May 2, 2023

Less Than One Week to Go Till Early Access Launch!

Cook Serve Forever - Jarogoodness

Hey Chefs!

There’s only one week left until Cook Serve Forever launches in Early Access on May 8th and we’re excited to announce the full cast, our launch day AMA, and how you can help influence development!

If you missed the announcement, check out the Early Access Launch Trailer, Roadmap, and FAQ in our previous newsletter — especially the part about the discounts for owners of our previous games and launch week sale to see how you could get Cook Serve Forever for up to 30% off!

Meet the Full Cast

When we began work on Cook Serve Forever, we thought we’d end up with 3-5 voiced characters. After all, Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?! only had four voiced characters (two of whom only appeared in the final levels) so 3-5 seemed like a lot. However, Cook Serve Forever grew to include over 35 characters with at least one speaking line.

Bringing these characters to life would be impossible without the truly unbelievable talents of our voice cast. So without further adieu, here is the full cast list for Cook Serve Forever:

Elspeth Eastman (League of Legends)
Maya Aoki Tuttle (Destiny 2)
Emme Montgomery (Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3?!)
Jennifer Caitlin Roberts (Triangle Strategy)
Clayton Jacobson (Animal Kingdom)
SungWon Cho (God of War: Ragnarök, Boyfriend Dungeon)
Andrew Hansen (The Chaser’s War on Everything)
Courtney Lin (Genshin Impact, Return to Monkey Island)
Ione Butler (Dead Space, Call of Duty: Vanguard)
David Cordell Cherry (Born Punk)
Julian Rebolledo (Red Dead Redemption, Grand Theft Auto Online)
Katy Bentz (Life is Strange: True Colors)
Brian Long (Boyfriend Dungeon)
Kimlinh Tran (Dust: An Elysian Tail)
Broden Kelly (Aunty Donna)

It’s no exaggeration to say that we feel incredibly honored to have worked with each and every one of these people. We cannot wait for you to meet every single one of their characters in Cook Serve Forever!

Launch Day AMA

We know you’ll be busy playing Cook Serve Forever all day on launch day, but if you happen to take a break, David Galindo (Creative Director & Founder of Vertigo Gaming Inc.) and I (Ryan Matejka, Narrative Designer & Community Manager) will be available for you to ask us anything over at reddit.com/r/games on May 8th at 1 pm CST!

Are you curious to learn about the game’s design and what didn’t make the cut? Do you want to know how the story came together and where it almost went? Are you dying to know what our favorite pizza toppings are? We’ll post the discussion around an hour beforehand so you can submit your burning questions before we arrive!

Influence the Game’s Development With Our Community

Join our Discord to chat with our community, interact with the team, and contribute feedback that could influence the game’s development in Early Access! Our community played a big part in the development of our previous game during Early Access, and we’re excited to leverage it once again for Cook Serve Forever! Remember: Discord is the absolute best place to leave suggestions, and Steam is the best place to leave a (super incredibly helpful) review!

Twitter - Instagram - TikTok - Reddit - YouTube

May 2, 2023

Around the World

Cooking Live - Italian Kitchen Simulator - Victoria S.

This is a board game where you can travel Around the World!
This event will last a few days, but you can only do 3 laps.

Use tickets to roll the dice and move the number of spaces equal to the number on the dice.

You can get more tickets for:

playing levels—each level will have a tag showing the number of tickets you can get
completing daily and weekly tasks in your blog

There are a few Rainbow Tickets that give you one roll free.

You can buy Gold Dice to get special features:

Roll the dice for half price
Get ALL the gold rewards
Get x2 showplaces
Unlock the 2nd and 3rd laps

There are 60 different spaces:

Some are empty.
Some contain a reward.
Others have showplaces on them.
And some spaces can move you either back or forward.

Every time you finish a lap you will get a reward!
You can buy the second and third lap with Rubies.

If you didn’t get a special reward during your current lap, it will be stored in the Golden Cage and you will be able to claim it after the third lap.

This event may get you:

Booster parts
Time-limited boosters
Full boosters
Groceries
Blog points
Coins
Rubies
Collections

Have a wonderful trip Around the World!

May 2, 2023

Demo 1.3 and Versus Mode

Sinus - earlysungames

DEMO UPDATE 1.3

Hello crew members!

