VN Ren'Py Cosy Cafe [v0.12.1] [Cosy Creator]

[shitass1001]

Hmm, that turned into a bit of a ramble, but it's something I've thought about a fair bit over the years and I just kinda vomited my thoughts out!

You should vomit more I like the behind the scenes rambling you do sometimes

 

[MoreLinks]

Don't think I could have said it better, Cosy. Especially this part:

So, instead, what I think tends to end up happening most of the time when devs do this is that in order to reduce the impact of player choices, the girls end up siloed off into individual stories of their own, where they are deliberately designed to have minimal impact on one another. This, in turn, leads to the standard template where the story has 90% of its run time devoted to the MC following simultaneous individual girl paths, perhaps with the occasional crossover and carefully worded group scenes that are so generic they can fit every path, but with the harem itself, the bit we're all here for, being relegated to an ending, not forming the core of the story.

I don't mean to diminish other harem games, as there's many I love. But having the harem be a core part of the story and unfractured is a good thing IMO.

 

[Elhemeer]

This is all true, and it also touches on an even bigger problem that I personally have with meaningful choices when it comes to harems and choosing girls, and that's the limitations it puts on your writing: the main one being that it means the girls themselves can't be used to drive each other's stories and character development forward.

To give an example, the entire subtext behind Vicky's sudden, seemingly out-of-nowhere attraction to the MC early in the story is her hidden inferiority complex comparing herself to Lucy, who the MC dotes on much more than he does Vicky. It's never explicitly articulated, but there are a tonne of obvious clues pointing towards it. None of that makes any sense, however, in a world where the player has the opportunity to reject Lucy. In fact, the player rejecting Lucy and pursuing Vicky alone would completely change the dynamic in their early relationship; suddenly, the MC is chasing her just like every other guy does (something she's more than used to) rather than rejecting her for the shy loner girl (something that's alien to her).

Now, obviously, you could write all the individual scenes a dozen different ways to account for this, but at that point you would be fundamentally changing all of the subtle story elements that drive the girls' character development, meaning that the characters themselves would have to be changed, too. To put it another way, different story input = different character output. That quickly becomes an impossible task to do well, you'd essentially have to write dozens of different stories all at once. So, instead, what I think tends to end up happening most of the time when devs do this is that in order to reduce the impact of player choices, the girls end up siloed off into individual stories of their own, where they are deliberately designed to have minimal impact on one another. This, in turn, leads to the standard template where the story has 90% of its run time devoted to the MC following simultaneous individual girl paths, perhaps with the occasional crossover and carefully worded group scenes that are so generic they can fit every path, but with the harem itself, the bit we're all here for, being relegated to an ending, not forming the core of the story.

Hmm, that turned into a bit of a ramble, but it's something I've thought about a fair bit over the years and I just kinda vomited my thoughts out!

Spoiler: My thoughts ...

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[PaxHadrian17]

I think one of the big reasons Cosy Cafe works so well is that the women's interactions and motives are helping to drive the story.

The women get to develop, not as an extension of the MC, but along with the MC.

Lucy growing into the pastry chef; Vicki growing into the head waitress role; Sarah embracing the marketing role to help publicize the cafe are all examples of this growth.

The women also rely on each other as well as the MC, making this an outlier compared to many of the AVNs I play.

The Goth weekend cosplay would make a great RL boost for a restaurant trying to establish itself/show the town's people that there is a new, exciting alternative to dining out at one of the 'regular' spots.

It is another great event 'in AVN' as we get to see a number of our beautiful ladies all 'gothed' up with the potential of seeing a number of other women visiting in goth cosplay for fun or to win desserts/the Favor.

I'm hoping for Annabelle and Samantha + it would be fun if Alison came for a meal, all 'gothed' up to show support for her man.

I'm not sure if Misaki will be bold enough to come in goth attire/makeup but I can hope...

I could even see Catherine bringing her two younger sisters in cosplay as something fun and different that costs little $ given her family's diminished means.

I enjoy the way the women look out for each other and support each other.

Alison, by position, is an outlier from the core harem since the MC is one of her students, but she and Elizabeth already have a pre-existing friendship and supporting the MC is a perfect reason to build on that friendship.

Who knows - Alison and Elizabeth could show up in goth cosplay as part of an evening catching up and this would help bring both a little closer to the core harem and show some fun interaction between them.

I'd certainly enjoy some photos to capture the event, including a photo of Alison and Hannah in goth cosplay - something fun sisters can share in that has nothing to do with FF politics.

Anyway - Cosy is giving us a great story; I'm fine with the Kinetic novel aspect of that story and I'm going back to rewatch the goth preview by the MC's ladies!

