Hi everyone, It’s been a while since I last released an update for TasteMaker. I’m currently working hard on my next project, and as a solo developer, working on 2 projects simultaneously is quite challenging.

However, I did want to release this small update for TasteMaker. There were some assets that were created earlier, so I polished them up for this release. Here is what’s new:

• 3 new painting frames
  
• A wall clock
  
• 3 new plant boxes with different color flowers

I would love to release more updates in the future, but unfortunately, I can’t make any promises.

It’s been a while since the release and last update for TasteMaker. I’m currently hard at work on my next game, and making good progress on it. Despite being mostly focused on my next game, I did make some time to make this small update for TasteMaker.


The game did not have that many options when it came to tables. I tried to improve this by adding 5 new tables: A barrel table, 50s bar, glass table, wooden bar, and a round wooden table.




I also added 2 new windows. A horizontal rectangular glass window, and a big round window.




Additionally, I added 2 wallpapers. A hexagon wallpaper and a flower wallpaper. The color of both of those wallpapers can be changed.




Feedback I got often after the release of the game is that it is not possible to delete fences with the wall removal tool. I fixed that issue in this update.

After two years of early access, TasteMaker is now finally fully released! I’m very grateful for all the support and feedback I received during early access. As mentioned in an earlier blog, I will continue to support TasteMaker, but the updates will probably be smaller and less frequent as I will also be starting on my next game soon.

The full release of TasteMaker comes with a number of exciting updates, and the game will be discounted by 40% this week. If you haven’t had a chance to play TasteMaker yet, this is a great opportunity.


Translating the game into multiple languages has been a much requested feature since the game launched in early access. This update finally introduces translations into 5 languages: German, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, French, and Dutch. More languages might follow in the future.


While it has been possible to change the color of a lot of items for a while now, I often received the feedback that it would be better to have the option to change the color of an item before placing it. Having to individually click each item and change its color after placing it could become a bit tedious. This update finally introduces the ability to change colors before you place the item.




With the new item menu color picking tool, it also made sense that icons for the item would dynamically change to the selected color. I implemented a system that will generate these icons. This has the added benefit that icons will be a bit more consistent.


To expand the ways in which you can decorate and customize your restaurant, you can now also change the colors for a lot of floors and walls.




Previously, wallpapers would not always wrap around corners correctly. I made an effort to improve this. While it is still not perfect, I think that the new version is a big improvement.




To further expand the decoration options, I added 2 new floors, 2 wallpapers and 2 new windows.

• Fixed wallpaper decor rating not being applied
  
• Fixed not being able to buy wallpaper while having enough money
  
• Fixed memory leak while generating employee icons
  
• Improved the cheat menu UI
  
• Rebalanced scenario’s
  
• Made various performance improvements
  
• Fixed returning of cutting board bug when using zones
  
• Improved review rating icon
  
• Fixed pans being counted as cabinet content while on stove
  
• Improved auto-reset of kitchen equipment
  
• Fixed money particles appearing through floors
  
• Improved menu UI
  
• Fixed loading panel opening stutter
  
• Fixed false “employee can’t reach [item]” messages
  
• Improved the review system
  
• Fixed overproduction of certain dishes
  
• Fixed plates getting stuck on cabinets when having avocado toast or donuts on the menu

After 2 years of early access and 35 updates, I’m excited to announce that TasteMaker will be leaving early access on Friday, April 21st at 14:00 UTC!

I’m currently working on a launch update, which among other things, will include more decoration options, and translations to German, French, Spanish, Brazilian-Portuguese and Dutch. The game will also be discounted on launch, so if you haven’t had the chance to play TasteMaker yet, the launch will be a great opportunity. I will post a more detailed blog about the launch update on the day of release. To be upfront, I would like to mention that Mac support and mod support will unfortunately not be part of this update.

I will continue to support TasteMaker, and there will still be new updates after the release. However, updates will be released less frequently as I will also be working on my next game.


