Lead
| A bubble tea shop owner who doesn't know how to draw and program is not a good game producer. |
I believe many players have heard the legend of the "breakup kitchen".
It's a game that can bury feelings. Washing dishes, cooking rice, cutting melons, putting dishes, and delivering vegetables...... The players are in a hurry, you push and I bump, the order time is approaching, the dripping sound of the pot will be pasted again, and in a mess, the boat of the two people's emotions will turn over. Not long ago, a Japanese artist broke down because of playing "Messy Kitchen" with her boyfriend. The "Breakup Kitchen" lives up to its name.
Legend has it that there are also successors. Recently, another "milk tea version of the breakup kitchen" has been launched, called "Cup and Cup Full".
As a meat pigeon version of the simulation management game, the early access version was launched on Steam for less than three weeks, and the sales of "Cup and Cup Full" exceeded 100,000, receiving a high praise rate of 92%. Because it is too realistic, it accurately sniped the dream of office workers as a "bubble tea shop". Some players said that because playing games like going to work, he had a "withdrawal reaction" to milk tea. There are also players who are full of fighting spirit, "I can already directly join a certain snow ice city"!
Surprisingly, there are only two developers for this game. Before making the game "Cup Fill", producers Kong Ming and Xiong Xiong really opened a bubble tea shop for three years. In 2018, the two returned to Chengdu from Shanghai, from making mobile games, opening bubble tea shops, to husband and wife partners doing independent games, focusing on the two words "casual".
As a small-scale game, why can "Cup Dump" be "caught off guard" in the simulated business track? This article contacts Kong Ming and Xiong Xiong to talk about the process of "Bubble Tea Shop Simulator" standing out.
01
Simulation management? No, it's a battle
In June 2023, the trial version of "Cup Dumping" will be released on Steam, and there will be signs of "going hot" on Xiaohongshu.
The customer is a bright and vivid mug, and the cute bear makes milk tea under high pressure, no matter how big or small, and his brain is red and warm accidentally. It seems to be cute, but in fact it is terrible, and the more players play it, the more they play, the more they start to promote it spontaneously on Xiaohongshu.
Milk tea refers to itself
And this comes from personal experience. Xiong Xiong and Kong Ming told the teahouse that when they ran a bubble tea shop, they would always encounter employees who were full of interest and "ran away" after staying for half a day. A friend quipped, "Why don't you develop a store simulator?"
Inspired by the fact that their original intention of research and development is so simple: to tell everyone that it is not so easy to be a bubble tea shop.
The story of "Cup Full" introduces a very "magical reality". The social animal Xiong Xiong had a nightmare, trapped in "working day and night". After waking up, the demon's whisper came as promised, resign, "It's profitable to open a bubble tea shop." Bear smiled evilly, signed a demon contract, and started the journey of opening a store.
But the reality is more backbone than ideal. Different from the traditional simulation management that focuses on Buddhism, "Cup and Cup Full" is a "battle game" that requires players to roll up their sleeves and go into battle, with a full sense of immersion.
The overall process of opening a store is based on reality. As a meat pigeon card level game, the early access version is divided into four chapters with a total of 16 chapters. The simple mode of "Cup and Cup Full" takes a seven-day cycle, starting from the unpacking of the order and preparing the materials for one day, focusing on "cutting the mess with a quick knife".
From customer ordering, production, and ordering, players must be comprehensive. In different levels, players also need to learn new recipes to increase their competitiveness. From simple freshly squeezed lemon juice to matcha, raw coconut coffee, and some with a burst of churning. In addition, there are differences in the temperature and sugar added to the drinks ordered by customers. If the temperature is wrong, you can hear the cup licking the mouth: "The temperature is not right." ”
At the same time, players have to pedal the "Hot Wheels" and rush to the phone booth to replenish the sugar, cups and other supplies that are about to be depleted. When the guests arrive, they need to press the button at the right time to shout "Welcome". It's really exciting.
Of course, because of the Demon Contract, the Meat Pigeon element can help players leapfrog reality. In the continuous rapid order, players can achieve Combo combos to quickly accumulate fame, so as to open gifts to randomly obtain cards, and build different card decks, including fast cups, extreme cups, and even jumping single cups. One of the most "evil" is the tip card set, if used properly, a tip of more than 10,000 yuan for a single cup of milk tea is not a problem.
Different ways to build cards
Of course, to successfully complete a level, whether it is mastering the crafting method, adjusting the layout of the machine, or mastering the use of the deck, the most important thing is whether the player can withstand the challenge of money and pressure.
If you recklessly purchase goods and forget to turn off electrical appliances, the daily bill will be shocked by the doubling of purchase fees and electricity bills, and eventually the bubble tea shop will go bankrupt and close down. Forgetting to clean up the garbage and making drinks too slowly leads to overtime, which will also make Xiong Xiong's head turn from red to purple, and finally cry and chirp to fail. At the same time, the corresponding cost of the demon contract has also become a dangerous part of the game.
The pressure is overwhelming
Eventually, after a seemingly methodical but stressful number of challenges, players will be able to reach the finish line, unlocking furniture and decorating their houses with their surplus.
