If you have already participated in the first Animal Shelter 2 Playtest, you do not have to do anything, tomorrow at 3:00 PM CEST you will receive access to them again

So if you want to take part, we encourage you to sign up now! You will find such a banner on the Steam page and all you have to do is just click "Request Access" and you will get access to Playests tomorrow!






See you tomorrow,
Animal Shelter 2 Team

Hi everyone!

This is a super quick patch to fix the High Jump achievement level condition which wasn't checked at all until now, making the achievement really easy to get. (oops!)

That's it though, this is the only issue that was reported for this game in the last couple of months, so we thought we might as well fix it on its own!

Thanks for the support, have a nice day!
-PUNKCAKE Délicieux 🥞

Hello all!

Today, I'm going to talk about the evolution of Fortune Avenue's design and the solutions I've found to improve the game experience, notably by managing frustration and adding interesting new mechanics.

In the early stages of development, I focused on the game design of Fortune Avenue, a board game inspired by Monopoly but with a personal touch. One of the first challenges I faced was to limit the randomness inherent in the game, as randomness can often lead to frustrating situations, especially when one player is clearly losing.

Let's imagine a game with three players. After 20 minutes, one player already has 20 hotels, another has 15, and you only have three small caravans. Barring a monumental stroke of luck, it's almost certain that you're going to lose. And while you're waiting for that inevitable defeat, the pleasure of playing disappears, both for you and for the other players waiting for the game to move on.

To address this problem, I initially thought of a timer system that would limit the length of a game. However, this could be perceived as unfair to players who have a chance of getting back on track. Unfairness creates frustration, so I dismissed the idea.

I then looked at a way of shortening the frustration with a sudden-death system. I considered several solutions, including the idea of rigging the dice to finish off players in difficulty, but finally opted for a more dynamic and fun approach: the pursuing banker.

Here's how it works: as soon as a player falls below the $100,000 mark, a banker appears and starts chasing him. The player then has five rolls of the dice to get back over $100,000, or he's kicked off the board. The banker then pursues the next poorest player if he too is under $100,000. This keeps the waiting time to a minimum and adds a fun, stressful animation for the struggling player.

To keep the other players from getting bored, I've introduced an elimination bonus. When a player eliminates another, he earns a substantial bonus, making each action meaningful and engaging for all players.

On the development front, now that the prototype is ready, I'm focusing on getting the demo ready. Currently, I'm working on 3D modeling with Blender to create the game's tokens. In the prototype, there was only one token, a white bear. For the demo, I modeled several tokens: a boat, a pawn, a shoe, a van, a little dog, a scooter, a goose, a top hat, a penguin, a pig and a suitcase. That's 11 tokens, each with five animations, for a total of 55 animations to create.

It's a time-consuming process, especially as I often go back to improve the animations. The idea is to prepare an ultra-polished demo for the next Steam Next Fest. However, it's likely that I'll postpone Fortune Avenue's participation until the next festival to allow the necessary time.

To fine-tune the demo, I'll be organizing playtests this summer and gathering your feedback to improve the gaming experience. In the meantime, you can wishlist Fortune Avenue on Steam.

Take care.
Xavier aka Binogure

A limited, preorder based campaign for a Kiwi plushy is up on makeship now:

Super Kiwi 64 Plushy

If we hit the 100% funding goal, kiwi will become real and squishable! ːMacBalloon64ː

Okay! So the cupboard is standing (if you know you know), now we can talk more about hideouts!

If you played DDS1, you’ll be familiar with the base concept of the hideout and some of the mechanics. But if you haven’t played DDS1, no worries! We’ll get you up to speed quickly enough.

Let’s look at the basics first. There are numerous hideouts on Isla Sobra and they vary in size, price and the way they look. You can buy hideouts that have their own gardens or docks, a balcony, or a parking spot. There are also flats available in tenement houses.

The hideouts vary not only in size and location. Some hideouts have access to running water which allows you to grow Marijuana plants much easier. And in some hideouts, you may install a phone so you can listen to voicemail. Do remember tho that you need to pay bills for water and electricity.


Hideouts have something called a hideout stash – it’s a thingamajig where you can store your goods and access them from every place in that hideout. Another type of storage available in the hideout is substance storage where, as the name suggests, all the substances are stored. If you place more containers around, you can increase the capacity of your substance storage.

When you craft your produce, you generate waste which also takes up space. You can get rid of it if you pay for waste removal.