Who doesn't want to spend time with these beauties?



Cheers!!

 

[hameleona]

Don't think I could have said it better, Cosy. Especially this part:



I don't mean to diminish other harem games, as there's many I love. But having the harem be a core part of the story and unfractured is a good thing IMO.

Just as a note, it can be done well (idk if I can mention examples), but it's neither easy nor are most people writing porn games good at writing and/or storytelling. Like barring maybe a couple of dozen exceptions (and yes Cosy is one of those), most are mediocre at best, have no solid understanding of what writing interactive fiction requires and just blindly try to shove as many cliches and tropes from their chosen genre without having even basic understanding on why those exist and how to use them. They shove 100 choices and then at 3-4th release realize that every chick in the harem requires even more writing and scenes (quick napkin math - every optional harem girl adds her number to the number of paths, i.e. girl 4 adds 4, girl 12 adds 12). So they either panic, and decide to cut the writing a lot or just abandon the project. If you have 10 girls, that's 1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8+9+10 = 55 paths! You can maybe use skill to cut them in half (kinda like we have in Cosy Caffe - not all the girls are around the MC 24/7, some like Misaki and Rachel are relatively rarely seen, etc), small variations to save on writing... but it's still 55 paths to plan, keep track off, write down and render for. Seriously AAA titles don't have the budget for it.

 

[taru]

i know its prob to late to suggest but in the beginning when the restaurant opens the first time he should've told sarah not to call his workers (victoria) names since he scolded victoria. you can definitely disagree MalLiz but still i get shes his "slave" but he gives to much slack to sarah.

 

[TBone9]

This is all true, and it also touches on an even bigger problem that I personally have with meaningful choices when it comes to harems and choosing girls, and that's the limitations it puts on your writing: the main one being that it means the girls themselves can't be used to drive each other's stories and character development forward.

This was an issue in another game that I liked called "My New Family". It gave you the option to choose not to pursue a romantic relationship with pretty much every girl in the story, but for most of them, doing so would lead to dialogue that didn't make sense, missing out on other girls, or sometimes even crashing at some point. Only the very fringe side characters could really be skipped without causing problems.

Of course, this was never a problem for me, because I will almost always accept every relationship and instead just fast-skip through any that aren't really appealing to me.

 

[CapnBlaze]

i know its prob to late to suggest but in the beginning when the restaurant opens the first time he should've told sarah not to call his workers (victoria) names since he scolded victoria. you can definitely disagree MalLiz but still i get shes his "slave" but he gives to much slack to sarah.

If we are speaking like a rules lawyer I agree with you. But in terms of how the characters are, I don't. The MC for the most part doesn't interfere in the girl's interactions with others. The exception to this is if there is true disrespect and/or the girl's feeling's are hurt. Victoria at the beginning was being hurtful and demonstrating a total lack of respect of others as if they were sub human. Sarah was and is insulting, but not done in a way that is meant to truly and deeply hurt. She's throwing shade but there isn't true malice there. Which is probably in large part why Vicky finds it amusing and isn't hurt by it. If Vicky's feelings were truly hurt, I am 100% positive Sarah would immediately back off and/or apologize. As it stands it's more on the element of trash talk.

 

[taru]

If we are speaking like a rules lawyer I agree with you. But in terms of how the characters are, I don't. The MC for the most part doesn't interfere in the girl's interactions with others. The exception to this is if there is true disrespect and/or the girl's feeling's are hurt. Victoria at the beginning was being hurtful and demonstrating a total lack of respect of others as if they were sub human. Sarah was and is insulting, but not done in a way that is meant to truly and deeply hurt. She's throwing shade but there isn't true malice there. Which is probably in large part why Vicky finds it amusing and isn't hurt by it. If Vicky's feelings were truly hurt, I am 100% positive Sarah would immediately back off and/or apologize. As it stands it's more on the element of trash talk.

i kinda get what you're saying but i still gotta say he should still tell sarah somethin, sure she could not mean it but one a restaurant owner shouldn't let his workers be called names at work regardless since she still wasnt a thought for working there yet. Hes always given sarah slack. He also knows she hated being called slut but turned it on her with his mc rizz so that she didnt mind. also she was rude for all of two seconds at the beginning of the game. i just feel like after he started bein her "master" he should've laid off a bit a really treated her as his not just an insult pole for others to say stuff and him only saying somethin when she says it, the only time he did was with her x friends. i get its a game but even actual sub/doms arent this corny and passive. he still sorta at that point treats her like he did day one but its passed off as a "joke" or rizz talk for his character as a (pretty terrible imo) dom. lucy is great girl but i think vickie was just with the wrong friends and it shows now that shes with mc and lucy. all i can say is hes lucky hes the mc. but hey im sure he gets better with her later on.

