical stuff, mechanics and interfaces. They will be in the whole game, after all, so it’s worth working on this before continuing the visuals.
  
  
• Anita (our game producer) sweared too much again while talking about the state of our development! If we had a penny for every swearword, we wouldn’t need additional funding...
  
  
• In-game texts are being translated to English all the time. Our favourite Native Speaker, Graham, will visit us soon in our office to revise the already translated material.
  
  
• We slowed down with the content, yeah, but that doesn’t mean we are not making it.
  
  
• Currently, briefs for the visuals for the last chapters of the gameplay are in progress.
  
  
• Speaking of the graphics, our Lead Artist’s hoarse voice during the meeting has resulted in sending her home to cure herself from the cough and the cold. The graphics will be created in the home-office mode for some time. Get well soon, Aleksandra!
  
  
• There’s a new main character portrait! Arthur’s getting a new look, distracting you with handsomeness during dialogues with contractors. The picture is almost finished, so we’ll show it soon.
  
  
• Twine is such an amazing software! Another part of dialogues is transcribed in order to create some bad-ass dialogue trees. Twine is more and more useful, though we have to be careful while transcribing. We did 60% of all the transcriptions already.
  
  
• We decided that not all texts in-game have to be spoken by the reader. This way, we reduced the amount of text that needs to be read recorded.
  
  
• After the recent tests, we decided to introduce sets of notifications for every section of the game. To be more clear: every section regarding the company management will have its own notifications list.
  
  
• Our social media and community are going to get busier. Feel free to get involved, ask us all the questions about anything that’s not clear in the Dev Updates, or tell us what you would like to see!

That’s all for now. See you the next week!

There is a lot of stuff going on right now with the production of the game. To be honest, the development of Coffee Noir has never been so intense and its quite a busy time for us since we're a small team. Nevertheless we'll try to cover all the aspects regularly and post dev diaries and updates here and on our website (coffeenoirgame.com).

The world of Coffee Noir presents an alternative reality - there was no World War II, for some reasons (it will be explained in the game) the fashion, music, applied art and pop culture has stopped at 40'/50' style.

Most of well-known noir movies takes place in USA, we wanted to use the unique atmosphere of London city and show it from a different perspective.

Basically we used old photos of 40'/50' cities to create the environment, for a larger screens we used London photos as reverences, adding some accents and elements suggesting that there this is a "different" 40s style London than we know - like advertising zeppelins, a lot of neons, retro-future electronics.



It was fun searching the internet for authentic photos of London and the city had (in fact, still has) undeniable charm



The world will be presented during cutscenes and loading screens. The game won'f focus on discovering locations - instead, Neo-London and it's story will be shown as a series of interesting facts.



We still have a lot to do. Right now we're working on new Neo-London screens. We have some work-in-progress arts like this one:



We will post our progress soon!

So... we're working on npc dialogue trees for Coffee Noir on Twine (great tool!). For this particular dialogue there are 23 different results.

Now that's some good retro-future vibes! Look at our new, work in progress UI of the production management section. We aimed for a high level of immersion, both graphics- and mechanic-wise.

Here, you will be able to determine your costs and how much you want to produce. All those numbers are calculated by our special economy engine that computes in-game economics as if they were real life ones.

Along with the development of Coffee Noir, the vision about some characters has changed. The decision to improve some illustrations was mostly dictated by plot changes. Thanks to the changes in concepts, we tweaked the visual layer of the game so that it would become an integral part of the main hero’s investigation. From now on, the player will experience the story through the rich spectrum of clues and meanings hidden within animated illustrations. Britt Gammalkvist is the best example of this technique. When we were modifying this character, we asked ourselves: what artistic means of expression should we use to enrich and complete Britt’s story? We chose: colour, valor, detail and animation. According to this scheme, we made the following changes.

OLD VERSION:


Earlier, it was decided that Britt is an elegant and confident businesswoman, who is not afraid of taking risk. Therefore, she should wear light colours that are full of life to emphasise her independence. We resigned from boring, predictable brown and picked elegant navy blue, which symbolizes seriousness, discipline and work. Now, she presents herself in daring makeup and stylish jewellery that shows her material status.

We also fine-tuned the place where she resides. Because of who the character is, we decided to add more detail in her office, such as organizers for documents and trophies, indicating good organization and success.

NEW VERSION:


What’s more, the illustration was set in motion a little. Due to limited time, we had to prepare a simple, but meaningful animation. Britt smiles slightly, breathes regularly and seems to be a calm person, but the nervous hand movement introduces some dissonance. The player subconsciously sinks into the story and searches for a hidden meaning.

