Our first core update includes a UI refresh for some of the previously hard to read components, bug fixes and steam leaderboards and achievements integration. Please see below for a list of updates:
UI Refresh
Replaced the arcade level HUD panel which was un-readable before, also replaced the My Neighborhood Arcade logos with a retro laser theme.
Leaderboards
Added leaderboards to all games. These have a local mode which, if we got the programming right, should show any players from the local system. A global leaderboard which shows the top 8 global scores and a friends leaderboard, which should limit the results to just friends. You can earn tickets and XP for by getting on the local leaderboards.
We'll be refreshing the global/friends leaderboards on some regular interval to keep them fresh. We'll be including some of the leaderboard winners in update community messages.
Achievements
We hooked up the 3 existing achievements, we have new achievements planned for an upcoming core update.
Wheels of Fortunes
We improved the UI for the Wheels of Fortunes Ticket game and added some game dynamics including scoring to be used in the leaderboard.
Infinity Jukebox
We added Internet Radio to Infinity Jukebox with 300 included stations broken up by genres to help you find the right station for your mood. Hit F6 from any game to bring up the Infinity Jukebox Hud and switch to a Radio station.
Bugs
We resolved a few bugs, including addressing the saving system bugs that were generating too many hours and ones around XP, tickets, wins/losses, etc. Unfortunately, we had to reset the backing stats for this release, but they should be valid going forward. (If we find a similar bug, we'll try to fix it asap so we don't have to keep resetting stats after people earn them)
Roadmap:
Core Update
In an upcoming core update, we want to address better integrating the tickets and xp aspects of the game. There are more opportunities to earn xp and tickets distributed throughout the core game experience with this release, possibly not completely evenly, but with the leaderboards, there's a lot more potential to earn across all games.
We're currently deciding if we're going to replace all the individual in-game currency with tickets, so you always use tickets, or if we'll continue to allow exchanging tickets for in-game currency (such as purchasing coins in Picture Puzzle to show hints or just charging tickets directly), we plan on resolving that in the next core update
We have plans on adding an award system when going up Player/Game levels via XP, we intend to include that in the next core update as well.
New Game Units
We're going to release in a single release or two closely timed releases 5-6 additional games over the next 2 weeks, and then we plan to start rotating 4-6 games a month in 2021. We have games across all 4 tiers planned.
(We're also working on updating our store front on steam with new graphics and videos and then we'll be adding 2 DLC's where you can purchase everything from our 2020/2021 catalog as two single purchases in addition to the current and expanding individual unit purchases.)
