With Little Dragons Cafe release later this month, MonsterVine recently had the chance to chat with its creator Yasuhiro Wada and discuss the restaurant management, slice of life simulator.
For anyone who doesn’t know about the game, what is Little Dragon’s Cafe?
It’s a mysterious adventure in a mysterious universe with mysterious characters. So the story starts out with a mother and her twins running a cafe in a very peaceful environment. One day the mother falls into a deep sleep, and the twins are left alone, helpless. An old man mysteriously appears, and he tells the kids “if you raise a dragon, you’ll probably be able to save your mother”. The kids are suspicious but have nothing else they can do, so they take the old man’s advice. Basically, the mother was running the cafe while the children helped. The twins aren’t able to run it by themselves, so it’s a story about the twins developing the cafe and acquiring staff and attracting customers.
So that’s the basic gist of the story. As far as the gameplay goes, you have to raise your dragons and do other things in the cafe. They’ll have to explore the world to gather ingredients and fragments of recipes. By collecting these fragments, they’ll add more items to their menu, and they’ll be able to attract new customers. There will also be characters they’ll recruit as their staff members who help to grow and develop the cafe.
You’ll meet characters with issues who come into the cafe and you’ll help them out. The main thing that can resolve these characters issues is food. Based on that, the story and world expands as well. By continuing the game, that’s how you’ll eventually, or hopefully, save your mother.
For fans of your previous work, such as Harvest Moon, what is the challenge of creating this game while appealing to old fans and new ones?
The general theme I usually have in my games is that there are no battles. My games focus on character relationships and development. Compared to my previous work, this game focuses more on story. So I’ve put a lot of effort into the story and character design. It has a very unique cast of characters, which has been a proud moment.
Did you create the scenario for the game?
The story and characters. We had a scenario writer write the text, but I oversaw it to make sure everything was right.
How long did it take you to write the story?
About half a year, six months. Usually you develop the story as you develop the game, but this time we had the story all ready, then the game came after that.
How has developing for both the Switch and PS4 been so far? Have there been many technical challenges?
We first created the game for PS4 and PC, so we had to downgrade certain things for the Switch. We also re-arranged some play mechanics, so there are some improvements there. I feel happy that the Switch version’s gameplay has actually improved, even though we had to downgrade some things.
In the case of Little Dragons Cafe, we had already started developing on Switch and PS4, so there were no specific difficulties. We used the Unity game engine, so it’s pretty much exactly the same on both platforms.
How has the response been from fans on this press tour?
We haven’t released too much information on the game, outside of trailers and screenshots, but based on that, the feedback we’re getting is that the artstyle is cute and the game looks good. It’s very superficial right now. We had a panel at Anime Expo, and the people there welcomed the game very warmly. We did have a playable demo at the booth, and the people who played did give us positive feedback. We feel the game will be successful.
What are your plans for the game post-release?
My idea is for Little Dragons Cafe is quite big, and the game itself is made of little pieces of it, so whatever’s remaining, if this game is successful, we have lots to work with later on.
Is there anything you’d like to say to fans or people following the game?
Please play it [laughs]. And if it’s not fun…don’t say anything [laughs]. We’d like to spread the word, and we hope everybody enjoys it!
Little Dragons Cafe releases August 24, 2018 on Playstation 4 and Nintendo Switch.
