G'day Startup Freaks!
Version 0.11.0 is indeed here. Now I know it has taken a while to get there, but that's not for a lack of working at it! This release focuses on some big UI changes which involved complex changes in the code. Excuses aside, let's have a look at what's in this build:
New Store UI
The biggest change in this release is the introduction of a new UI for the store. One of the biggest issue with the previous UI was that getting to and placing furniture was clunky and time-consuming. There is now a new slide-in UI on the left hand of the screen where you can get to the office store, as well as offices and logos. More importantly, when placing furniture you can easily span around and place multiple instances of the same item. The UI remains translucent while this happens.
Post Level-10 Task Perks
Another important change is that now all backlog tasks provide some form of bonus or benefit beyond level 10 (some tasks previously would have no additional benefit after this level). Here is a full listing of all tasks and what you can expect beyond level 10:
- Infrastructure - Reduce overall infrastructure cost by 1%
- Branding - Increase visitor count by 1%
- All Marketing Tasks - Increase visitor count by 1%
- Market Research - Continue opening up more areas on the product map
- Job Advertising - Continue to increase the pool of candidates
- Company PR - Continue to increase candidate quality
- See Investors - Continue to find new investors
- Office and Supplies - Reduce office rent by 1%
Other Improvements
Beyond these, many more bug fixes and improvements have been made to the game, such as:
- Context menus are much improved. A lot of annoying situations where the context menu would popup, for example when dragging the product map, have been fixed.
- Did a lot of balancing, and made the easy industry (Photo Sharing) easier and more accessible.
- Fixed one of the offices having a $0 monthly rent (I apologize to all squatters).
- Fixed a bug where a very large company valuation at the end of the game would actually cause the total cash to become negative.
- Many many more fixes.
So What's Next?
Startup Freak has come a very long way since its early Beta versions on itch.io, and eventually its Early Access release on Steam. I have added a few large scale features, as well as many smaller improvements and fixes. At this point the plan is to put the game into full release some time in March. My focus will be to add extra polish and balancing to the game, fix any bugs, and also add content where possible. I'm also keen to add/improve some tutorials so that new players have a better idea of how to progress in the game.
The honest truth is that because Startup Freak launch was smaller than I anticipated it has not been possible to dedicate full time, and/or more cash to it. It remains something I work on in my spare time while holding a full-time job. Therefore it has made more sense for me to improve and solidify what's already there instead of indefinitely adding big new features and bloating the game without consolidating them.
I'll continue to do bug fixes and minor improvements to the game beyond the full release. I really appreciate all your support and feedback.
Happy Starting Up!