Brew coffee. Help strangers. Keep the magic hidden.
Supermarket Simulator Meets Coffee Talk, sprinkled with a little magic
Create Your Own Cozy Magical Café
Build a café that feels like your own little refuge. Prepare drinks by hand, arrange your space, decorate it with personality, and create a warm place your customers will want to return to.
Serve Your Customers
Listen to conversations, learn your regulars’ stories, and discover small ways to help them. Infuse a drink with courage, confidence, or certainty, bring a little luck into someone’s day, and watch their stories unfold over time.
Their happiness helps fuel the ancient magic hidden within the café.
Learn & Master the Mystic Arts
You may run an ordinary café, but you are no ordinary barista. Learn spells, enchant objects, and use magic to make everyday life a little easier, just make sure no one is watching!
Keep the Magic alive, but hidden!
Deep within the café, an ancient runestone depends on the warmth and happiness created around it. Use magic to protect its power, help your customers, and keep the café thriving. But be careful! The more magic you use, the greater the chance someone notices. Keep the magic alive, without letting the ordinary world discover it.
Use too much magic, and something may slip through!
Meet the team
A small team bringing a big little world to life.
Co-Founder , Gameplay Engineer
James has over a decade of experience as a software developer in the visual effects industry and currently works at Industrial Light & Magic. He also serves as a Technical Steering Committee member for the Academy Software Foundation’s Dailies Notes Assistant project and as a committee chair for The Pipeline Conference in Vancouver. For Whispers in the Steam, James is the primary gameplay developer, implementing core systems and maintaining the team’s Perforce infrastructure.
Co-Founder, Art Director, Concept Artist
Maria J. Venegas has an undergraduate degree in Art and a Master’s in Animation, with a background as a 3D animator on titles including Mafia III, Ready Player One, and Aquaman. In 2020, she transitioned into design for animated features, working in concept art and visual development for clients including Netflix, Warner Bros., and Disney. She brings a strong eye for appealing design and a particular passion for cozy, whimsical worlds and environments.
CG Supervisor and UE Environment Artist
Alvaro studied Game Development and specialized in 3D Environment Art for Games at Think Tank Training Centre. With a strong eye for detail and a talent for translating 2D designs into compelling 3D spaces, Alvaro oversees the artistic implementation of the game in Unreal Engine, including asset integration, level assembly, materials and shaders, lighting, and overall environment polish. Working closely with the Art Director, he also helps translate ambitious visual ideas into practical, production ready solutions that can be effectively realized in-engine.
3D Artist
Corwin is a 3D artist from California specializing in prop and environment modeling for games. He studied Game Art and Design at VanArts and works primarily in Maya, Unreal Engine, and Substance 3D Painter. For Whispers in the Steam, he focuses on creating and integrating props, environments, and FX that help bring the game’s world to life.
Surfacing Artist
Maya is a 3D artist from California with a focus on stylized texturing/look development for film/real-time production. Her journey in the industry has just started, yet she’s already had the opportunity to help lead surfacing teams with The Third Floor Inc., Bardel Entertainment, and is now a VAD artist Weta FX, New Zealand.
3D Animator
Fernanda is a character animator with over 10 years of experience in visual effects, television, and feature animation. She began her career in Mexico after completing her degree and the online program Animation Mentor. She moved to Vancouver in 2017, where she has continued working in the industry for the past nine years. For the team, Fernanda brings her experience contributing to the animation and development of the game’s characters.
About the project
Introducing Whispers in the Steam, an independent game created by a small team of six across art direction, gameplay engineering, animation, 3D art, and environment development.
Whispers in the Steam is a first-person magical café simulator about creating a place of comfort, getting to know the people who visit it, and deciding how much you are willing to risk to help them.
Players run and customize their café through hands-on tasks like preparing drinks, serving customers, upgrading equipment, and managing busy rushes. At the same time, recurring patrons bring their own relationships, fears, ambitions, and problems.
By listening to them, players can choose to intervene using magic, offering courage, confidence, or a subtle push when someone needs it most.
But magic has a cost.
An ancient runestone protects the café from darker magical forces, and every use of magic weakens that protection. As it deteriorates, strange creatures and supernatural events begin to threaten the refuge the player has built.
At its heart, Whispers in the Steam is about building something worth caring about, using magic to make that little world better, and protecting it when the consequences begin to appear.
Funding Goals
Bring in Exectuve Production & Narrative Development
We hope to bring an experienced Executive Producer / Narrative Lead onto Whispers in the Steam to help guide the project through its next stage of development. This role would support both the creative and production sides of the game, refining the story, strengthening patron characters and emotional arcs, helping define scope and milestones, and ensuring that the different disciplines come together as one cohesive experience.
Invest in the Team
We also want to support targeted Unreal Engine training, including stylized Niagara VFX and advanced 3D workflows, so our team can push the game’s atmosphere and polish even further.
Sound Design
We want sound to make Whispers in the Steam feel deeply immersive and tactile, from the hiss of the espresso machine and the clink of ceramic cups to the soft ambience of the café and subtle magical effects. Funding would allow us to bring in professional sound design that makes everyday actions feel more satisfying and helps the world feel warm, responsive, and alive.
Roadmap
Currently Whispers in the steam is in our prototype and exploration phase. We first started with a prototype in Unity but have since transitioned to Unreal. Most of our core systems have been built in Unity already however to get the look that we are going for, we moved to Unreal and are in the process of building our prototype in the engine.
Concept Art
Let’s Stay in Touch
Would you like to collaborate?
Don’t hesitate to reach out!