Hey everyone, I hope you’re good! I wanted to personally thank those of you that have already taken the time to try out our demo and submit feedback. If you haven’t had a chance to play yet, we are keeping the demo live until Sunday 11th July, so still plenty of time to still get involved.
With regards to the feedback that we received so far, I thought it would be useful to highlight some of the points raised and share how we will be acting upon them as we continue development.
Demo feedback
After finishing the demo, we asked players to rate different aspects of the game, and the areas that you felt required the most improvement were:
- Restaurant building options
- Sense of challenge
- Stock management system.
So this has encouraged us to focus our efforts on improving these aspects first! Alongside the QoL and tutorial feedback (really helpful), we also received the following common suggestions, which I’ll now address:
Recipe editor and menu tools
“I’d like to customise the appearance of my dishes more” - We can add additional 3D models and improve the usability of the UI on the recipe editor to support this.
“It would be great to have a small premade recipe book with suggestions for dishes!” - Recipe for Disaster now supports modding via Steam Workshop, which means that you can share your recipes with others!
Staff hiring and management systems
“Can staff skill levels be improved over time? How about staff training?” - Staff will level up skills depending on how frequently they perform certain actions, so if a staff member spends a lot of time on the grill they will level up their grill skill.
“It’s too easy refreshing the staff pool to always get who I want. Could this be a bit more restricted?” - Staff hiring is an incredibly important part of the game. As such the player will only be able to pick from a finite pool at certain points during gameplay which will mean that choices really matter. By EA release we also plan to include one-time applicants who will be exceptional workers, but come with a hefty price tag.
“It would be helpful to have more visual differentiation between staff depending on their main job e.g. servers and chefs” - We will add roles and uniforms which allow you to visually group staff together.
Pacing
“The gameplay loop gets quite intense! Could we have more unexpected occurrences that break up gameplay?” - We plan to add more social interactions, events, additional weather mechanics, mishaps and disasters to create more variety in the gameplay loop. Some of this will appear in-game during Early Access.
Restaurant building and customisation tools
“Please can we have MORE placeable objects and customisation options!” - Of course you can! We’ll continue to add new objects to the game including ones that have specific themes to give your restaurant’s more character.
“It feels like tables are too spaced out, and I’d like to be able to place my tables next to walls” - The plan is to implement tables which can be linked together, so for example, you’ll be able to combine two tables of two, to make one table of four. We’ll also make sure that you can place tables against walls, allowing you to fit more objects within a smaller area.
Sense of challenge
“More variety in goals and milestones would be welcome” - Each level will have its own specific objectives, on top of this we plan to implement a sandbox mode with configurable goals.
“It would be cool to see VIPs or restaurant critics” - Definitely! VIPs and critics appear as an event and will have very high standards! If you manage to impress them they will give you a huge boost in popularity!
“There needs to be greater clarity on what determines a customer’s review score” - We will continue to work on how reviews are presented in the UI to show exactly what is influencing customer opinion.
Ingredients stock management and ordering system
“The express delivery and keep minimum stock options are confusing. Could this be simplified?” - We’ve streamlined this system by removing the express delivery option, and adding hourly delivery windows. This should make the process of ordering and managing stock feel more intuitive.
“How about additional storage objects that allow you to store specific ingredients, for example a fish tank?” - A great idea, we’re thinking of adding objects such as a lobster tank and herb garden to provide additional storage for new and exclusive ingredients.
Updates: New landscaping objects and improved lighting
Our art department has been working hard on creating new landscaping objects to beautify the exterior of your restaurant and make it more pleasant for customers dining al fresco!
We also added more realistic grass textures and new specular lighting to really highlight the contrast in light and shadow within the game’s environments.
That’s all for now but I’ll be back soon with another progress update. Take care until then!
Alex Mochi
Founder & Lead Designer - Dapper Penguin Studios