As part of the effort to release a high quality build in April, I’m looking for people who want to playtest the game. The test will take place over Discord and will likely last between 1 and 2 hours. I’m also looking for people who are willing to test the quality of the translations. As a token of appreciation, all testers can keep the game for free after the test. If you are interested you can send me an email at booijjelle@gmail.com or DM me on Discord.


You can add the game to your wishlist to receive a notification when it launches!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1289340/TasteMaker/

It’s been a while since I last released an update, but I have been hard at work improving and testing the game. I’m really excited to share this update and hope it was worth the wait.


One of the biggest changes I made was removing the tutorial and incorporating it into the game. This has been my goal for a while now because I feel that the game can be taught more organically and intuitively this way. It allows me to space out the teaching of different game mechanics instead of trying to teach everything at once in a separate tutorial section.

The tutorial window itself also received a rework. It can now be accessed in every game mode and tries to provide the most relevant information for the current situation. In addition, it can now display video’s and dynamically scale to fit the content of the window, which prevents it from being unnecessarily big.

The new system still has room for improvement, but I hope that it can make the game a lot easier and more fun to learn. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.




I made some big changes to the algorithm that determines when guests have to go to the toilet. Previously this was solely based on how long guests were in the restaurant. The issue with this was that guests would only go to the toilet when the restaurant's waiting time was really long. The new algorithm makes sure that going to the toilet is decoupled from waiting time. You will now need to have enough toilets regardless of whether or not your waiting time is long or not. Guests will also care more about how clean the toilet is.

In addition to this new algorithm, I also added the ability to change the cleaning frequency of a toilet. This allows you to make a tradeoff between having really clean toilets, and not overburdening your staff.




I felt that the UI of the game looked a bit cluttered and inconsistent at times so I reworked a lot of it. The tooltip system that I added a while back is now utilized more often to hopefully make the game more intuitive. I also reworked the toolbars to make them look less cluttered.

Another area that received improvements is the item window. Previously, every item tile displayed the item name, which was problematic for longer names and required larger tiles, limiting the number of items that could be displayed at once. In the new design, item tiles only display the price and an image of the item. You can hover the item to see more information, including the name. I also added a scrollbar to the window, which should remove any limit to the amount of items I can add to the game. Lastly, I added more detailed descriptions to items that require it.

I also remade a lot of the icons in the game as the old ones could often be unclear. I’m still not entirely happy with all the icons in the game, but I think that this should be a good first improvement.




In the last month, I have conducted a lot of playtests. These tests enabled me to make some significant balance changes to the game. I’d like to thank everybody who participated in the tests.

The most common problem I encountered was that the first hour of the game started off very slow. The low profits at the start of the game resulted in the player having to wait a relatively long time for enough money to buy items. I have improved this by making it a bit easier to make a comparatively high profit at the start of the game, and increased the price range of items to hopefully make progression a bit more interesting.

I also reworked the guest spawning algorithm. It now reflects the reviews and customer satisfaction much better. The spawn rate is now also a little less sensitive to changes in menu prices.

Besides these bigger points I also made a lot of smaller changes and I rebalanced the scenario’s. I hope that all these changes will make for a better and more engaging experience.



I’m preparing to translate the game and ran into some challenges with the review system. The old review system used to dynamically create sentences, which created challenges in translating the reviews into different languages due to variation in grammar.

I decided to completely rework the review system since it was already quite a flawed system to begin with. The guests' comments are separated and highlighted by a color. I also improved the usefulness and relevance of the comments. Although the new system is a big improvement, it is still not perfect and I plan to continue improving it.




As mentioned in the balance section of this blog, I aim to improve the price range of items in the game. This means that there are cheaper and more expensive options for items in order to facilitate a sense of progression.

For a game about designing a restaurant, TasteMaker was seriously lacking in furniture. I added 8 new chairs, which doubles the amount of chairs in the game.



I also added 5 new tables. One table was removed because it was too similar to other tables. I plan to add more furniture in a future update.



I added 3 new kitchen appliances: A small fryer, a stand mixer and I replaced the normal shelf for a big and a small shelf. The small shelf holds 12 ingredients and the big shelf 24. I hope that having cheaper and more expensive versions of kitchen appliances can give the game more of a sense of progression.