To sum up: in the game development process, the artistic decisions are almost as important as correct optimization. Small changes are inevitable, but the primarily accepted convention and the way to convey the plot must be coherent. Otherwise, the end product is not a legitimate creation, but a cluster of elements that do not fit each other. As Coffee Noir developers, we are aware of this dependence, so we try our best to polish the game in every aspect. We hope that through small changes that we currently implement in the game, Coffee Noir will become an even more amazing and absorbing story.

Usually, games have engines that only roughly represent real-life economics. In Coffee Noir, we use an advanced computing engine capable of creating a very realistic in-game market. Anything related to business is created by professional academics who specialize in economy. In this blog, we’ll show you how complicated and important is the business tycoon part of our game.

The engine reflects real-life situations that contemporary managers face every day. The game is dedicated to a wide array of players, who wish to feel how it is to manage the company from the point of the four sections: production, sales, marketing and HR.

In this section the player determines how much they want to produce and what the cost will be. Innovations play an important role, as they increase production capabilities and lower unit costs. Any possible change is calculated by the engine and presented to the player in the form of numbers and graphs, based on which player takes the ultimate decision. Classic microeconomics cost classification was adopted with the division on fixed, variable, unit and marginal cost. Thanks to the combination of computing engine and user-friendly graphics, the player chooses between different levels of production with pleasure and deep sense of immersion.



In the sales section, the player talks to contractors and tries to establish cooperation on the best possible terms. For this purpose, a highly interactive negotiating module was created, which differs from the existing solutions implemented in previous games in a way that allows the player to use and check the effectiveness of over 30 negotiation techniques, including such well-known ones as: Dead Fish, Russian Front or Brooklyn optician tactic. Choosing the right negotiating technique leads to certain positive or negative financial consequences, such as higher or lower margin, which is clearly presented on the screen.



This section, in turn, is about choosing the best coffee promotion strategy at the given time. The player determines what kind of coffee he wants to promote, how long and in what area. On the basis of the entered data, the engine calculates the cost and the impact on the potential customers. The player has the ability to accept set terms and thus start the campaign or modify parameters if he does not have enough cash, or if he is not satisfied with the potential impact of the marketing campaign and wants to increase its impact. All input data are then re-calculated and displayed.

Similarly important is the HR department of the company, since in this section the player optimizes his decisions referring to work allocation to the employees. The player takes into account what type of tasks are the best for a given employee (based on the personal data provided) and tries to arrange the work schedule in the way the benefits (understood as task effectiveness) are the greatest. For example, in the game you need to care for the right level of relations with the contractors who buy coffee from you. The more working hours you assign to the specific task, the greater the growth of relations with a given contractor. The player determines the number of hours with the help of sliders, and later the system calculates the impact force on a real time basis.



Ultimately, all parameters that have financial consequences in the game are compiled in the finance section, which presents the profit and loss account for all events that occurred in the game. The player has preview of how his income has shaped over time, what is the total amount of generated costs, and whether and how he achieved net profit or loss. This is important because previously signed contracts may be terminated or modified, and this significantly affects the company’s profitability. Because the computing engine calculates economic events taking place in the game every turn and presents them in the finances section, the player has not only a comprehensive overlook of financial results, but also controls the most important financial items. All data can be checked with regard to given turn, both in the form of rough numbers or a nice chart.

Mysterious documents, dissapearances, suspicious events... It's time to investigate! This is a prototype of our investigation UI.

We're working on mechanics of the whole process, including the Investigation Board, which is a helpful tool for players. Thanks to the Board, all information from conversations with contractors or stories from animated comics can be collected in one place.

Don't forget that Coffee Noir is an alternate world with a flavour of both retro and futuristic styles. This is also an example of how our electronics look.

Probably as many other games, Coffee Noir came a long and bumpy way during its development. From purely educational, serious game developed by the small founders’ team of our Doji Studio, transformed to the product suitable for Steam and casual gamers.

Last year we planned to release Coffee Noir in the Early Access stage somewhere around Fall 2018, then postponed it to Q1 of 2019. We polished graphics, added some animations, boosted UI with retro-noir touch, rewrote plot and dialogues to give them more swift and engaging feeling – all to achieve the proper quality and coherent, extraordinary style. But we still need more time to finish the game as a standalone product. You would ask – why are you doing it so long? Postponing again? Will you ever finish it, guys?

Speaking frankly – if we were given such convienent chance to work on this project only, it would very likely be available now for you all to play. But such scenario is very often a dream of a common indie game developer. As company offering also B2B gamification systems and with realtively small team (10 people on a daily basis) we must often switch all of our attention to other projects, the ones which keeps us going financially.

But this situation cannot go on forever, right? That is why we decided that instead of Early Access stage in Q1 we want to give you the final product in Q4 this year. And it’s the final deadline – no more place for excuses on our side. So support us in this hardworking time, add us to the wishlist on Steam (very important for us!) and follow us on our social media where we’ll post news and interesting facts about the game