Hello heroes! 👋
January has been an exciting start to the year. We hit the ground running, and we're bursting at the seams to share the latest updates with you.
Let's get right to it.
TLDR: We've significantly improved the feedback, customer pathing, and inventory management systems. Plus, new researchable items for weather, pricing, and recipe perfection.
Gameplay Updates
Feedback System 👍👎
Playtesters' feedback on this component brought some real issues to our attention. The main pain points were text readability, difficulty matching comments to stands, and identifying new feedback.
Here's how the previous version looked:
We've improved the layout to be more user-friendly and intuitive! Icons now represent stands, localities, and customer segments.
We've included a counter for the latest feedback and bundled food and service quality feedback for each customer. This means less clutter and more insights at a glance.
Customer Pathing 🛣️
The customer pathing system is how customers find their way around each locality. We designed it in such a way that they can find the shortest path to a stand. The image below shows the relevant aspects of the pathing system:
- The stand is marked in red, with its range shown in transparent red.
- The path followed by customers is highlighted in blue, and the green squares mark intersection points where they can change direction.
- At the yellow decision point, customers decide whether to buy a burger based on their collision with the stand range.
Over time, we noticed that some stand spots, particularly those farther from customer path intersections, had lower foot traffic. We’ve moved two affected stand spots in Noisy Playground and Street Corner to improve their performance.
For Street Corner, it was a slightly bigger move.
Additionally, we've optimized the intersection points to ensure better foot traffic across these stands in both locations.
After thoroughly testing business performance through different conditions, we will only know if these changes are effective.
Cold Storage & Ingredient Expiration 🧊
We've tweaked the cold storage and expiry functions to simplify ingredient management. Now, expiry only occurs when there's no cold storage.
In the latest design, just patty and cheese will expire when cold storage is unavailable.
When stored normally, patties and cheese expire after one day. However, when stored cold, they stay fresh indefinitely.
Cursor Updates 🖱️
While implementing the tooltips, we added new cursor designs for items on the UI. Items with a tooltip now show a text box on hover, while clickable items show a pointing hand.
New Research Items
Weather ⛈️🌦️
Weather Forecasting has become an exciting new feature you can unlock through research. Initially, you'll have access to the current weather conditions.
As you progress and research this feature, you'll gain the ability to see future weather forecasts.
Pricing Survey 💵👨👩👧👦
We've added a new, researchable pricing tool. The pricing survey helps you discover how likely your customers are to buy your burgers and drinks at current prices. Once unlocked, it's available once daily at a nominal fee.
Perfect Ingredient Feedback 🍅👍
The days of feeling like a mad scientist trying to figure out the perfect recipe are finally over! Many players voiced their struggles with this, and we listened!
Perfect Ingredients Feedback is our response to your requests.
When you unlock this feature, customers will tell you when an ingredient amount in your recipe is just right. This feature promises to be a game-changer for discovering those perfect recipes.
That's it for January! 🥂
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Live Long and Prosper 👋,
Team Visionaries