by River Kang

Hello everyone, I’m River Kang, the developer and editor of Coffee Rush: Winter. I’m happy to share some of the story behind the game with you.

Coffee Rush: Winter is a standalone version of Coffee Rush. We wanted to preserve the fun and flow of the wonderful original game while capturing the atmosphere of a cozy café in winter. That led to many discussions about everything from new drinks and a modular ingredient board to the shape of the mugs and the light spilling out of the café windows.

To share some of that process, I’ve adapted an earlier interview with Coffee Rush designer Euijin Han, graphic designer Sooyeon Lee, and myself into this post. Here’s a look at the ideas we explored, the challenges we faced, and the details we refined along the way.

Q. Why winter?

Sooyeon Lee (Graphic Designer): There were two reasons. One was that the seasonal feel of the base game was yellow-green, in other words spring and summer, so we wanted to present something completely different. The other was that we felt cafés in winter had a distinctive atmosphere.

Euijin Han (Designer): We drink all sorts of beverages in spring, summer and autumn too, but winter has so many drinks with real character, such as hot chocolate and vin chaud.

Q. How do the rules differ from Coffee Rush?
Euijin Han: A lot of the feedback we received was that people wished they could rearrange the ingredients on the board. So we made the board modular and let players assemble it themselves. We also added more drinks suited to the winter theme. We tried not to stray too far from the original Coffee Rush. The basic principle was to keep most of the core structure and make only minor changes. The two biggest changes are the modular ingredient board and the new drinks.

River Kang (Editor): We wanted to make a game that people who had been enjoying the original Coffee Rush could play this one in much the same way, while also offering extra options for those who want a little more freedom.

Euijin Han: Oh, and upgrade tiles were added as well. There are six in total: four from the base game, one from the Piece of Cake expansion, and one newly designed for Winter. Players choose four to use.

Q. What changed in the design?
Euijin Han: Design was what we paid the most attention to while preparing Coffee Rush: Winter, so quite a lot changed. First, we changed the shape of the cups. The original cup is a round cappuccino cup, but we turned it into a mug for hot winter drinks such as hot chocolate and added an engraved snowflake. We thought this style of cup fit the winter theme well.

River Kang: We also took the aprons off the pawns and gave each one a differently shaped scarf. We had heard that some players with color-vision deficiency had trouble telling which pawn was theirs. Even in the base game, we used different shades of red and green to make them easier to distinguish for players with color-vision deficiency, but we heard that players were still getting confused, so we decided to give each pawn a different scarf.
We made a similar seasonal change to the ice, shaping it like a snowman. The most important change, though, was switching one of the ingredients from caramel to fruit. The fruit piece itself is shaped like an orange slice. There are a lot of citrus drinks in winter, so we wanted to make that change.

Sooyeon Lee: We also redesigned the rush tokens as cookies, with three different shapes. The shapes make no difference to the rules, but they are cute.

Q. What Did You Focus on the Most?
Sooyeon Lee: The visual side, above all. We changed the various components to suit the season, and we redrew all of the artwork. Illustrator Siwon Hwang created the artwork for Coffee Rush in 2022, and her skills have developed even further over the past three years. So while we were at it, we redrew almost everything: the package, the board, the drinks. Other than the existing drink and ingredient icons, almost everything was redrawn.

River Kang: You could say that our main focus was bringing the winter theme to life through the artwork and 3D components.

Q. What was difficult, or what did you worry over?
Euijin Han: The biggest challenge was how little time we had between the initial idea and the completion of the final version. We also debated whether to change the rules more boldly. We thought about adding something like an obstacle to the board, or introducing variations to the tiles. We explored changing the rules in various ways. But it felt like it did not suit the cozy, playful feel of Coffee Rush, so we took it out.

Sooyeon Lee: On the art side, finding the right color palette for winter was a bit difficult. From the beginning we wanted the feel of winter at night rather than winter in daylight. We wanted the artwork to convey the feeling of winter: a slightly dim world, light spilling out of buildings, cold outside, and warmth inside. So we asked the illustrator to capture the feeling of a winter evening. But when the art came back, it was much darker than we had expected, and the overall mood felt gloomy. Many of the reference images we had found showed dark exteriors with warm light glowing from inside, so we had not anticipated this problem. Once we saw the artwork, however, we realized that the box art was too dark overall.

After a great deal of discussion, we finally asked: “Please aim for a level of brightness somewhere between 5 and 6 p.m. on a winter day.” We wanted enough light to be visible inside the shop so that players could feel its warmth. After all, the coziness of winter comes from being indoors. Finding that middle point, giving the feel of a winter night while keeping the Coffee Rush look from seeming too drab, was a little hard.

River Kang: Getting the component sizes right was another challenge. We made new 3D components, and when we received samples made to the dimensions we had initially envisioned, there were problems: some pieces were too large, and the cup was too deep. The cup in the original Coffee Rush is round and narrows toward the bottom, so the ingredients settle in naturally and the wide opening makes them easy for players to see. But a mug is deep and not wide at the top, so the ingredients became difficult to see. So we solved this by adjusting the size of the ingredients and raising the bottom inside the mug. If you look closely, you can see that the cup’s interior base is about 3 mm higher. We adjusted it so the ingredients look full whether you look from above or from the side.