It's no wonder that players call Cups Full a "realistic game". Some players and friends have a lot of fun playing with "tip streaming" to farm gold coins, and some players say that they abandon the game because the debuff is too heavy.
Players are playing like crazy
Some bad reviews
In the face of the abandonment of some players, Xiong Xiong told the teahouse that what they wanted to do was a "painful and happy game", so that players could get the feeling of finally reaching success through repeated failures. And this is also her real feeling when she opened a bubble tea shop: "If there is a fiscal deficit this month, should you just give up or adjust it and try again?"
02
Originally a gaming partner
Chicken or egg, that's the question.
However, in "Cups and Cups", it was Kong Ming and Xiong Xiong who first had the experience of running a bubble tea shop before they had this game. And before the two set out to make "Cup Full", they were first game partners, and then they became a couple and a couple. Nearly 20 years together, one ring after another.
It can be seen that both are hardcore game lovers. Kong Ming and Xiong Xiong first met because of "Audition", and they were close to each other because they were both Chengdu people. Later, when the two played "World of Warcraft" together, they "developed a relationship".
Kong Ming, Xiong Xiong and kitten feces
For a long time after they met, the two were in a different place.
After graduating from high school in 2006, with the support of his parents, he took his bags and went to a base in Shanghai to participate in planning training.
Since then, Kong Ming has worked for a number of well-known game companies in Shanghai, dabbling in online games and terminal games, mainly focusing on planning. After graduating from university, she also came to Shanghai to meet Kong Ming and switch to game art.
From Xiong Xiong's description, it can be understood that she is a person who loves freedom. "I changed a few game companies, worked for a few years, and then I still wanted to do it myself." On the other hand, Kong Ming also had the idea of starting a business after about five years from the establishment of an online game to the online maintenance. The two hit it off.
However, the first venture was a premature death, and it was only a kick in the door.
In 2015, Kong Ming and Xiong Xiong partnered with a programming company to develop a mobile game with animals as the main characters. The four have been in development for about two years and have negotiated a million-dollar agency fee with the domestic distribution, but the team has "stranded" on the modification of the "gacha mechanism". At the request of the agent, the team repeatedly debugged and revised the data for a whole year, but it was still not optimistic. In the end, due to the collapse of the issuing company, the first venture was officially declared a failure.
After the failure of the business, the financial status was a little tight for a while. In 2016, Kong Ming returned to the state of working as a part-time worker and made mobile games with his classmates. Xiong Xiong was invited by a platform to broadcast "Monster Hunter" live and began to be a contracted anchor at home.
The subsequent story may be known to players who have watched the video of Station B. In 2018, due to investment, Kong Ming and his classmates returned to Chengdu to develop mobile games, and Xiong Xiong returned to Chengdu together. Then, after receiving an invitation from his girlfriend, the three of them partnered to open a bubble tea shop. The three of them invested nearly 600,000 yuan in total, and withdrew after the expiration of the three-year franchise period, making a small profit.
However, it is clear that the second venture is not the end of their business. In 2021, the company was in a recession due to the epidemic, and Kong Ming left his job to recuperate at home to find another way out, and he was confused for a while. After being reminded by Xiong Xiong, Kong Ming re-brewed the "dream of independent games" in his heart. Drawing on the experience of starting a business for the first time, Kong Ming plans to be "self-sufficient" with Xiong Xiong and start teaching himself the game engine Godot.
When the bubble tea shop was closed, two side-by-side tables and four computers in the living room were surrounded by three cats named "Stinky", "Fart" and "Dung".
Three cute kittens
03
What stands out
From the obscurity in the early days of development to the sales of more than 100,000 in three weeks, Xiong Xiong and Kong Ming said that this far exceeded their expectations. Initially, they thought that "Cup Dump" would sell between 2 and 30,000 at most.
Looking back at May 2022, Kong Ming "exposed" himself for the first time on station B, and the video still has only nearly 3,000 views. It's no wonder Xiong Xiong told the teahouse: "The progress in the first year was very slow, I kept learning, no one paid attention, I was very confused, it seemed that the two were fooling around." ”
It's a bit tortuous. Prior to Cups Full, the two had tried to pick up the co-op gameplay they had imagined, but eventually gave up due to the difficulty. Later, the two decided to draw on life, and after putting "Cup and Cup Full" on the agenda, they also did a long-term business demo that approached "endless mode", but they redid it because they agreed that it was not fun.
After more than half a year of exploration, in March 2023, "Cup and Cup Full", which was changed to "meat pigeon level system", finally began to take shape.
The independent game exhibition area organized at the Comiday Game Teahouse in Chengdu in August 2023
The real turning point will be in the summer of 2023. With the signing and distribution, participating in various comprehensive and game exhibitions, and competing for Tencent GWB, the "wine fragrance" of "Cup and Cup Full" finally became well-known through the alley.
