Dev update 2 - June 4, 2021 - Areas’ management
Hello Owners!
We are back with Dev update #2 to showcase how the development of Blooming Business: Casino is going and highlight some of our key features. This time, we have added more depth to management in the game and in particular the “Game area” and “Entrance area”. Casino owners will have more control over the flow of clients visiting your casino and have additional options to improve the efficiency of games and utilities areas (restrooms, bars…).
We also prioritised various adjustments (tutorial flow, UI improvement,...) based on the feedback of our community members who participated in the latest playtest! We want to thank them again for their crucial and valuable inputs.
If you want to know more about what to expect for the Early Access release and what the team focused on these past weeks, read all about it below.
Important announcement! We will reveal more about our gameplay during the next Guerrilla Collective event on June 12th. You can check out their website and activate the notification on Twitch. Also, stay informed by joining our Discord community server or following us on Twitter !
New features
Our different areas
As a quick introduction, Blooming Business: Casino offers a system of areas to guide you and help you manage and optimize the different aspects of your business. There are 3 types of areas, all with dedicated information panels to better understand & optimise your performance and operational options. Let’s go in a bit more depth :
1) Game area
This is where you can place your casino games (slot machines, blackjack tables, etc...) and where your dealers operate. During this development milestone, we continued working on Game areas with new options and details within the operating menus. There are new operational functionalities (sell, move the areas,...), an improved shopping experience and additional menu information.
2) Entrance area
We implemented a new area type, the “Entrance area”! It enables you to open or close your casino, regulate visitors flow and attract different clients. You will be able to open or close your casino if needed, add a bonus entrance sign, monitor specific KPIs such as number of entries, waiting time, standing level...
Overall, it will give you more control over who you let in, and it comes with a new job for guards : the bouncer! Clients will no longer go through stanchions, since the bouncer will now let them in !
3) Convenience Areas
“Restrooms” and “Bars” will attend to your clients' most vital needs ;)... Moreover, we’ve improved the restroom area : You will now be able to choose how and when to clean it. However, whenever a Janitor has to clean the room, they will close it entirely, so make sure you have another somewhere in your Casino ! If a room isn’t cleaned enough, Clients won’t be able to relieve their needs as much and will spend less time playing. And you don’t want that !
Our first VIP is here
Our very first VIP is here! Meet Ant’ny Barr (or just ‘Tony’); our famous mafiosi bear. Ant’ny is one of the *charming* personalities you will be able to meet in the future. He is the head of the new crime family who just "ousted" (read: murdered) the Rheeves family. Oddly enough he's not a high roller. When he's around he plays very tight, but he loves to be served by his favorites. If you don't have a staff that he approves of... expect trouble... big trouble. Take care of him or he might show his bad side.
Playing the game, it will be vital to connect with VIPs and learn their backstories, needs, goals and desires. Specialize your casino and adapt your management in order to cater to their craziests pet peeves for big rewards !
Sit on couch
We heard your playtesters, our dear clients can finally take sit on couches to take a break from all the crazy emotions from your floor !
Major improvements
UI
A lot of issues and improvement areas were reported about our UI. Although it is not definitive yet, we made some changes to make it more user friendly and easy to understand.
We added outlines on objects, changed some names and improved its overall look.
Tutorial
We always update our tutorial to show off our new features. But this time we also added some story to go with it, and we really try to give a better feeling of progression through it.
Minor adjustments:
- Options: we added some graphic options for better game experience
- Loading screen: we added a loading screen so the game doesn’t seem to freeze when starting.
- New animations: we created more animations for existing characters to give a more lively feeling
- New sound balance: we changed the sound balance to put more emphasis on casino sounds. However this is still super rough.
- Character movement: We improved character movement so they don’t go through walls anymore and their motions seem more natural.
Bug fix
- Selling tool cursor now displayed the right icon
- Mouse outside screen edge now work even in fullscreen
- Game area panels open as expected
- Issue movement with camera at start is fixed
- Beauty layer don’t break agent’s texture anymore
- Event’s choices tooltip is fixed
- Restroom walls don’t clip with existing walls anymore
- Areas can be placed even when totem are already here
And that’s all for this update. As always, do not hesitate to share your thoughts and questions as we make progress to the development of Blooming Business: Casino. We want to share with you how we progress and are always keen for feedback!
We're looking forward to sharing more about the game and what new features we will be adding very soon! In the meantime, we are discussing with our community on Discord. Join us and be informed about upcoming playtests!
Kriss from the Homo Ludens team.