Euijin Han: Balancing the proportions of the drinks was also a major challenge. When the ingredient changed from caramel to fruit, every drink that used caramel had to be reworked. That meant new drinks had to come in, but simply replacing caramel with fruit in the existing recipes did not work. Caramel drinks mostly contain coffee and milk, and if you put coffee and milk together with fruit, wouldn’t that be a drink that is hard even to imagine? So we had to readjust the proportions of all the ingredients.

Coffee Rush has four regular ingredients and four special ingredients, and the ratios of cold drinks to hot drinks, milk to coffee, and regular drinks to specialty drinks are all carefully balanced. To match those proportions in Coffee Rush: Winter as well, we made a table comparing the new and existing drinks so we could keep the ingredient ratios as consistent as possible.

Q. How did the ideas for the new drinks come about?
River Kang: As soon as designer Euijin Han proposed fruit tea, I wanted to include vin chaud (editor’s note: French mulled wine). The broader idea was to include warm drinks with fruit flavors that fit the winter theme. Korea has many kinds of hot fruit tea, so we wanted to include drinks like those as well We researched fruit-based drinks from various sources and asked people for suggestions. As we built the ingredient list, we selected the ideas that seemed like the best fit.

We also created a few new drinks that suit winter even without fruit in them. One of those is the white chocolate latte. Snow is white, so the drink naturally feels wintry. The combination is identical to that of the chocolate latte, but we created new artwork for it. We added an affogato as well. It is a distinctive drink that contains both a hot ingredient and a cold ingredient. Since the ice is snowman-shaped, we thought, “Let’s make an affogato with a snowman in it.” We came up with a combination in which milk plus ice makes ice cream, while steam plus coffee makes espresso. That is how the first drink in the Coffee Rush series to contain both ice and steam came about.

We also included a drink called bicerin. It is visually appealing because it is made in three layers. We had also received a request to include an unusual drink, so we decided to add it.

Q. What do you think people will like about it?
River Kang: I think the greatest strengths of the Coffee Rush series are its beautiful artwork and components, which players can now enjoy in a fresh winter setting. From an experienced board gamer’s perspective, another strength is the modular ingredient board. You can arrange the ingredients freely, somewhat like in Catan, which means you can have a different experience every time you play.

We also redesigned the ingredient trays so that all the ingredient tokens can be divided evenly between the two trays. This lets players place the two trays in separate, easy-to-reach spots around the table during play. I also put a lot of care into the box insert, which holds all of the components. It was designed to keep everything neatly organized, so packing the game away should be much easier.

Q. Any fun stories from development?
Sooyeon Lee: The snowman ice originally had a nose. But the nose was so small and pointy that someone might get hurt during play, so we had to remove it. Sadly, the snowman ice became a little less cute.

Q. This is the first spin-off. What are your hopes for it?
River Kang: We set out to remake the game while preserving its original fun and flow as much as possible. At the same time, we tried to address some of the shortcomings of the previous release in a different way, so I hope people are satisfied with those changes. In fact, I think the most important thing is for people to enjoy the game without being particularly conscious of what has changed. I think that if someone finds themselves thinking, “Why did they change it this way?” or “This is inconvenient,” then we have failed. That is what concerns me most.

Euijin Han: I hope people can choose the game according to the mood of the day. Shall we play Coffee Rush today? Or Coffee Rush: Winter today? I hope people can enjoy both like that. The best thing for us would be for people to love them both. One of the reasons we made Coffee Rush: Winter is our wish that people enjoy a version with a different, more wintry look. One of the most rewarding experiences after the release of Coffee Rush was seeing a child at a board-game demo event who, without knowing the rules, put whatever ingredients they wanted into a cup and excitedly said, “Dad, look, look at this! I made this.” That is why we put so much effort into the artwork and the components. I hope people have a good time playing it together.

Sooyeon Lee (Graphic Designer): If I hear people say, “I bought it because it’s pretty,” or simply, “It’s so pretty,” I’ll feel like we’ve achieved what we set out to do.

Q. Will more titles in the series follow?
Euijin Han: The Coffee Rush series will continue. It may not be about coffee, though; the next game could involve a different kind of food. I cannot say for certain that every future title will be called Coffee Rush, but the Rush series can definitely continue.

Q. Finally, a word each for the people who will play the game.
Sooyeon Lee: It’s cold in winter, so people tend to stay indoors more, and I hope they have a good time indoors with Coffee Rush: Winter. You don’t even have to go outside!

River Kang: When you line up the three boxes on a shelf, their colors look really nice together. You can choose between Coffee Rush and Coffee Rush: Winter according to your preference, and if you’ve played the original, you can enjoy winter in a slightly different way. I hope you get to enjoy the whole series.

Euijin Han: I hope Coffee Rush makes its way around the world, so that even people in countries without winter can experience winter through Coffee Rush: Winter.