hey! It's been a bit since I've posted about my game, but it of course still in progress.
Currently I'm playing with game balance/flow a lot. I've tried various things to kind of ease the difficulty spikes, but currently the thing that seems to be working out best is having two lanes of orders: fast and slow. In-store, of course, are fast, and Takeout(/delivery/call-ahead/whatever, not sure what to call this yet) is slow. The implication of course is that the people standing in the store are going to expect their orders now, and the non-in-store orders... well, they're waiting on somebody to show up to pick them up in the first place, and those people aren't even here yet, so.. yeah. You got a little while. (I know this probably doesn't comport with the reality of food-service, but I am trying to make a game here.)
I also added order difficulty, which currently I'm displaying instead of names (which, at this point, were starting to really make the UI here feel extremely busy; I'm looking into possibly having little avatars for them or something instead). And, importantly, 3-star orders, currently the hardest ones, -usually- spawn as takeout/delievery/whatever orders.
Some other things about this system/planned features:
- Order difficulty affects customer patience and the amount you'll get paid. Currently, harder orders are less patient, but tip better (again, I'm not saying this matches reality, but, trying to make a game here that feels fun). But, importantly, the patience is based off of the size of the order as well, so you still have more time per dessert for the bigger orders, but less than if an easier order contained that same dessert.
- I'm considering making it so that, while call-in orders are easier, perhaps you lose two lives instead of one for failing to provide it in time.
- I'm also considering adding some kind of apology coupon as an accumulate-able item, which would refill a customer's patience meter somewhat, and also take money off of the final sale. It would basically be like a bomb in a shmup.
- I removed an entire dessert level, making it 9 possible levels of dessert instead of 10. I think this makes the game a lot more fair-feeling.
- Hana will be brought back at some point; possibly as a super rare 4-star order (two birthday cakes, please...)
- I'm intending to soon implement a promotion system, where meeting sales goals for the store (basically the raw proceeds currently shown as your score) will result in you being offered a promotion, essentially making the score here like an exp counter
- Additionally, I'm going to start tracking your personal income, which will be your paycheck + tips. And, you'll start getting paid regularly, every so many turns.
- Promotions will increase that regular pay rate.
- The frequency with which you get harder orders will increase with promotions.
- This entire system of promotions/job rank and order difficulty will replace, entirely, difficulty modes. I think. Instead of picking easy/medium/hard, you’ll just level up. But maybe have the option to not level up and keep playing on level 1 if you really want to? Idk yet.
I originally was going to try to do weekly releases this year but gave up on that. I'm not moving as fast as I'd like, but I'm maintaining progress and haven't given up on this project (and don't intend to! I can see the light at the end of the tunnel here). I DO however really want to put up another early access/beta/whatever release of this to download once the new gameplay stuff is a bit more worked out.