Hi everyone,
The last few weeks have been busy, so this update has ended up being a couple rolled in to one. The good news is that this should be a big one, with a few new features, lots of fixes and the start of some big improvements.
This patch will roll out to the play testers first (should be available now!) and then to demo players once it's been put through its paces!
Location
Fed up of the city? Take your restaurant to the countryside, and enjoy some tranquillity. Want something more intense? Go even further afield and find a snowy mountainside to sizzle your steaks on.
There are three locations in the game so far. Each location will affect your restaurant, giving a little twist on each run you do. This is currently a bit barebones, but I'm hoping to give each location it's own feel and give you another thing to factor into your plan.
Weather
Each day brings new challenges, and new weather! Each location has its own weather pattern, and days with inclement weather bring their own problems. For now, customers will be less happy to stand outside in the rain or snow, so don't let the queue build up on these days!
This is also a first-pass, so look out for more effects from weather, good and bad.
Upgrade cards
To make it easier to keep track of what's going on in your restaurant, I've re-styled the upgrades at each star level into cards, which have been re-designed to better explain what they do. The full set of cards you chose (together with any others active) can be seen at the end of the run, so you can show off your incredible menu variety.
New outfit
Lots of people have said they'd like new outfits, so I've taken another look over how outfits work in the game and made it easier to add new ones! This update has one new outfit for you to try, but let me know what other outfits you'd like to see.
I'm still playing with the idea of allowing each player to equip an individual upgrade that gives them a special ability, or makes them a bit better at something. Personal chef knife set? Running shoes? Emergency napkin? Tool belt?
New appliance
While I'm not yet focusing on adding content, it's always nice to throw something new into the mix... enter the mixer! The mixer will automatically chop things and knead dough for you. It's not the fastest, but another pair of hands will always come in handy.
Tweaks
There's been a bit of twiddling to various settings.
For layouts, the most important one is that large layouts can now have another hatch! Supply your front-of-house twice as fast, cook in front of your guests, or set up a giant conveyor belt, the choices are endless.
For customers, I've changed it so that customers are now more likely to order extra things (sides, desserts and starters) when you have more options. Previously, you could choose a side for each upgrade and the difficulty wouldn't increase much. Now this will stack up until every customer is ordering a side.
Bug fixes
Part of the reason this update is a bit later than usual is that I wanted to get a lot of bugs fixed before I sent it out, so there should be fixes to pretty much all the problems people have reported (and a few they haven't!). My favourite ex-bug: you can place conveyor belts next to tables and let people take their orders directly from them (that's intentional), but the list of connected conveyor belts was never cleaned out, so if you picked up a belt and put it somewhere else, it would still let people take their orders from it, even if it was on the other side of the restaurant (that's not intentional).