June Devlog!

With big progress on the life-sim and town side of Rolling Hills in May, June was spent implementing the core restaurant gameplay. That means adding depth to recipes, customers, ingredients, and more. Let's dive in!

Sushi Points and Recipe Stats

I should start by explaining two fundamental additions to our sushi-based gameplay. First, recipes are no longer pre-made, instead you'll create them yourself with our new design interface. You can make whatever you want, and it'll be added to your recipe list so you can craft it later. The catch is that more complex and powerful recipes require Sushi Points to design. This is now our third currency in addition to Gold and Joy. We're still figuring out all the best ways to earn Sushi Points, but I'll explain one method later in this post.

The second addition is recipe stats. Not all sushi is created equal, so whether you're designing a new recipe or deciding on ingredients, you'll want to consider their Taste, Appeal, and Price.

❤️ Taste is represented with red hearts. The more hearts, the more powerful the dish. These hearts affect the customer's satisfaction level.

⭐ Appeal is represented with yellow stars. This determines whether the customer will eat the dish at all. We wanted to represent that—especially in the sushi world—some dishes are more visually appealing than others.

💰 Price determines how much the customer will pay for the sushi. Each customer has a budget and once it's depleted or they've run out of patience, they'll leave the restaurant.

Those of you who have followed our development since the beginning know that we've experimented with custom recipes in the past, but we could never get it quite right. These easy-to-understand stats and the addition of Sushi Points have finally clicked things into place.

Having these stats means that not only are recipes and ingredients more unique, but so are the customers!

Customers

The first thing you'll see when a customer enters your restaurant (even if you're not there to greet them!) is a little notification.

As you can see, each customer has their own standards for Taste (hearts) and Appeal (stars). You'll also notice they have a loved and hated ingredient—I really like how this ties into appeal. If you've ever been unsure about trying new sushi, only to realize it includes one of your favorite ingredients (spicy mayo, anyone?) then you know that a familiar face can make all the difference.

In addition, customers will leave a review as they exit. My hope is for these to feel like a quick online review that helps summarize the customer's experience. Again, you'll see these recaps even if you're not inside the restaurant!

Yes! Customers can also level up. Each time that happens, their budget will increase along with their taste and appeal. Bigger challenges mean bigger rewards!

Sushi Bot

We spent some time refining Sushi Bot's abilities this month, but one thing is never in doubt: Sushi Bot is a huge part of Rolling Hills!

🔋 Sushi Bot now runs on a battery that will eventually deplete and need to be recharged via Sleep Mode. It's an obvious metaphor for a robot, plus it helps iron out some gameplay problems... not to mention it's very cute when the lil guy falls asleep.

🍳 In Chef Mode, Sushi Bot will automatically create sushi. Right now we're experimenting with the idea that Sushi Bot doesn't even require ingredients to make sushi, only a sufficient battery charge.

🌐 SP Mining Mode. As promised, this is one way to earn Sushi Points for creating recipes. In this mode, Sushi Bot will slowly generate Sushi Points, as seen in the first image of this post.

Time of Day

Although GIF compression is a force to be reckoned with, this is still a great opportunity to not only showcase our cool lighting changes, but also the gorgeous visual effects we've added. Depth of field in particular gives the game a dollhouse-look that I'm in love with! If you look closely, you'll notice a slight fog/mist in the background of morning and night.

Gathering

A little cherry (or blueberry) on top to finish this month's devlog! Gathering ingredients is an easy (and free!) way to snag some ingredients for your restaurant. Yum!

Thank you

I hope you enjoyed this month's devlog! I couldn't be more excited for the direction Rolling Hills is heading in. Our desire has always been to make a fun, creative cooking and life-simulation game, and this month saw us get much closer to that goal. Thanks for believing in us! <3