Coffee Talk Episode 2: Hibiscus & Butterflyis a single-player interactive visual novel that follows a barista and their day-to-day encounters with customers in a re-imagined Seattle. Thisvisual noveldoesn’t allow players to choose the conversations they partake in, but instead the drink they make for their customers.
Game Rant recently spoke with producer and composer AJ and lead artist and art director Dio about how the ideas of the original creator and writer,Mohammad Fahmi, continue to live on inCoffee Talk Episode 2, the meaning behind a cup of coffee, and what inspired the art and music of the video game series.This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
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Q: For our readers, can you both tell me a bit about yourself andCoffee Talk Episode 2?
AJ:I’m AJ. I’m the producer and also the sound guy. I’m responsible for managing the project and making the music and sound effects.
Dio:My name is Dio, and I’ve been the lead artist/art director since the firstCoffee Talk.
Q: What kind of game isCoffee Talk? What’s the objective?
AJ:You play as a barista while you just chill inside the coffee shop and drink warm drinks, listening to chill music. You hear about people’s stories – people who want to share about what they’re doing, what they’re experiencing in their life, and just let people tell you about their story. We just chill together with the music, the atmosphere, and the rain from outside the coffee shop.
Just a reallyawesome chill, relaxing game. From my role, I think this is the perfect medium for me to explore how I make really chill, relaxing music because this is actually my first time making this kind of music. I did a lot of research on how to make heartwarming music. I’m just surprised that there are a lot of people that really love this kind of music. The music really helps how people just want to enjoy the game as it is.
Dio:Coffee Talkis a heart-to-heart and Barista simulator – talking simulator – where you play as the barista and you serve warm drinks to your customer to help solve the problems that they share with you. I think it’s a game where you can relax with the music and try to hear other people’s stories.
What I did inCoffee Talkis to create a relaxing tone as in color tone. We are trying to give the authentic feeling of what the cafe is like in Seattle. Our previous writer ofCoffee Talk, Mohammad Fahmi, and I are 90s anime fans, and we are trying to go with the anime style – and also pixel art – which has been like a trademark for Toge Productions as well.
Q: What does a cup of coffee symbolize? Or what do you think it symbolizes?
AJ:I’m not sure because I’m not really a coffee drinker myself, but if I can take from the late Fahmi,coffee is all about culture. I think that people can really connect to each other through coffee because when you start sitting down together and you just drink coffee, you just let everything flow from yourself – you just want to share anything and I don’t know why, but I think coffee really makes the perfect companion for that. That’s what I kind of take from [Fahmi] about coffee because he was a super coffee lover.
Dio:He was the biggest coffee fan on the team.Coffee Talkis a visual novel, but we don’t allow players to choose a different conversation; we allow players to decide what drinks to give to the customer because the coffee or any warm drinks will open the character’s heart, they share the story, and that’s what Fahmi liked to do. He was in a coffee shop and he talked to the barista, and he had this conversation with the barista, so he wrote a lot of the stories inCoffee Talk 1in a cafe shop in Jakarta.
Q: For AJ, the music plays into this comfortable setting and it’s very relaxing, and it’s almost similar to Lo-Fi music. Where did you get inspiration for the compositions? Especially because you said this is a different type of music that you’ve made.
AJ:Before making this kind of music, I made some kind of action music, like orchestra music. [Also] other stuff like rock and pop music, just general common music for our previous games. When Fahmi gave this idea about the game, he just told me about this game and what kind of music he really wanted. He told me aboutchillhop music.
He just told me to get references from a lot of chillhop music on YouTube, and that’s where I did a lot of experimentation and research. When I made the music, [I] just put a lot of jazzy tune elements and made relaxing vibes in the music.
Q: For Dio, the characters inCoffee Talkrange from realistic people like a police officer to fantasy-like characters, like a girl with horns. Were there any challenges trying to blend these two types of characters into the game?
Dio:It’s not really hard for me to do because I’m aDungeons & Dragonsfantasy fan, and I work on some third-party publishers forDungeons & Dragonsrole rules. I think it was actually part of my idea to put fantasy characters inCoffee Talkbecause it will give more diversity to the characters that live in the world ofCoffee Talk.
Q: Was there anything else that inspired your art style for this game?
Dio:As I mentioned before, because Fahmi and I are ’90s anime fans, we actually gathered a lot of references likePerfect Blue,Neon Genesis Evangelion, andCowboy Bebop. Those gave me the inspiration for the art styles, and I’m trying to recreate the vibes. I try to put my bit of style because it’s quite hard for me to get used to the anime style because I hadn’t, at that time, drawn any anime style in years, and [I was] like, “Okay, how to do this again?”
