The Final Chapter is here!
This is our last Stage update, but the journey continues. Plenty more content is on the way after this drop!
Stage 4: Water City
Our final stage arrives wearing a Greek-flavored magical city-on-the-water theme. Stage 4 is the largest map of all four stages and comes with systems all its own.
New Systems
Fountain System: neglect the fountain's upkeep and water will flood your restaurant.
Water Slowdown: stepping into the water cuts your movement way down.
Dimensional Gates: press to warp to a fixed location. Memorize the layout patterns. It will make your runs noticeably smoother.
Magic Orbs: use them to reshape stage tiles to match your playstyle or whatever situation is in front of you.
Pedestrians: in some layouts, townsfolk walk the streets. Bump into one and you'll get stunned. Mind the foot traffic.
New Weapons
A full weapon system with weapon-specific perks:
Rolling Pin: your brutal starter weapon. Viable from start to finish, if you don't get bored of it first.
Perks
Combo: turns your attacks into a chained combo string.
Tornado: weapon skill button unleashes a forward-launching storm.
Torch: the only ranged weapon in the game. Comes with a brand-new aim-assist system.
Perks
Combo: turns your attacks into a chained combo string.
Homing Shot: when an enemy enters range, your fireballs auto-track them.
Flying Pan: a unique weapon. Replaces your normal attack with a dash-through that damages everything you pass.
Perks
Raging Stone: dashes stack so you can chain several together back to back.
Earth Crusher: after dashing, press attack to slam the ground.
Hammer: the slowest weapon in the game, but it makes up for it with absurd damage.
Perks
Falling Frost: ground-slam an area three times for wide AoE damage.
Soaring Frost: lunge forward and crash down to AoE the area.
Perk System
We've tweaked the system so some perks no longer appear in Stage 1. This keeps the early game balanced and stops it from breezing by too easily.
New Perks:
Double Jump: jump twice.
Passive Income: birds stop spawning, but you receive a fixed coin payout instead.
Steam Achievements
You can finally unlock Steam Achievements in our game!!
Badge System
Collect in-game accomplishments to unlock special rewards across three categories.
Some boost character stats, others trigger flashy in-game effects. Dig into the menu and see what fits you.
New Scenarios
We've reworked most Scenarios because the old ones weren't really changing how you played. The new Scenarios you can pick when choosing the next day's Layout.
A few examples:
Migration: monster migration season hits, so today only one type of monster will be attacking.
Forest Lord: a leader monster appears, rallying others into coordinated waves.
New Stuff
New monster: Mimic. Disguises itself as a customer. There's a way to spot it. Go figure it out.
New outdoor trash bin
We swapped the plain wooden lid for a tree that eats trash. And customers.
New instrument
New bed mechanic
Sleeping in the bed now advances time in the Lobby.
New Tutorial (Again)
We've gathered all the feedback and pulled it into this new version. Hopefully we don't need to rebuild the tutorial again. But if we do, we'll keep rebuilding it until everyone can play without getting bored at the start. <3
Balance Changes
Every monster has more HP across all Stages.
Increased the cap on player upgrades.
Lowered Stage 1 difficulty so it's easier to push through.
Adjusted customer tip rates per Stage:
Max: 10 → 20 → 30 → 40
Mid: 5 → 10 → 15 → 20
Min: 1 → 2 → 3 → 4
Gameplay and Quality of Life
Full redesign of the in-game book UI.
Squashed a ton of bugs. If you still run into any, ping us via Discord or any of our social channels.
Expanded Language Support
Sous Raccoon now supports 29 languages, including:
English
Simplified Chinese
Japanese
Korean
Thai
Russian
German
French
Spanish
Brazilian Portuguese
...and many more.
What's Next
New monsters: we still have three more monsters in the pipeline.
New bosses: two new ones planned. Stages 3 and 4 should've had new bosses already but we didn't make it in time. Look forward to randomized boss encounters for variety.
Story: more story beats delivered through Dialogue on each Stage.
Skins: we want to turn this into a gacha system, but we don't have enough skins yet. For now, buy them straight.
Decoration: a wide range of furnishings so you can dress your raccoon's room in your own style. Soon.
Co-op: probably the system everyone's been waiting for. We're in R&D right now and hoping to land it before Ver 1.0. It's in our major roadmap and we're already test-playing internally.
Thanks for playing Sous Raccoon. Every piece of feedback, every bug report, every kind word means a lot to us.
~ Team Novice Flow ~