 

[Juerhullycin]

i kinda get what you're saying but i still gotta say he should still tell sarah somethin, sure she could not mean it but one a restaurant owner shouldn't let his workers be called names at work regardless since she still wasnt a thought for working there yet. Hes always given sarah slack. He also knows she hated being called slut but turned it on her with his mc rizz so that she didnt mind. also she was rude for all of two seconds at the beginning of the game. i just feel like after he started bein her "master" he should've laid off a bit a really treated her as his not just an insult pole for others to say stuff and him only saying somethin when she says it, the only time he did was with her x friends. i get its a game but even actual sub/doms arent this corny and passive. he still sorta at that point treats her like he did day one but its passed off as a "joke" or rizz talk for his character as a (pretty terrible imo) dom. lucy is great girl but i think vickie was just with the wrong friends and it shows now that shes with mc and lucy. all i can say is hes lucky hes the mc. but hey im sure he gets better with her later on.

Why should MC intervene when those two bicker with each other? You did follow the rest of the story, I presume? Neither Vicky nor Sahra stopped ribbing each other. They bicker with each other as friends, and MC figured that out pretty early on. Also, Vicky is constantly calling Sahra shrimp and ribbing her otherwise, so he has no reason to say anything because Vicky can hold her own in this arena.

 

[Elhemeer]

Not to mention (but I'm going to anyway) Vicky and Sarah have obviously known each other much longer than the MC has known them, and neither have shown any sign of either A) backing down from the other; or B) being overwhelmed emotionally from anything they say to each other; or C) Neither has ever shown signs of throwing down with each other (at least not without others stepping in); and D) Lucy clearly was getting along with Vicky, to Sarah's obvious surprise when we're introduced to her, which in my mind immediately made Vicky "not a real enemy" for Sarah regardless of how they felt about each other in the past.

Also, I do feel like there was one moment where Sarah seemed truly upset, but pretty sure MC stepped in right away there. Can't remember the incident though.

 

[briansanders]

Also, I do feel like there was one moment where Sarah seemed truly upset, but pretty sure MC stepped in right away there. Can't remember the incident though.

I believe the incident you are referring to is the first king's game. This was when Sarah had 0 confidence in her body. Sarah wrote slut on Victoria's face and Victoria had asked Sarah to remove her top

 

[Ade_Scott]

Man, cant wait to see how everyone that likes Rachel now will react when they see where she ends up...

let me guess she either ends up in prison or working along side the female family head i think shes called gloria

 

[Elhemeer]

I believe the incident you are referring to is the first king's game. This was when Sarah had 0 confidence in her body. Sarah wrote slut on Victoria's face and Victoria had asked Sarah to remove her top

 

[Nezron]

This was an issue in another game that I liked called "My New Family". It gave you the option to choose not to pursue a romantic relationship with pretty much every girl in the story, but for most of them, doing so would lead to dialogue that didn't make sense, missing out on other girls, or sometimes even crashing at some point. Only the very fringe side characters could really be skipped without causing problems.

Of course, this was never a problem for me, because I will almost always accept every relationship and instead just fast-skip through any that aren't really appealing to me.

That's funny you mentiion My New Family, I just tried to finish a run where I only pick Alice, but since I ignored everyone else, it broke the game.

And most other harem games have so many girls, that you hardly see some of them after the first couple of interactions. I think the way Cosy is doing it is great.

 

[danb35]

Just finished this update. A lot can happen in two days!

• Lucy's still at the top of my list, with Sarah a very close second. "You're all equal," says MC, but she's obviously first among equals. And it only makes sense; the harem was her idea, after all. Wouldn't be my pick based purely on looks (though she is very cute), but her personality more than makes up for it. And that seems to be pretty common for me in these games--more often than not, my favorite LI isn't the one I'd consider best-looking. Thought it probably helps that in the world of AVNs, everyone's at least an 8.
• Not surprised, but still happy to see Sarah join the club. I liked the twist that she was making a deliberate effort to be on everyone's good side; she's the first (after Lucy) to specifically try to get added to the harem. Photo shoot was well done and got very hot (though the texture of the fishnet bodysuit looked a little weird under her breasts for a couple of the shots). I think she's finally gotten the message that MC really likes her, and also is really attracted to her. Sex with her can wait, though I doubt it'll be long.
• Catherine is more relatable, her sisters are cute, and Ivy's sharp as a tack. I expect they, and their mother, assume (and in the case of her mother, maybe even hope) more happened Thursday night than actually did. And I think she's seeing MC in a better light.
• Rachel's still at "F that bitch" in my book, but I doubt we've seen the last of her. I won't say she can't be redeemed, nor even that I won't think better of her after it happens (as I expect it will), but I don't think I'd mind not seeing her again. But her taking MC's words to heart and admitting it seems like the way it's going to go.

