Hi everyone!

I've just released a new Demo version of the game, with a fancy new gameplay system: Current Events! After you Take it Easy during 4 Days Off across any number of Runs, you'll gain access to this new system that should help spice up your runs a bit. Whenever you reach a new Day Off, you'll trigger some Breaking News.

Breaking News will show you the new Current Event that will affect your current Run for the next few days. Current Events can alter the price of Item cards (positive or negatively), affect your customers, or affect your Inventory in a few ways that I won't spoil here, but they should add to the variety of each run in a fun way I think. You'll be able to adapt to a more fluid market that responds to a world outside your shop, and maybe turn some current events to your advantage!

If you need a reminder of what a current event is doing, you can hover over the display in the top bar to see a short tooltip, or click into it to see a more detailed menu.

Now, eagle-eyed shopkeepers might notice that this takes up the space usually reserved for Side-Quests, so where did those go? Well, you might also notice a yellow ! over your shopkeeper's head now! Click on your shopkeeper and you'll get to pick your side-quest, like usual. You'll be able to track your progress with some status text that'll hover over your shopkeeper's head after you pick a side-quest.

I think this'll be a bit easier to notice, since I found that even I forgot to pick side-quests from time to time.

This version also does away with the sliding Player/Customer Turn panel UI, for the most part. I found that during playtesting, it was ending up being more frustrating for players than helpful, and slowed down the game loop pretty significantly. You should be able to breeze through Market Days a lot more quickly now, which should in turn help the game feel less like a slog when you have a lot of customers to get through.

In marketing/for fun news, Raccoons to Riches got displayed on the Canada Malting Silos last night alongside a bunch of other cool Toronto-based indie games in a gameplay montage that I was not expecting to be quite so huge. Pretty cool seeing my game blown up real huge on a giant building like that! Check it out!
If you're in Toronto, it's Toronto Games Week this week, and there a bunch of other cool events going on too! Go check `em out! And if you want to see Raccoons to Riches on the big silos, the montage will also run on June 20th, and July 3rd from 9 till midnight.

Oh, also, pre-launch roadmap stuff! I know I keep saying "This is the last new system", and then adding another new system, but this time for real. Beyond UI tweaks and general bugfixes, the game is now pretty much feature-complete! Woohoo! For the next month and a bit ahead of the full release, I'll be focusing on cleaning up any last little bugs that crop up, UI Quality of Life stuff, and testing the game. You might see some minor fix versions pop up from time to time though!

Ok, enough bragging/rambling from me. Here's the full patch notes for Demo v0.27.0:

Demo v0.27.0

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- New Feature: Current Events! Once unlocked, every time you make it to a day off, you'll get a new Current Event that will affect card prices, customers, specific items, and more! This is unlocked by taking a day off 4 times across any number of runs.

- Gameplay/Metaprogression: The New Shop event from the beginning of new runs must now be unlocked by successfully completing one in-game week

- UI: Side Quests are now accessed by clicking the Shopkeeper, instead of the topbar. Sidequest progress is now displayed over your shopkeeper's head during a market day. If you have no active sidequest, a yellow ! will appear to alert you that y ou can accept a side quest.

- UI: Turned off the player/customer turn banner for now. I think it was actually slowing the game loop a lot without a lot of benefit. Might add a turn counter in elsewhere later.

- UI: Customers now display their intent tooltip when hovered, instead of only showing that tooltip when hoving the intent ui itself

- UI: Improved readability of the daily wrapup panel

- Quests: Added the Easy Does it Quest (Take it Easy during days off 4 times across any number of runs) Unlocks the new Current Events feature, and the Market Research tactic.

- Bugfix: Fixed the Market Day icon on passed days in the calendar not appearing to be greyed out properly

- Bugfix: Fixed the Shopkeeper's sprite looking really jagged when he's angry

- Bugfix: Fixed a strange slowdown when selling an item to a customer with over $7500 banked in the non-demo build of the game

- Bugfix: Fixed buying customer items with a controller buying like 7 copies of it in some cases

- Bugfix: Fixed the Buy Item Offer tooltip popping up when hovering over a customer's Disliked Item Types

- Text: A few text cleanups, especially around tutorial popup tooltip texts