Hello everyone! I’m back with another devlog and a new update. I’ll also have a small announcement at the end. But let's start with the update.
I’ve managed to get a lot done during this time, so I’ll keep the list brief so I don't bore you to death:
UPDATE:
Burnout and Mood:
Now employees have a burnout meter. Burnout accumulates when an employee spends a long time in a sad or miserable mood. And since I rebalanced the mood bonuses, this happens more often than I'd like. Also, employees can now arrive at work in different moods, instead of always defaulting to "neutral".
New Traits and Personalities:
Ambitious - Gains experience faster, but always asks for the upper limit when requesting a salary bump.
Sickly - Gets sick and takes sick leave more often, but asks for 15% less salary than the average employee.
Ambivert - The most stable employee ever. Gets no mood bonuses or penalties from chatting with colleagues. Also immune to certain boss events.
Tarot Reader - Hated by geeks and finance bros, but gets along fine with the alternative folks.
Food Thief - Might steal someone else's lunch during break time, which baaaadly ruins their colleague's mood.
Crunches:
Because what's work without staying until 8:00 PM? Of course, if a project is going down the drain, a real PM needs the ability to ask colleagues to work late for the good of the company. The only thing is, they'll show up the next day with a penalty to energy and mood. But who cares about that, right?
Reporting:
I love reports. I love numbers and Excel spreadsheets. So now we have a financial report and an HR report. I'll definitely keep expanding the reporting system, but for now, I can only brag about this basic version I managed to put together.
But you can't just access the reports that easily. You'll need to level up the corresponding skills. Which, by the way, have also increased in number.
Office Development:
Yep. Now the kitchen, coffee machine, and corporate psychologist aren't available by default. You have to buy all of them. And it will cost you not just money, but the Boss's Trust as well. I also added a few more interesting upgrades there that should make the game a bit easier.
A quick note on the "Boss's Trust" resource. The key thing in my game is that the player isn't some Hand of God like in typical tycoons, nor are they the big boss. The player is a hired PM carving their path in this fun industry. The number of actions the player can do on their own (without the boss's approval) isn't actually that large. Earning the boss's trust isn't too hard, though: just agree to his crazy ideas, successfully complete projects, hit monthly goals, and hire people the boss likes.
New Tutorial:
Based on local playtests, I changed the tutorial. Now the game tries to teach you how to play using a standard card-action system. I wouldn't say it's a 10/10 yet, but it's definitely better than it was.
HR:
People told me it's stupid when the player has to stand over the HR manager while they look for candidates. And yeah, it really was stupid. So I removed the HR manager HAHAHAHA. Now the player stands there and looks for candidates themselves. BUT. Now, through office development, you can hire an HR manager who will search for candidates on their own and not block the player. Yay.
And a bunch of little things:
Lots of minor balance tweaks regarding costs, buffs/debuffs, projects, employees, and so on. I also added various pop-ups, visual elements, confetti for successful project completion, new sounds, and a bunch of other small details. The game feels a little better and more fleshed out. Thank you all for the feedback! Okay, I think I dragged out the update section a bit.
Announcement:
I can't remember if I mentioned this before, but my current plan for the game is: Demo in May. Next Fest in July. Early Access in the summer.
I've already spent some time in Reddit threads discussing why this plan might be somewhat flawed, and I realize all the risks and how wrong this approach might be in some aspects, but it feels like I'm not ready to back down from it right now.
So, in April, I will be hosting my first-ever Steam Playtest. And if you want to participate, add the game to your wishlist right now!
Thank you for your support!