We are very happy to announce our demo got a major update. Apart from a lot of improvements and optimizations we added a whole new game mode. That's right, you can now ruin your friendships with our new VERSUS MODE. Welcome to local multiplayer madness with "Deathmatch" and "Teams" game modes, a new playable character, stats system with end match awards, and a cool new parry mechanic. Hope you guys enjoy it, and please let us know what you think on our DISCORD. A lot of these changes and improvements are a result of your feedback, so THANK YOU for that!

NEW:
- Versus (local multiplayer mode)
- two game modes in Versus (Deathmatch and Teams)
- Eki (new playable character available in Versus)
- new stats system with end match awards
- new melee system with sword parries
- new damage doors
- better player hit awareness (vignette effect and gamepad rumble)
- upgraded port backdrop
- new control panel idle screen

IMPROVEMENTS:
- general performance improvements
- reworked weapon chip notifications
- reworked tutorial
- reworked skill tree
- changed how permanent skills are unlocked
- reduced switches cutscene time
- added exit battle mode delay
- added overlap area to item info
- turret bullets are harder to destroy
- character abilities can be activated in any state
- reworked all ammo operations
- reworked gamepad rumble
- added corrupt items based on inverse importance (less punishing)
- added more items in shops
- added control panels to first location and all waves rooms
- added a hint chat from jazoo about the destination flag
- moved contracts and second side mission as unlockables in console
- added and arrow pointing at the console after unlocking it
- tweaked all characters abilities
- add bloom and animation to orpad errors
- after equipping items to active slots, cursor returns to drive
- chats have more screen time
- players start with a common memory module
- mission prizes are automatically equipped after collect
- tweaked legendary items rarities

FIXES:
- fixed all easy trap rooms
- fixed vsync issues
- fixed sniper reload times
- fixed all elementals hits particle systems
- hack and attack agents follow owner when target unreachable
- fixed side mission spawner shape
- fixed alert and hint chats
- tweaked auto, semi auto and manual damage multipliers for weapons
- added stomp on turrets
- fixed reposition to passive agents
- fixed button actions progress bar
- explosions deal damage to dashing players
- fixed flamethrower turret neon rotation
- fixed hack agent not completing side mission
- fixed boss turret burn interrupts hack
- fixed ability damage and resistance boosts
- fixed bloom on various objects
- fixed music transitions
- retweaked lecs health boost

There a bunch of smaller improvements and fixes not listed here, but we've taken enough of your play time :)

The game went through a lot of changes since the last update, so expect to lose your previous progress.

Thanks for playing!
George and Tibi
Early Sun Games

May 2, 2023

Closed Alpha v0.12.0851

Cursed Crew Playtest - Cracklewock Games

A couple of critical bugs were found, including a crash and a few other game breaking soft locks and an issue with ranged job getting stuck. Another noteable issue we found that apparently existed for a while was that projectiles weren't working intended, making it much harder to hit stuff with cannons, especially at high game speeds. This patch solves all these issues. See the list of changes below for all changes/fixes.

Feedback and bug reports are highly appreciated!

Changed

Rebalanced loot weights. Treasure should be more common, and ammunition less common, everything else slightly more common.
Lowered weapon budget for enemy crew.

Fixed:

Various issues with cannon projectiles, causing them to sometimes not collide while they should, especially on high game speeds.
WASD pathing sometimes getting stuck, causing teleports and potentially crashes.
Weapon accuracy not being calculated correctly, especially for NPCs (who were pinpoint accurate)
Being able to clear repair resources. This made it possible to do free repairs.
Being able to sell repair resources that were already assigned, also making it possible to do free repairs.
Trader not listing player resources packed in crates.
Ranged attack job getting indefinitely stuck, and not cancelling properly
Invisible walls on enemy ship after boarding it
Enemies not cleaned up properly after sinking an enemy ship, resulting in a softlock because you can't continue your journey.
Characters sometimes getting stuck outside the ship after jumping from ship to ship.
Player can clip out of the ship by colliding with certain points on the ship.
Empty resources persisting through saves and not cleaning up properly, potentially occupying space that shouldn't be occupied.

May 2, 2023

Early Access Update #19 - The Hidden Shrine

Army of Ruin - WaaghMan

Hi!

In today's update we're releasing the 5th zone for the game, featuring four new stages filled with new enemies and traps, equipment to unlock, and three new playable characters!

As the game is nearing its 1.0 release, we've also worked hard on polishing the UI and gameplay, adding a bunch of new features in the process, such as the in-game map, as well as some balances and Quality of Life changes that we're sure you'll like!

