The current bartender is actually the Prologue’s bartender, so no lame jokes will get in harm’s way (We kinda gave away we were going this direction if you see the Prologue’s Loading screen).

The male bartender is the Prototype’s bartender (Gillian). He’ll be a separate character.

Thanks! Yeah, it was smaller… sorta.

Back at itch.io’s Cyberpunk Jam we saw everyone making games about being the hero, the hacker, the Deckard and whatnot. At that point we thought “Screw being the hero, what if you’re just the bartender in that one shoddy bar that always gets a scene?”.

Turns out there was a lot of cloth to cut from that simple concept.

We were originally going for a “Neutral” approach, as seen on the Prologue, where we kept things as just “Bartender” (Although I’m pretty sure there’s a “Mr.” that slipped its way to the release somewhere).

However, for the full version, Bartender-san is not a neutral player avatar anymore, we decided to create a full-fledged character, mainly because the interactions with the clients would be easier to develop and more meaningful that way (This other question’s answer talks a bit more about that). It would also make the player explore another character on the way.

This is Bartender-san. We’ve yet to formally introduce her, but you can already spot her in a few Illustrations we’ve released.

Her name’s Jill, please take care of her.

We’re working on that and we’ll post about them as soon as they’re available.

NO DRINKS OR DRINK SUGGESTIONS UNTIL YOU PAY YOUR

This is a bit of a long one, so let’s take each question to a paragraph.

Will there be more traditional decision making during conversations? 

The few times the player gets to pick an option from a menu, they’ll usually be of the “pick an object” kind, and on special events. There won’t be the usual “Select what your character will say” choices. This is because we’re crafting the bartender as another character, and it would feel kinda artificial to craft a whole character and then throw a menu of dialogue choices. The player can change what she does (Through bartending and the aforementioned events) but not what she says or who she is.

How much would you have to work to pursue a particular route/ending you desire? 

We mentioned in another previous question that they won’t be so much routes as they’ll be “Character Arcs”. Still, seeing as the player might want to see (or not) some of them to change the game’s ending, the flags/points will mostly come from drinks not mentioned in the order (But suggested while playing and learning that character’s tastes) or on whether some of them get drunk or not. This is so the player can still filter some “Routes” without giving up on a perfect performance or reducing their score. As for the difficulty, we’re doing our best to make it all feel natural. As you get to know the characters more and more, you’ll learn what they like or hate. So it will only be hard if you don’t pay attention to your clients or the game in general.

Also, how much branching can we expect?

Expect lots of it. We’re trying to make it feel as natural as possible however. For example: A scene in Day 2 will play differently depending on whether or not you got certain client drunk on day 1; this is because if said client got drunk on day 1, then he’ll talk about something he wouldn’t talk about otherwise, making the bartender bring it up as a different conversation topic on day 2. There will also be a lot of minor branching depending on what clients you got drunk or even if you deliberately mess up an order or two. As for major/big branches, the “Route” kind… there won’t be any. At least not of the “The game will play totally differently from this point on depending on what you’ve done” variety.

Our original purpose when coming up with the rainbow corgis was to mock the homogeneity the games industry indulges into on its trends (Be it AAA games with their mass-produced brown-haired optional-perma stubble white male protagonists or indie games with platformers) by showing the same sprite but colored differently (But with their personalities covering a wider range than their colors, mind you).

The racist part came later when we realized we could take a few jabs at racism as a concept by showing how silly it all sounds when you try to apply it somewhere else, like say… in dogs and their races, or even better, with corgis and another variation of corgi (The whole Pembroke Vs. Cardigan thing).

And we chose corgis because it’s a #fact that it’s biologically impossible to get angry at them.

Neo- America is not freedom friendly.

Very likely as long as Ektomarch is o k, I’m a fan of that game actually.

Why yes! They’re more akin to character arcs however, as the game won’t branch in a completely different direction after a certain point just to explore one character. This also means that, even though the game will have multiple endings, you can see the end of a character’s arc before reaching the general game’s end; and said ending might be unrelated to which character conclusions you saw (We’ll talk more about that in the near future).