A few updates!

Hi Everyone!

Hope you're having a great Saturday morning! We've been busy trying to get exposure for our game, but we'd like to mention that we're close to closing in on 20% the way through only 3-4 days into the kickstarter! While 10+% is expected on the first day, the amount of momentum we've kept is far greater than our last kickstarter attempt, so we're really excited about that! Notably lots of the more recent backers have come from itch.io, the site where we host our demo, so we've found another avenue for spreading the word! Even more than the money we've raised, we've accrued more than 50 backers in this very short span. Thank you all so much for supporting our project!

We were pretty busy with the kickstarter and trying to spread the word, so we haven't been working as much on the game directly as usual, but we have made good progress. We've added whole other environment that's entirely passive, a background for visual-novel segments that reflects the activity just outside the bar.

Demo:

Now:

Note the low framerate is due to gif compression, not gameplay. 

It's a lot of effort for a minor detail, but we think it adds to the visuals quite nicely! Before the background was honestly far too dull and this gave us a good chance to demonstrate the walking and driving animations up close! Since we're planning to have at least four regulars, each with around 5 scenes, that's a decent amount of time spent listening to characters' stories, so a good background is key. Notably we've programmed it so that pedestrians and vehicles spawn ONLY when a visual-novel scene begins and they despawn once the scene ends, so this addition isn't taxing on lower end machines. 

We've also added several upgrades, the advertising stand is now interactable, garbage can be cleaned around the bar to increase popularity, and we're introducing a bartender mechanic. As in the video for the kickstarter, there are be android bartenders but now there's also human ones,

We're working on more idle animations for bartenders. Android bartender have a higher initial cost but are much cheaper overall. But as can be seen in the demo's story, there's a moral grey area with how androids are to be used as their technology and AI develops. 

We'll be working on a notification and event system next, so that on certain dates current events in Syn City can occur to introduce technology options, temporarily spike popularity or costs, etc. We also still need to incorporate customer variety in their buying habits when it comes to the Drink Maker by making customers randomly prefer different types of drinks rather than just price. 

Before we move on to working on other businesses you can buy and ultimately Syn Corp., we want to consider how we can make the gameplay a bit more unique. We're pretty happy with our aesthetic and story, but gameplay is pretty standard for a tycoon/idle game. We've been getting lots of great advice from lots of our backers and redditors, so we'd love to create a discord so you guys can easily suggest gameplay changes you'd like to see in the game! More on that in the next update!

Thanks again to all 50+ of you, have a nice weekend!

-Mocha