"Not 'to be, or not to be' — tonight's question is to shake, or not to shake. It's the only way to keep your late grandfather's bar alive."
Hey everyone!
Your right hand is tipping a bottle of rum over the glass. Your left is reaching for the ice. Another customer walks in. And at the edge of the counter there's still a stain from the drink you overfilled a minute ago.
At the end of Devlog #0 we promised a closer look at the counter. This is it. In To Shake, or Not to Shake you spend most of your time in one small space: two hands, a few bottles, a glass and a rag. Here's how we built it.
One mouse, two buttons, two hands
This game started life as a touchscreen mobile game: tap, pour, shake. When we moved to PC, there was a mouse on the desk with two buttons. A bartender has two hands. The rest followed.
Left click is your left hand, right click is your right. Click a bottle with an empty hand and you pick it up. It follows your cursor with a slight lag, like you're actually holding something.
Let go, and let it pour
You pour liquids by holding the button. Here's where it gets interesting: flick your wrist mid-pour and the bottle leaves your hand, stays right where it is at that angle, and keeps pouring on its own. Your hand is free.
So while the rum is flowing, you can grab the ice, drop a lime slice into the glass, or start pouring a second bottle with your other hand. Click the bottle to take it back.
That one small feature changed the rhythm of the counter. You stop thinking in steps and start doing things at the same time.
Of course, a bottle that pours itself is also a bottle that's very easy to forget about.
Every drop lands somewhere
The stream from the bottle's neck lands on the first surface below it. If that's the glass, great. If not, it's the counter. Keep pouring into a full glass and it overflows, straight onto the counter.
Every drop on the counter leaves a stain, and serving over a stained counter costs you points. That's why you've also got a rag: pick it up, run it over the counter, and the stain is gone. If only every stain came out that easily.
Pouring two bottles at once, grabbing the ice and trying to wipe the counter on a busy night... When we said "satisfying (and sometimes chaotic)" in Devlog #0, this is exactly what we meant.
What you draw on the glass matters
Some drinks are shaken, some are stirred, some need their ingredients muddled. You do all of it in the same place, with the mouse, right over the glass: swing left and right to shake, draw circles to stir, press and hold still to muddle.
A small confession: early on, drawing circles in the glass also counted as shaking. So no matter how carefully you stirred a drink that should be stirred, the game counted it as shaken and docked the score. We caught it in our own playtests, when stirred drinks simply refused to come out perfect. Now the game reads the path your mouse takes and works out what you're trying to do. Next, we're tying this system to bar tools like the bar spoon, so what you're doing will be much clearer, both to you and to the game.
Notes from behind the counter
Bottles actually empty. The level drops as you pour, and even on a full bottle you can see it from the very first pour.
The counter clears for the next guest. Customers order at the counter, take their drink to an empty table and leave their spot for whoever's next.
What's next
Next time we're coming back to these hands. Because they're not your hands, they're the bartender's. And if you read Devlog #0, you already know: in this bar, the bartender drinks too.
In the meantime, we're curious: what kind of bartender would you be? Two bottles at once, or one careful pour at a time? Tell us in the comments or on Discord. We read every one.
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See you behind the counter,
Team Sheer Cat