[ ABOUT ]

DRONE CAFÉ is a point-and-click action thingy. You play as a CUTE ROBOTIC DRONE in the VAGUELY UTOPIAN FUTURE, working at a café by the train station. You will be serving customers and getting to know some of your fellow drones, and altering yourself to become better at those things. There are kink overtones, and the game dabbles some in hypnosis/mind control stuff.

🔞  18+ only, thanks!  🔞

Made for Strawberry Jam 9 (https://itch.io/jam/strawberry-jam-9) in two-ish weeks. This game is experimental, so expect jank. It's also much more bite-sized than my usual work, so don't expect the usual sci-fi epic. Sorry!

DRONE CAFÉ shares a setting with some of my other games - the utilikin have appeared in multiple titles. You don't need to be familiar with those, though, and the story mode gives you a quick reality lowdown at the beginning. There isn't as much of a central plot, but there is a series of little vignettes, gesturing at themes and dynamics I want to explore more in the future.



[ CONTENT NOTES ]

This game contains gently pulsating lights, and plenty of them. Transitions between them are generally fairly gentle, but there might be some flashing every now and then.

MIND CONTROL KINK is all over this game. (Starting on Day 2 in the story mode, or immediately in free-play mode.) It's all wholesome teasing, though, and there's no attempt to actually hypnotise the player for real. (It will not attempt to put you into a trance.) But if you're uncomfortable with those themes, or the idea of being reprogrammed, this might not be the title for you.

By default, the game will play some mouth sounds (chewing, drinking, etc.) If you find these unpleasant, be aware that there's a setting in the options menu to replace those sounds. If you enable it, a more generic NES-style 8-bit SFX will play instead - this shouldn't trigger misophonia.

Finally, I should note that the game attempts to calculate a default drone ID. To get one that's consistent across installations but different for different users, it attempts to do some device fingerprinting, throws the results into a cryptographic hash function, and picks two bytes from the hash. This all happens strictly on-device/in-browser, no data is ever transmitted or stored.

No sex scenes or even much in the way of implication, but teasing does happen. So, again, 🔞🔞🔞 .



[ INSTRUCTIONS ]

If you find this all a bit confusing, you can watch some gameplay footage here - perhaps it'll help: https://youtu.be/FpnT5bWj0x8

The whole game is controlled via mouse (or touchscreen). To walk, LEFT-CLICK anywhere (or touch there.) To interact with a person or object, LEFT-CLICK on that too. If you do the story mode, the mechanics are explained one at a time. There's also an in-game help function, accessible via the main menu - I recommend skimming it.

A thing to note: If you click on a hotspot, you're locked into interaction mode. That is, your current drone will walk there and do their thing, and you have to wait for it to be done. You can't switch drones while that happens. But if you click-to-walk, you CAN switch while your drone is in transit. This will take some getting used to, but I'm confident you can do it.

In dialogues, you can also press SPACE or RETURN to advance the line, and you can use the NUMBER KEYS on your keyboard to select a dialogue option. (If your platform has one.) This is in addition to left-clicking. A keyboard is pretty optional, but extremely useful, since you can also use it to switch between drones (F1 and F2).

To see all interactable objects on the current screen, click and hold the lightbulb icon. The game can be paused at any time. Note that the challenge clock DOES NOT STOP during dialogue.


[ CREDITS ]

The main writer and developer is me, Kaye, of https://snowcean.net/ fame. 

Credit for the drone portraits goes to my good friend @operatorart.bsky.social. I had to ruin them a bit to squeeze them into the game,  The music is CC stuff, as are some of the visual assets - see in-game credits for details.