Hideouts are not only for you and your luxury. They’re also a place where your employees (lab technicians or distributors) will work. Remember to make it a nice place to be in! Even more so because you can adopt pets and keep them there. You want your pets to be happy, right? Right???


There is also one more thing you need to remember: hideouts are not immune to the outside world. It may happen that your place will be discovered and you’ll find yourself facing a raid and potential losses connected with it. You can try to get the money and drugs, and run away. Or you can try installing better locks and bars in your windows – that way you’re gonna get more time to run. Gotta save the goods, right?

And the last thing – of course, you will not be buying a cat in a bag! Before you commit to purchasing a hideout, you can get in and look around, see if it’s a good place for your operations. So choose wisely!


https://store.steampowered.com/app/1708850/Drug_Dealer_Simulator_2/

Demo version is now available! Try out the game for free and save the Christmas!

Okay! So the cupboard is standing (if you know you know), now we can talk more about hideouts!

If you played DDS1, you’ll be familiar with the base concept of the hideout and some of the mechanics. But if you haven’t played DDS1, no worries! We’ll get you up to speed quickly enough.

Let’s look at the basics first. There are numerous hideouts on Isla Sobra and they vary in size, price and the way they look. You can buy hideouts that have their own gardens or docks, a balcony, or a parking spot. There are also flats available in tenement houses.

The hideouts vary not only in size and location. Some hideouts have access to running water which allows you to grow Marijuana plants much easier. And in some hideouts, you may install a phone so you can listen to voicemail. Do remember tho that you need to pay bills for water and electricity.


Hideouts have something called a hideout stash – it’s a thingamajig where you can store your goods and access them from every place in that hideout. Another type of storage available in the hideout is substance storage where, as the name suggests, all the substances are stored. If you place more containers around, you can increase the capacity of your substance storage.

When you craft your produce, you generate waste which also takes up space. You can get rid of it if you pay for waste removal.


Hideouts are not only for you and your luxury. They’re also a place where your employees (lab technicians or distributors) will work. Remember to make it a nice place to be in! Even more so because you can adopt pets and keep them there. You want your pets to be happy, right? Right???


There is also one more thing you need to remember: hideouts are not immune to the outside world. It may happen that your place will be discovered and you’ll find yourself facing a raid and potential losses connected with it. You can try to get the money and drugs, and run away. Or you can try installing better locks and bars in your windows – that way you’re gonna get more time to run. Gotta save the goods, right?

And the last thing – of course, you will not be buying a cat in a bag! Before you commit to purchasing a hideout, you can get in and look around, see if it’s a good place for your operations. So choose wisely!


https://store.steampowered.com/app/1708850/Drug_Dealer_Simulator_2/

1. Optimize the display of package attributes
2. Fix the bug of purchasing double tokens and continuing to deduct diamonds after reaching the upper limit
2. Add F3 replica
3. Add a new spirit set

It's been a while! We took our time to test the latest update and ensure that the biggest bugs really have been fixed and that this updates ensures a boost in playability of the game over all.

Updates are slow as we are in parallel preparing bigger changes for the game. More about this in another upcoming post.

- fixed an issue causing workers being stuck in a loop trying to do repair jobs
- fixed an issue causing frozen zombies/humbies not be picked up for treatment/storage
- fixed haulers dropping ore when trying to refill furnace
- fixed buildings requiring power not displaying proper status after being upgraded
- fixed buildings sometimes permanently displaying unreachable status
- fixed an issue when loading a save game with an ongoing frozen character transport job
- fixed multiple issues resulting in left over power cables floating in the air
- fixed an issue with guards being stuck
- fixed an issue where gatherables inside a room would not be removed when merging rooms
- fixed an multithreading issue when assigning workers
- fixed an issue where upgrading objects sometimes would not work (leftover, unupgradable roads)
- fixed an issue where zombies could get stuck in place when trying to leave at break of dawn
- minor change to where saplings can spawn: they can no longer spawn right next to player buildings to prevent blocking narrow pathways
- reworked loading issue popup: when a problem occurs while loading a saved game sending a report is now optional

Hi everyone!

Thanks so much for your support on this game! This is just a very small patch that fixes one crash that was reported to us over on Discord. Specifically, it fixes an issue with two player mode where the game would crash when both players tried to close/open the building panel at the same time.

That's it! We hope you're having a nice day!!
-PUNKCAKE Délicieux 🥞