I also reworked the big mixer so it now contains 3 servings instead of 1.



A feature that has been requested often is to make the cabinets connect. I finally got around to implementing this. The cabinets also connect in corners.

• Plates not being collected bug fix
  
• Main menu improvements
  
• Fixed Farm Scenario road issue
  
• Camera tilt range increased slightly
  
• Cutting board is now moveable
  
• Changed food quality settings
  
• Improved the plate model
  
• Reworked staff hiring mechanic slightly
  
• Removed the "once" option from ingredient ordering

I’m working towards the 1.0 release of the game, and have decided to slightly increase the price from 9,99 to 11,99. This price increase will happen at the start of next month, most likely on the 3rd of March. Until that time you will still be able to get the game for 9,99.

It has been a while since I last released an update, but I am working hard on a larger update that will hopefully be worth the wait. Determining the value of a game is hard because it is very subjective, But I hope that the updates made over the last 2 years, along with the upcoming update justify the increase in price.


Some exchange rates have changed a lot since I last set the price for TasteMaker in 2021. I want to keep the price increase as low as possible in all currencies, but I also can’t completely ignore the current exchange rates, which means that some currencies will see a price increase that is bigger than 20%.

Happy new year everybody! This is a bit of a smaller update that I considered making a patch. But because it does contain some new content, I decided to write this short blog.


I’m not quite happy with the current menu tree and want to change it a bit. I decided to start with changing the beverages. The cocktails did not make a lot of sense from a gameplay perspective so I removed 2 of the 3 cocktails and added beer instead. I also replaced the cocktail glass item with a beer glass item, and added a beer tap item. Beer was already a part of the game before it was released in early access, but I ended up removing it, which I now think was a mistake. I hope that the progression of the beverages tree makes a bit more sense now.

• Fixed dirt not being visible
  
• Fixed wine not being able to be made by waiters in certain cases
  
• Fixed not being able to close the scenario goal window
  
• Fixed food quality being broken for chicken
  
• Rebalanced staff wages
  
• Rebalanced tableware dirtiness
  
• Fixed pans not being displayed in inventory correctly
  
• Fixed lag spikes when someone poops in your restaurant
  
• Fixed some spelling issues

- Fixed Ingredient delivery bug
- Fixed table settings bug

While not everything I worked on in the past 2 weeks is ready to be shown yet, I did make a few important improvements and bug fixes that I wanted to release before the end of the year. This will probably be the last update for 2022. Hope you all have happy holidays!


When testing the game, I often found myself accidentally placing items outside of a zone. My restaurant would then break because employee’s couldn’t reach them. This caused a lot of confusion and frustration. I reworked the zone overlay to hopefully resolve this issue. The overlay now also gets enabled when you place items. This way you always know in which zone an item is.

• Fixed saving issue
  
• Performance improvements
  
• Tableware now get’s evenly divided between cabinets (while still adhering to the specified fill priority)
  
• Dartboard “Item in use” bug fixed
  
• Stove “Item in use” bug fixed
  
• Income stats saved more accurately
  
• Paintbrush icon reworked

I added a dish specific waiting time tab to the stat window. The rest of the window was also polished and reworked and I made sure that all the stats got saved properly, which was not the case before.




Something that I see in tests quite frequently is that people don’t know how they can delete walls. I hope to solve this issue by adding a separate wall deletion tool. This tool has the added benefit that you can delete entire walls at once instead of having to click on each individual wall segment.




A few weeks back I added a new zoning system and I am generally quite happy with it. That said, it still needs a lot of tweaking. This week I improved employee’s adherence to their zone.

• Fixed spelling issues
  
• Added tooltip to decor and hygiene overlay button
  
• Reworked menu icon
  
• Fixed ordering chicken while it's not on the menu
  
• Removed “Save Successful” message
  
• Path moved to painting
  
• Reworked wall icons
  
• Zoning color saving issue fixed