A Cafe in Baerhaven

Welcome to the cafe! This game is made in RPGmakerMZ, and in it, you play a cafe owner looking to get closer with some of your patrons. To move, use the arrow keys, or click the tile where you would like to go. To interact with an object or character, click on the object or character in question, or press enter while facing the object/character you'd like to interact with. At all shops, interact with the shopkeeper to purchase goods. The only ingredient you can get while inside the cafe is water, and while others might not be found at shops, you'll have to look around to see what you can find outside. To cook, click on the oven which you use to make that particular recipe. There are three ovens - one in the main kitchen and two in the backrooms. Also in the backrooms, you can go to your dressers and change your outfit. Be mindful of your gold - without it, you might not be able to afford ingredients and the cafe will be stuck. There's some lying around the cafe when you begin. You can check your gold by pressing escape, and from that menu can view your inventory by clicking "items." Outside the cafe, you can visit: - Baerhaven Town Square - Dale's General Goods - the Fortune Teller's tent - the Not-So-Secret Forest and Semi-Hidden Grotto - Allen, the blacksmith's workshop Characters will have different things to say if you should run into them outside the cafe!------------------------------------------------------------------A Cafe in Baerhaven served as the final project for "Queerness and Games" at Bennington College. It was playable for the "Not Like Other Games: A Queer Gaming Conference" student arcade. The game responds to queer playtesting of released resource management and dating simulation games - in particular, the multiplicative gameplay loop allows for progression to accumulate at faster rates, not slower ones, encouraging progression through the NPC social aspects, instead of punishing it (as was found by players of Stardew Valley during a class experiment). The dating simulation progression relies on a default bisexuality, considering the gender of the player and the player character irrelevant, with masculine and feminine appearance options being strictly aesthetic - a view of gender shared by many of the trans and genderqueer students within the class. Unlike many popular resource management and social simulator games, the progression of the social elements does not carry a mechanical benefit for the management of the cafe - instead, the cafe operations are a vehicle for the social progression, refocusing the notion of management and business ownership away from capitalist expansion and towards community building.