Dev Blog #1 - Lost Abroad Café
Last month we released Devlog #1 for Lost Abroad Café, a language learning game where you, the player, will open a coffee shop in the city of your choosing from around the world. Currently available are Seoul for Korean, Shanghai for Mandarin Chinese, and Mexico City for Spanish (as it is spoke in Mexico -- we'll add more locations later for Spanish in Spain and other countries). Check it out here!
In this blog, we’ll be going over:
Our Design Philosophy
Our Development Choices
Progress So Far
What’s Next for Lost Abroad Café
Our Design Philosophy
We are deliberately choosing not to "make learning fun" but rather to "make fun educational" -- a distinct difference that means we place fun FIRST. We want to start with fun and engaging mechanics, and then make those work to create a language learning game, not just “gamified” studying.
So what is fun? A gaming industry expert I once spoke with said it boils down to 3 things:
Engaging gameplay
Aspirational goals
Good rewards system
For gameplay, we decided to go with a management/cooking sim concept because this is a game type that appeals to a wide range of people and is already known to be a fun and engaging gameplay type. Of course, we'll still add our own flavor to it!
In terms of aspirational goals, we actually have three of them: 1) many people aspire to own and run a business in general, 2) specifically working as a barista in a cool coffee shop is something many people romanticize, and 3) moving to a different country and learning the language is a goal shared by hundreds of millions of people around the world, and is the primary motivator for people to use ANY language learning method.
For the rewards system, we plan to implement achievement systems and leaderboards for a variety of playstyles (“marathon” style achievements for total customers served, “consistency” for keeping streaks, “accuracy” for serving customers the right order, etc), as well as make buying/upgrading equipment and décor feel like it’s worthwhile.
Development Choices
On the technical side, Lost Abroad Café will be made using two primary platforms: Unity (for the frontend) and Django (for the backend).
For front-end game development there are a wide variety of options, but the most robust options are Unity and Unreal Engine. Many of the benefits of Unreal Engine are for top-of-the-line graphics and effects, so since Lost Abroad Café has a fairly cartoony look we wouldn’t get those benefits. Additionally, Unity uses the C# programming language, which is a bit easier to work with than Unreal’s C++.
For the backend API that stores information about the game, we really only considered two options: Django or Firebase. Firebase is a Google service that makes it super easy to set up a database in your web browser, and when I was learning Flutter for app development a few years ago I was really impressed with how simple it was to get started. That said, the backend is used for more than just a database: it need to perform many operations on the data. For example, when a new customer comes up to the register to order, it needs to analyze what equipment you have to see what orders are possible, and make sure you’re being regularly tested on all the things you’ve learned. For this, even though it’s possible in Firebase, we went with Django primarily because I’m much, much more familiar with it, having over 5 years of Django and Python experience. This customization
Additionally, Django comes with a really cool built-in Admin Site, which allows you to assign users to update the database without having to code. Firebase has this ability as well, but I find the Django one easier to use and customize. In fact, when we added Spanish in the recent update, there were zero lines of code that needed to be added! We just used the Django Admin Site and added another location in the Unity Editor.
Progress So Far
First, we’ve now built out this globe view where you can spin the globe and select a city to open your coffee shop. Right now you can choose from Shanghai for Mandarin Chinese, Seoul for Korean, or Mexico City for Spanish. As we add more languages, we just need to update that backend and throw in a new map pin.
In a “Phase 0” approach, we’ve just organized three sets of levels and tutorials to play through. In our next gameplay update, we’ll replace this with a shop where players can buy new equipment in any order they want and see what new menu items it will unlock.
In Tutorials, customers come up to the counter, and an indicator tells players where to tap on the screen. It's up to the player to pay attention to what the customer says and link it to what’s being made.
In Levels, players get tested on what you learned in the corresponding tutorial. 60 seconds are put on the clock to serve as many customers as possible. Right now it’s simply a competition to see if you can get the max number of customers served (11), but going forward each customer will pay money, which will then be spent upgrading the coffee shop.
To play this alpha version, we launched on WebGL, which allows people on our waitlist to play directly in their browser. To be honest, this was not the right call, as it’s only support in desktop/laptop browsers so it can’t be played on mobile, and it doesn’t play nicely with different resolutions. To get into how we’re going to make the playable experience better, let’s go to…
What’s Next for Lost Abroad Café
First things first: we took YouTube comments and a poll we sent out into consideration, and we’ll soon be launching Lost Abroad Café through Google Play Open Testing for Android and Testflight for iOS. Setting up for Google Play was relatively simple, and we already have an internal testing build that can be subscribed to, but iOS in general has required a lot more setup.
In terms of locations and languages, we’ll next be adding Paris for French and Tokyo for Japanese!
And finally, in terms of gameplay we’ll be adding in that management phase of the game where players can purchase new equipment. In a further update, equipment will even be upgradable (such as making the coffee machine dispense faster, adding additional tools to espresso machines, etc).
That wraps up our first development blog, we hope you enjoyed learning about our development process and are excited about our first language learning game: Lost Abroad Café! Make sure you’re on the waitlist to get an email soon regarding our Google Play and Testflight links!
