Cozy Barista Game
A cozy drink-mixing game where players pour ingredients, discover recipes, and drink custom cafe drinks
The Concept
Cozy Barista is a browser-based drink-mixing game built around experimentation, recipe discovery, and sensory feedback. Players press and hold ingredients to pour them into a cup, stir the drink, serve it to Rei, then receive a reaction based on the drink's flavor balance and recipe match.
The original idea came from the joy of cafe menu exploration: learning how espresso, milk, tea, matcha, syrups, toppings, and ice combine into recognizable drinks. Instead of presenting that knowledge as a static recipe list, the game lets players discover it through trial, feedback, and collection.
I partnered with a developer friend to create Cozy Barista. This is a self-initiated group project where I served as the Game UI & Interaction Designer and coffee domain expert, helping shape the ingredient categories, recipe logic, flavor language, and cafe atmosphere.
My Impact on Game Rules & Collaboration
I helped translate coffee and beverage knowledge into game rules: ingredient categories, drink proportions, forbidden combinations, flavor dimensions, and the difference between a successful recipe and a chaotic custom drink. My developer partner turned those rules into the playable JavaScript system.
Game Features
Cozy Barista is designed as a small, replayable cafe toy with clear feedback loops and collectible progress.
- Ingredient shelves: Players choose from bases, milks, syrups and flavors, toppings, and ice. Liquid ingredients are poured by holding the button, while toppings and extras are added in smaller steps.
- Dynamic cup visuals: The cup fills with visible layers while pouring. Stirring blends the drink into a single color, making the act of mixing feel immediate and tactile.
- Recipe collection: The recipe book tracks 19 unlockable drinks. Locked recipes show hints, while discovered recipes reveal their required proportions and restrictions.
- Flavor scoring: Every served drink is evaluated across bitterness, sweetness, creaminess, sourness, and saltiness.
- Rei reactions: Rei reacts with different expressions and sounds, including excellent, jittery, sugar rush, disgusted, and bored states.
- Audio feedback: The game uses Web Audio API sounds for pouring, stirring, serving, and character reactions, making the interface feel more alive.
The visual direction uses a warm cafe backdrop, soft ingredient icons, and a friendly character system so the mechanics feel approachable rather than technical.
How It Works
The game logic evaluates both recipe accuracy and overall taste. This lets players win by matching known cafe drinks, but still receive meaningful feedback when they invent something unusual.
- Pour: Holding an ingredient button repeatedly adds that ingredient to the current cup until the drink reaches its volume limit.
- Mix: Stirring changes the drink from separated layers into a blended beverage and affects the final presentation.
- Serve: When the player serves the cup, the game calculates ingredient ratios, checks recipe requirements, and rejects forbidden combinations.
- Evaluate: Flavor values are calculated from each ingredient's profile. Extreme combinations can trigger jittery, sugary, bored, or disgusted feedback even if the drink is technically full.
- Unlock: A matched recipe is saved to local storage, updating the recipe book progress so players can keep building their collection.
My Impact & What I Learned
My main impact was merging my real-life coffee knowledge with interaction design. I learned how to make a rules-based system feel cozy and playful, how to prepare visual assets for dynamic UI states, and how to communicate game feedback clearly through character reactions, recipe hints, and flavor bars.