Full changelog of the update:

New features:

New area: Hidden Shrine, including 4 new missions with their own enemies, bosses and challenges.
11 New weapons (+11 evolutions) and 4 new trinkets to unlock.
3 New Unlockable Characters.
New Unlockable Features: In-game Map (check nearby pickups, chests, etc) and Favorites (increase chances of getting specific equipment in a stage).
Added Steam Achievements for all the new unlockable content.
Added Italian / Russian languages.

Improvements:

Revised visibility of all weapon attacks.
In an earlier update, we changed many things to make sure visibility remained within acceptable levels in heavily crowded situations. However, we went a bit overboard with specific weapons, making their effects barely visible. We've done an extensive update on all weapons' visuals to make sure they can be noticed while keeping them from obstructing view in the later stages.
Trinkets that would enable evolution of one or more equipped weapons will be shown as recommended in the level up screen.
The "Evolve N weapons" challenge now recommends eligible weapons in the level up screen.
Boss name will now be shown on its health bar.
Added a setting to change character voices volume.
Controller face buttons settings are now saved per system, not per user.
Challenges requiring a weapon evolution will show the required elements on their description.
Adjusted lighting of specific stages to increase visibility.
Added a way to check current stats from the level up / Charm selection screens.
Added a new section with a list of recent plays for all stages.
Recent plays could be shown for a specific stage, but there was no way to check the full list from a single point.
Recent plays will now save and show how much money you did spend in upgrades.
Useful to compare performance between different players. WIll also be used in future challenges.
Message for challenges that can't be attempted yet: Now it will show the stage where the item you need is unlocked (if you have that stage already unlocked).
A panel is shown at the beginning of the stage showing the recommended challenges for the current stage.
Some direct damage trinkets (such as Fire Mirror or Explosive Flask) will now show icons telling if other trinket upgrades affect them, just like weapons do.

Gameplay changes:

Reworked Bow evolution, now it will keep shooting right like its base version, but shots will bounce on the screen borders.
While a controversial weapon since its inception, the Bow is useful as a reliable source of damage in a specific direction. Its evolution, however, lost that identity and made it a bit more impredictable. Now it will be a more obvious upgrade from the base weapon.
You can now unlock the 2nd or 3rd stage challenges at the same time you beat a stage for the first time.
Our reason for not showing the challenge conditions from the beginning is to avoid "forcing" people to pick specific characters/builds the first time they play a stage. However, this could cause players being "forced" to repeat the stage with the same build, specially on the first stages where there aren't that many items unlocked yet.
Slightly increased star requirements to unlock Stages III and Endless.
With the newly added area, it just felt natural to increase the requirements to unlock for later stages a bit.
Petrified enemies now have increased mass, making them harder to be pushed by enemies behind.
Petrification effect was "worse" than freeze as enemies received less damage from attacks, with no clear advantage. Now petrified enemies can act as a barricade slowing enemies behind them.
Immune enemies are no longer immune to knockback effects from attacks.
Another controversial mechanic, Immune enemies offer a way to counter pure damage builds and force players to maneuver around them. However, specially on Turbo/Ruin stages, they could become obnoxious and too annoying to deal with. With this change, they will be knocked back a bit when hit, giving more breathing space.
You can now downgrade specific skills in the Upgrades section without the need to do a full Respec.
Slightly increased the amount of health pickups found in boxes or dropped by elites.
This leads to less money drops. Check the next point!
Increased amount of money obtained from Chalices/Crowns from 10/50 to 25/100.
Overall the amount of money obtained will be higher than before. However Challenges and Chests remain being a more important source of coins.
Enemies are now pushed outwards when filling the Charm box meter.
Voodoo Doll now benefits from Skill Cooldown.
It's the only trinket directly affected by Skill Cooldown, but it can lead to interesting synergies.

Bugfixes:

It's no longer possible to walk slowly when using a controller. This was never intended to happen, and for example mouse controls wouldn't allow it.
Fixed Render Size setting sometimes not being applied properly unless you applied the changes twice.
Fixed UI disappearing when closing the pause menu on specific situations.
Fixed Enhancements obtained in chests not working.
Fixed Buckler not petrifying enemies as intended.
Fixed "Controller disconnected" text not being localized.
Fixed incorrect message when trying to do a reroll if you don't have enough money to pay for it.
Fixed "Health Recovery" skill not working at all. An embarassing bug that has been there since the beginning!

Following this update, we'll be doing the final touches before the 1.0 release, as well as starting work on the console ports, and one of the things we'll do is to increase the game's price soon. So if you don't have the game yet, it's the perfect time to get it at a reduced price!