In August 2023, "Cup Full" after hanging out the demo page attracted many "tap water" players. Kong Ming told the teahouse that at that time, the Ai Power Generation Platform began to be patronized one after another, and some players shouted as captains during their live broadcasts: ask for in-game testing codes. In the end, I accidentally saved up a test group of 500 people.
Some of the supporters of "Cup Full" on Love Generation
It was at this point, Kong Ming said, that they began to be convinced: this game is fine.
Kong Ming and Xiong Xiong told the teahouse that on the one hand, there are not many games related to the "store simulator", and at the same time, they will dig out and avoid the disadvantages of similar games that are not fun. In Cups and Cups, they pay special attention to avoiding the repetitiveness of the cycle (automation) and focusing on "expansiveness" and "authenticity".
In Xiong Xiong's view, repetitive loops breed boredom, and automation is the opposite of multiplayer co-op gameplay. Therefore, in Cups Full, random buffs, debuffs, and cap twisting can break "a boring cycle". In addition, they also designed a simulated management gameplay of the home, so as to improve the expansibility of the game.
The homestead simulation method attracts players to earn more coins
Kong Ming and Xiong Xiong have their own views on how to think about the significance of authenticity in business simulation games. Kong Ming believes that the meaning of this "real" is mainly embodied in a kind of "gameplay" that is linked to reality and makes players willing to experience it repeatedly. When players are willing to use the steam engine to make milk tea over and over again in the meat pigeon gameplay, and see the steam engine in the bubble tea shop in reality, they may smile.
Xiong Xiong believes that the meaning is closer to "the truth of mentality": "If you have urged the store staff to feel impatient, and then encounter something similar after experiencing the game, will your psychology change?" Xiong Xiong also went on to add, "The in-game ingredients can still be used until the second day, and when no one blames, will you continue to use them?" The flow of mentality between the customer who drinks milk tea and the boss is also what Xiong Xiong wants to express.
Of course, as a "realistic game", "Cups and Cups" turned out to be so rebellious that there was no human character. Xiong Xiong says it mostly comes down to personal preference. She loves animals, and Kong Ming says that even her home has been encroached upon by animal dolls. Of course, she also revealed that part of the reason customers presented them as mugs was that it was too cumbersome to draw people.
"Efficiency first" is the principle pursued by Xiong Xiong in the development process. In order to allow Kong Ming to focus more on the program and debug the online gameplay more smoothly, Xiong Xiong sometimes takes care of the planning work. In addition, Xiong Xiong insists on "free first" in sound effects and fonts.
So how much is the development cost? Xiong Xiong said with a smile that the main thing is the living expenses of the two people, which is not much.
04
"A 'thorn in the eye' that can't be pulled out"
From being a World of Warcraft playmate nearly 20 years ago to a game-making companion today, have the two seen how they have changed from each other?
Xiong Xiong said that she and Kong Ming have become "unbreakable thorns in the side" of each other — sometimes they can't get used to each other, but the two still often play games together.
Because they are both veteran players, the two often have their own opinions about the fun of the gameplay. Last week, the two argued in the live broadcast room over the production of the latest chapter of sparkling drinks, and the audience also joined in and said, "Quarrel". However, Xiong Xiong said that this is the norm for the two to polish the gameplay, and later the two will find that in the final version, "both of them compromise with each other, and both move one step to the middle".
The division of labor between the two is different. In the face of player feedback, Kong Ming has a more gentle personality, and Xiong Xiong will stand up and be the one who says "no". She insists on the presence of a moderate amount of debuff in the game. At the same time, when it was found that the proportion of women in the internal test group of "Cup Full" was as high as 8 percent, Xiong Xiong, as a female player, thought that female players could be competent in the face of player feedback, and did not reduce the difficulty across the board, but made an appropriate amount of simplification, so that the threshold for novices was further lowered.
At present, judging from Xiaohongshu, many female players have entered the "tide of gold coins".
The release of the Early Access version has come to an end, and now Xiong Xiong and Kong Ming are back in the daily game development routine. From the teahouse, you can feel their out-of-the-box attitude towards life, from which they are infected with the casualness of Chengdu's humid air. They wake up at noon every day and start streaming, where they show players the process of daily development and playing games in the evening.
In addition to continuing to repair the online network, Xiong Xiong and Kong Ming plan to complete the development of the remaining four chapters and new characters this year.
They don't plan to hire new people to develop the game in the future. "This is a very real problem. "Not only did it mean applying for a venue, I also had to supervise the staff, and I had to get up on time, which was a headache." And this may affect her development progress, "I may not sleep enough every day, and my work efficiency is actually reduced."
Regarding the idealized expression of "quitting at home and bravely chasing dreams", Xiong Xiong and Kong Ming didn't want to claim it, thinking that it was the sun.
"In layman's terms, in fact, it is two people who like to stay at home and don't want to go to work, and they have to find a way to support themselves, and this thing happens to be what they like, and they have their own good parts, and they can combine with each other to make a complete thing, which is already very good. ”
It seems that Xiong Xiong and Kong Ming treat every journey in their lives as the box of chocolates in the hands of the protagonist of "Forrest Gump". It doesn't matter if the next chocolate is sweet or bitter, just eat it.