Some of the characters are alsoinspired by some characters inDragon Ball Z, not 100 percent inspired, but there’s a tiny bit here and there.
Q: The items in the game seem to be a more pixilated art style whereas the characters aren’t. Why is that?
Dio:There’s no clear explanation. InCoffee Talk1, the drinks are a one-by-one pixel, and it is presented smaller thanEpisode 2. Because of the time constraint, we cannot redo all the drinks that are shown inCoffee Talk1. InCoffee Talk2, we decided to show it bigger, so maybe that’s why it looks a lot more pixelated than the previous one and the characters.
Q: What can fans expect to be different in terms of the music as opposed to the first episode?
AJ:We actually have one feature that the writer really requested me to make a different kind of genre of music. You’ll find out later when the full game is released.
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Q: Aside from the bigger pixels, is there anything that fans can expect to be different in terms of visuals?
Dio:InCoffee Talk Episode 2, players will see a lot of illustrations that are made by Indonesian artists, pixel artists that we commissioned as freelance artists. In the firstCoffee Talk, we were trying to collaborate with Indonesian artists as much as possible. We just did with fanart, not in game assets way, but this time, we actually commissioned them and asked them to draw illustrations for the stories. As the game plays, you will see some cutscenes.
Also, a new variety of drinks. It will be like 50 new special drinks with different images and also more character expressions.
Q: Why did you guys decide to commission local Indonesian artists?
Dio:Back inCoffee Talk1, it was late Fahmi’s idea, but we didn’t have the time and didn’t have the resources to actually hire them. We actually just asked a few friends that do fanarts, and we put it in our gallery. In this episode, I want to bring the same spirit that the late Fahmi had inCoffee Talk1, and then we are trying to show to other players that there are great Indonesian artists and pixel art.
AJ:It actually helped us. We can speed up the process to provide all the assets we need for the game. It’s cool.
Q: What were some of the biggest lessons that you learned from the first game?
Dio:It was really hard to make compelling stories. In this episode, we went with a completely different writer, Junkipatchi, so it was still hard because it was her first time. Also,Episode 2is a sequel to [Coffee Talk’s] success. There’s more pressure. We have to do this the right way, in the same vibe asCoffee Talk1, and we need to capture the old fans and the new fans.
If I was able to go back in time and doCoffee Talk1 [again], I would do a lot more facial expressions.
AJ:I’m going to agree with Dio about writing. Writing and storytelling is really hard, and designing a really compelling narrative design is the big challenge. [We had] some delays with the game because we have a lot of inspiration for the story, for the writing, and that’s always the biggest challenge for us.
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Q: Has the fan reaction to the first game influenced how you approached episode two?
Dio:Yeah, in some ways, because there are some reviews from Steam from people [who said]: “Coffee Talkis very relaxing in story and calming and very relatable, but I think it can be explored more.” InEpisode 2, we try to give it more depth. The story branching is even more than the firstCoffee Talk.
AJ:I saw several reviews that people said, this game is not really deep, just really casual, and some of the people said this is not a really good story because it’s so boring and etcetera. But we know there are a lot more people that really enjoy the story because it really relates to them. So inCoffee Talk 2, we [made] the story deeper but also still kept relatable elements. We just really hope that they can really connect with the story and they just really like it. We really hope. I think people just want more stories.
Q: How important is it to launch day one on Xbox Game Pass for the team?
AJ:Game Pass helped us in funding the game and that really gives us more resources to prepare everything the best way we can. Xbox also gave us a lot of support. They’re really nice to spend their time helping us go anywhere and spread the news aboutCoffee Talk 2overseas. I think that’s the most important thing for us because they really help with anything. They’re just ready to give anything that we need for the marketing.
Q: Is there anything else that we didn’t talk about that you’d like to discuss or mention?
Dio:Please play the game [Laughs]. I think it’s a big anxiety for me at least, because it’s a sequel and making a sequel is always scary. “Are we going to find the same hypeasCoffee Talk1?”
Especially with Junkipatchi, our current writer, it’s her first time jumping into the game developer industry. In her previous job, she was a story writer for a comic studio, and it was really a great challenge for her to make a compelling sequel that also we hope that people will enjoy and also the music that AJ composed.
There’s a lot of new music from AJ, like, I don’t know how many AJ? 30? [laughs]
AJ:37.
Dio:Yeah. I hope people will enjoy the game. Another feature in the game you can see is other characters’ stories day by day. It will be different every day. The item itself will give you a new conversation branch – if you gift different items to different characters. It’s a feature that we wanted inCoffee Talk1, but because of the time constraint, we couldn’t. We got the time now.
[END]
Coffee Talk Episode 2: Hibiscus & Butterflyis out now on PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.
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