High Times dev log 01

What is High Times about?

Now that we’re getting closer to the release date, we figured we’d talk about the highs and lows of developing High Times and how this café came to life.

For those discovering the game now: High Times is a narrative donut-making game where you help customers process their emotions… one donut at a time.

But the story actually started somewhere else.

It all started with the characters

The game actually started with the characters! Our artist showed us some of the character designs he was working on and we loved it so much we basically tried to build a story that would do his colorful and whacky designs justice.

It took many long hours of brainstorming, but we finally decided on a cast of toxic exes who all started dropping by your donut shop looking for some sort of closure or revenge.

As development went forward, the ideas changed and we tweaked the characters a bit. What used to be a closure-simulator became what it is now: a donut-making sim about helping people figure out their emotions and maybe giving failed relationships a second chance (romantic or otherwise). Steam post image

From anti-dating sim to… dating sim

Like we mentioned above, High Times wasn’t actually meant to be a dating sim. In fact, the words ‘anti-dating sim’ have been thrown around in the office for a while. But in the end, the dating sim fans inside us won out. After all, all of the exes already have a good and a bad end… Adding a romance option can only be a plus, right?

The donut system

So we’ve got the characters sorted out and spent many an hour making sure their routes made sense, but the actual donut-making was a whole ‘nother ball game. And right before we actually got the ball rolling, 2020 happened.

That didn’t halt production and we worked on a system that would allow everyone to work from home (a system that’s still in place today), but we have to admit that the lockdowns and general insecurity about the state of the world hadn’t been good for morale.

The donut-making system was more complex and particular than we had expected and at the time, we doubt most of the world was in the mood for complex and particular problems. But we managed. With lots of coffee and donuts and bug fixing. The mood-enhancing mechanic, which had been simpler and more random before, slowly became more integrated into the story.

Routes and relationships could change depending on the donut you serve. The characters have specific reactions to elements they liked and didn’t like… It took a while getting there, but the donuts and mood enhancers have become an essential part of the characters’ stories instead of being a separate element that’s only meant to farm relationship points. We’re quite happy with how it turned out.

A long journey

It’s been quite a few years since we started working on High Times (how could it be 2026 already?!) and it has changed so much from what we envisioned back in 2020!

This game could have been an okay donut-making sim with visual novel elements, but we’re glad we decided to take the time to make sure all of the elements on the donut complement each other, so to speak.

We’ll be talking more about how we worked on the game in the coming weeks, so stay tuned! Comment with anything you want to know about the game and our process and we'd do our best to reply or write a long post about the topic!

And… if you like narrative games, donut cafés, and messy relationships, don’t forget to wishlist High Times on Steam!