Now back to waiting...

 

[TBone9]

That's funny you mentiion My New Family, I just tried to finish a run where I only pick Alice, but since I ignored everyone else, it broke the game.

And most other harem games have so many girls, that you hardly see some of them after the first couple of interactions. I think the way Cosy is doing it is great.

So true about the number of girls in some stories. Variety is good and all, but one problem with having lots and lots of LIs (*cough* Lessons in Love *cough*) is that everyone eventually develops favorites and inevitably some characters go through long dry spells without much content and the fans of those characters get upset.

I think this VN does a great job of hitting the sweet spot with the number of LIs, plus the fact that there is just one overarching storyline rather than many individual routes, so that no one gets neglected for too long.

 

[MalLiz]

So true about the number of girls in some stories. Variety is good and all, but one problem with having lots and lots of LIs (*cough* Lessons in Love *cough*) is that everyone eventually develops favorites and inevitably some characters go through long dry spells without much content and the fans of those characters get upset.

I think this VN does a great job of hitting the sweet spot with the number of LIs, plus the fact that there is just one overarching storyline rather than many individual routes, so that no one gets neglected for too long.

I really don't like being all "fanboyish" with...well, just about anything or anyone, actually. But I will say that this (and the other points raised recently) is why I think of Cosy Cafe as simply one of the best AVNs I have ever come across. And I am a very prolific pervert, let me tell you! I have seen a few AVNs to say the freaking least, my friends!

Of course, I do know I still have some gripes with "CC" just as I do with other AVNs out there. I can't think of anything off the top of my head, but that is how it usually goes. When put on the spot in any one subject, your mind just blanks out completely.

Still, lots of inspiration to be had from Cosy Cafe for budding, inexperienced developers like myself. I have always thought the best way to learn how to do something is to study an advanced or acclaimed work, deconstruct it on your own and figure out what makes it so good and why. And that goes double for anything involving programming, in my experience!

-Mal

PS: Again, I really do not want to sound like a fawning fanboy here. "Credit where it's due" is all I am saying.

 

[Konrad Simon]

I really don't like being all "fanboyish" with...well, just about anything and anyone, actually. But I will say that this (and the other points raised recently) is why I think of Cosy Cafe as simply one of the best AVNs I have ever come across. And I am a very prolific pervert, let me tell you! I have seen a few AVNs to say the freaking least, my friends!

Of course, I do know I still have some gripes with "CC" just as I do with other AVNs out there. I can't think of anything off the top of my head, but that is how it usually goes. When put on the spot in any one subject, your mind just blanks out completely.

Still, lots of inspiration to be had from Cosy Cafe for budding, inexperienced developers like myself. I have always thought the best way to learn how to do something is to study an advanced or acclaimed work, deconstruct it on your own and figure out what makes it so good and why. And that goes double for anything involving programming, in my experience!

-Mal

PS: Again, I really do not want to sound like a fawning fanboy here. "Credit where it's due" is all I am saying.

Yes and no. I'm probably going off topic here, but if so a mod will just pull it, and no problem.

Point is, yes, regarding only the writing, I agree about CC. It is one of the best written AVNs I've ever seen, maybe the best. But as a new dev, you can actually learn more, I think, from something that is good but flawed, because you can see what the writing is trying to do and where it does and doesn't work. Something like CC is seamless, and all we get is the effect. Games like Love of Magic or Leap of Faith are beautifully written, but also have moments of cringe that, as a dev, make you go, "Okay, I have to be sure not to do that in my game." I've never found such a moment in CC, which makes it great to play, but harder to learn from.

 

[hameleona]

Yes and no. I'm probably going off topic here, but if so a mod will just pull it, and no problem.

Point is, yes, regarding only the writing, I agree about CC. It is one of the best written AVNs I've ever seen, maybe the best. But as a new dev, you can actually learn more, I think, from something that is good but flawed, because you can see what the writing is trying to do and where it does and doesn't work. Something like CC is seamless, and all we get is the effect. Games like Love of Magic or Leap of Faith are beautifully written, but also have moments of cringe that, as a dev, make you go, "Okay, I have to be sure not to do that in my game." I've never found such a moment in CC, which makes it great to play, but harder to learn from.

I'll go a step further - you learn a lot more from bad products, then good, but flawed ones. Learning what not to do is arguably more important then learning what to do - we all inherently know the absolute basics of telling stories and playing games. But there are actually numerous ways to fuck both those things up.