Hey everyone!
Update 1.0 is here! There's a lot packed into here with some rather large updates so let's just get started with the rundown.
Multiplayer:
Multiplayer has come to Bookshop Simulator! Up to 4 people can play in a game. Multiplayer works through Steam's normal multiplayer handling APIs so you can join games your friends are in through your Steam friend's list or invite others directly to join. Certain benchmarked things will change based on how many players are in the game to help keep things a little balanced (what levels employees unlock at and what level certain buildables like checkout counters become available). Certain features have also been added and/or reworked to help make sure players aren't bored with nothing to do.
New Location - The Cotswolds, England:
A new location is now available! The Cotswolds is a cozy area set with a snowy atmosphere. The shop itself features two stories with a nice balcony overlooking the part of the first floor, and a decent sized storage room in the back left. Much like Paris and Yamanashi, you can choose the order in which you buy the stores so you can purchase it as your second store right after Lyon for 3k bleps or if you're further along and have all 3 other stores already, you can purchase your 4th store for 300k bleps.
New Item Type - Magazines:
Alongside The Cotswolds, a new item type has arrived - Magazines! Magazines are unlocked once The Cotswolds store reaches store level 12. 5 new magazines have been added for the initial batch and work like other licensed products (IE, books, manga, comics). A magazine bookshelf has been added to the DepotMax app to display magazines for sale.
Flyers:
Not enough customers for your liking? Your friend dragged you into their store but you don't feel like stocking shelves anymore? A flyer stand can now be purchased in the DepotMax app once any shop level is at least 5. This will allow you to grab some flyers and hand them out to passerby on the streets to try to coax more customers in. Not all customers will choose to enter after taking a flyer but there's a decently high chance.
Recommendation Rework:
Recommending items has been reworked to be a bit easier. Instead of chasing customers down, a customer service desk can now be purchased in the DepotMax app once any shop level is at least 8. The customer service desk can be placed anywhere in your shop and will act as a go-to point for customers seeking book recommendations. Up to 5 customers will queue to get a book recommendation at a time. The customer service desk, like the checkouts, can also be closed if you wish for customers to not ask for book recommendations anymore.
Other Location Updates:
Both Lyon and Yamanashi have been expanded!
Many people requested that Lyon be made a little larger and while our intent was to have Lyon be a fairly tiny starter store that deliberately could not store everything the game would eventually contain, we have decided to expand it and give people a little more space. Lyon has had 1 store upgrade space added to fill in the spot next to the front door and is gaining 3 storage room spaces to the back of the store.
Yamanashi has also had a storage upgrade. There is now an outbuilding to the left of the main store that contains a total of 6 storage expansion spaces with the first unlock giving you the first two.
Mythical Books:
A new, more powerful versions of legendary books has come - Mythical books. These are more powerful versions of Legendary books which can be displayed like normal Legendary books for benefits. Mythical books are only available in a specific Mythical used box that can be bought in the BooksNMore app like other used book boxes once player level 50 is reached. Mythical used book boxes are much more expensive than regular used book boxes.
To help make use of these powerful new books, a new 3 slot legendary display is available as well. This means that you can now have 6 different legendary/mythical powerups active at the same time.
New content:
This update also brings a few new content items other than the new Magazines and mythical books. 5 new books, 2 board games, and a new cafe item are coming as well.
Quality of Life/Fixes:
As usual, we always try to add some quality of life improvements and bugfixes. You can find a change log below of the changes, though a lot was entangled with the multiplayer reworking so I'm probably missing some entries in the changelog
Pricing update:
As we said in the last update notes, we will be raising the price a couple of dollars to $19.99 USD. We had intended to do so at the 1.0 launch and provide a launch discount but unfortunately we cannot raise the price for 1.0 and provide a launch discount at the same time. We're going to follow Valve's recommended suggestion on this and allow it to stay at the EA price for 30 days following our transition to 1.0 to allow us to run a launch discount for you all and then the price will raise to the 1.0 pricing.
Finally:
Finally, we want to thank all of you that have joined us through the Early Access journey. It's been a wonderful (if incredibly stressful sometimes) experience. For those that are just joining in, welcome! As we said in the last update, this is not the end of updates for Bookshop Simulator. Future updates will be coming down the pipeline including more items, expanding workshop support, another new location, and more. We look forward to what you all will create and share and we'll be back with the next update!
1.0 Changelog:
Added:
- Multiplayer!
- New location: The Cotswolds, England
- New item type: Magazines
- Flyers to get more customers
- Yamanashi storage building added, 6 new storage spaces
- Lyon expansions added, 1 store and 3 storage spaces
- New books
- New board games
- Mythical books, more powerful versions of Legendary books
- New Achievements
- New cafe item for The Cotswolds
- New item layouts for round tables and bookshelves
- Employee promotion indicator
- New 3 slot legendary/mythical display
- Inventory tracking for shop items shown in app
- New customer service desk to handle customer recommendations
Changed:
- Hanging Signs can now be placed closer to buildables
- Players can now hold multiple rares at once
- Customer recommendation system changed to use customer service desk
- Save system changed to save automatically to its own slot, additional save slot added
Fixed:
- Some language locales causing issues with credit card entry
- Credit card cafe interactions should no longer subtract experience
- End of day screen displaying erroneous spending data