The world of High Times
We’ve got the mood donuts and the Donut Maker, but what about the place where the donuts are made?
The name of our mood cafe actually comes from *ahem* a term in “grass” culture referring to a small enclosed space where people smoke the green stuff. The Hotbox is a place people go to for their donut high, we thought the name would be appropriate! (This definitely didn’t help the game’s ESRB rating though lol.)
From sci-fi cafe to cozy corner
The game was initially set in 2069 and earlier studies for the facade of the Hotbox had a more sci-fi vibe. If you notice in the pic above, the colour palette is also more muted and cold compared to the final look.
You also probably noticed that the final version of the Hotbox is a lot smaller than the initial study… We ended up going with a floor plan that’s closer to Study B.
A smaller cafe feels a lot more personal, like a place where customers can tell you all about their problems. The study below has the High Times colour palette, but we felt like the sleek modern look and all the space detracted from the cosiness a little bit. Imagine if the Hotbox really made it big though! Maybe Boss can actually afford to hire another person…
Inspired by music
A big inspiration for the High Times vibe is Lo-fi music (and the aesthetic, of course). We wanted the Hotbox to feel like a cosy diner that remains open even late at night, a place where you can chill if you can’t fall asleep. Even the BGM have that Lo-fi feel. Our music designer composed some super cool Lo-fi beats for the Hotbox jukebox, so feel free to choose your favourite to listen to while making donuts!
But what’s happening outside?
We looked at a couple of cities to serve as an inspiration for San Mazo. There’s California, the proverbial melting pot of cuisines and where the people are larger than life. San Mazopalooza, despite the name, also has big C*achella vibes. But since we live in the Philippines, we couldn’t resist adding a bit of Filipino flavour to San Mazo as well. After all, Manila has all the parties and good cheer, despite the hours-long traffic jams and the floods.
‘But wait,’ you might say. ‘The main character never leaves the Hotbox, though? What was the point of making up all that San Mazo flavour?’
And you would be right! Our MC is a workaholic, but that doesn’t mean we couldn’t do a bit of worldbuilding through the dialogue and social media. After all, we already have some influencers and streamers as regular customers. Even if MC never touches grass, we could at least show off some of the things happening in town via social media.
And we wrote a lot of social media posts (and so many comments on those social media posts lol, we really went ham there). The posts also had photos. And the people commenting had their own profile pictures… The Facenook app started giving the programmers a lot of grief because of the sheer amount of posts that get posted each day. But hey, this is important to the worldbuilding, you know!
You can get a small taste of San Mazo and our infamous Facenook posts in our demo!
And as always…
If you like cozy cafés, messy people, and emotional donuts, don’t forget to wishlist High Times.
Thank you gang for your support!