"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!
A customer is placing their order. Right when they get to the name of the drink, something else crosses your mind, and instead of a drink the bubble shows a half-finished thought. People are waiting in line. There's a bottle on the shelf. One sip and your head would go quiet.
At the end of Devlog #1 we said we'd come back to the hands, because they aren't your hands, they're the bartender's. This post is about that bartender. In To Shake, or Not to Shake the bartender drinks too, and pays a price either way. To us, this is the most special system in the game. Here's how we built it.
Sober: a crowded head
The longer you work through the night without a drink, the more pressure builds up in your head. At some point the thoughts start coming. They show up as bubbles anywhere on the screen and type themselves out letter by letter: in a corner, or right where you're looking. They don't leave on their own. They pile up on top of each other, and the higher the pressure, the faster they come. They're there to make the game harder, not impossible.
The real problem is that they come at the worst possible moment. As the pressure rises, the order the customer gives you starts to break down:
You don't catch it. A thought takes the place of the drink's name. You're left guessing what was asked.
You mishear it. The bubble shows a different drink, and its edges ripple slightly.
Or nothing's wrong at all. The bubble ripples just the same, but the order is actually right. You might think you misheard and change a correct order for nothing.
The customer, meanwhile, knows exactly what they want. The game always scores you against the real order. The only thing that changes is what you heard.
Grab a thought, throw it
Luckily, you can push your thoughts away. Grab one that's in your way with either mouse button, drag it, and let go to throw it wherever you like. It glides, slows down and clears the way. Throw it off the screen and after a while it drifts slowly back in.
You can throw a thought off the screen. But it comes back.
And as the pressure rises, new ones come faster. After a while, the screen never settles.
One sip
Pushing thoughts away one by one takes effort. A shot takes one move.
So you take the shot, and every thought on screen fades, even the one in your hand. If a broken order bubble is open, it pulls itself together: the thought where the drink should be disappears, and the real order is written in.
One sip and everything is clear. That's exactly the problem.
In Devlog #0 we wrote that the easy way out always looks like the drink. We built it that way on purpose. Drinking is a quick escape, and a trap that quietly builds its own risk over time.
As the glasses add up
The first sips cost very little. But being drunk builds up in stages, and each stage stacks on top of the last.
First the edges of the screen blur. Then the blur creeps toward the center, the screen turns yellow and the world starts to sway a little. Your hand shakes too: the cursor drifts slowly, and the tremor gets worse while you pour. Since the bottle follows your hand, your aim drifts with it. Whatever misses the glass lands on the counter.
Remember the stains from Devlog #1? A drunk hand means a lot more overtime for the rag.
We set ourselves one limit here: even at its worst, the game should feel "very hard", never "unplayable".
Why two different prices?
Staying sober and drinking push on different things. Sober, your perception pays: hearing what was asked gets harder. Drunk, your hands pay: doing what you heard gets harder.
We didn't want to punish the same skill twice. But we deliberately didn't weigh the two sides evenly either. In the short run, a drink should always look like the better deal. The real tension is in the bill for that easy way out arriving as the night goes on.
Notes from behind the counter
The bar spoon is here, and it brought friends. In Devlog #1 we said we'd tie stirring to bar tools like the bar spoon. Done: there's now a muddler for muddling, a bar spoon for stirring, and a real shaker with a lid and a strainer. The mouse gestures over the glass have retired; every technique now has its own tool. You shake the shaker with both hands: hold both buttons and shake.
Tools fall too. Let go of a tool and it drops back onto its shelf. Drop it hard and it wobbles or tips over. If a shaker tips over with its lid off, whatever's inside spills onto the counter. Yes, the rag again.
What's next
Next time we're crossing to the other side of the counter: the people who walk in the door.
In the meantime, we're curious: what would you do when you can't make out the order? Take a guess and keep going, or have a sip? Tell us in the comments or on Discord. We read every one.
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See you behind the counter,
Team Sheer Cat