The Cosmetic Update

It's been about three weeks since the release of Pixel Shopkeeper on Steam, and only in the past week have I slowed down a bit with the updates. I thought that after release the dev process would calm down, since the weeks leading up to it were the busiest. Nope, it was even busier! Brand new features that were not really planned had to be developed and pushed within the first couple of days (undertested) had to go in -- particularly a new difficulty mode for people who found the game way too difficult. But I think that's another post, I'm getting away from my topic.

The most recent update features more on cosmetic and appearance, as well as 'quality-of-life' related issues. Two new town services are moving in -- first, a restaurant that sells buff items, ingredients, and seeds which were a bit difficult to come by in game on a consistent basis. Because of the introduction of this though, a few fixture items that buffed seeds as well as the prices of crafted items that use ingredients had to be tweaked a little bit. I had to play around with the numbers for a while, and even now I can't be 100% sure about how it affects the game. The bad thing about adding features in a sim game like mine I feel is the unsettling of the overall game balance. I feel like I had a decent balance of challenging/reward aspects, so putting something like this in is always uncertain. However I still have been getting a lot of people with suggestions on ways to make getting such items easier, so I felt like it was important (plus it has always been a planned feature).

The second service is a boutique which addresses the issue of having some sort of money sink since late game players are filled to the brim with money as there have been no more challenges (basically free play after the story arcs are completed). A few new hair colors & styles as well as outfits were added for visual appeal. It's also nice I think to have some personality, so more cosmetic features should be added regularly (maybe thematically?) to keep it looking fresh.

Chapter 3 is in the works, and this will hopefully open up a new set of challenges for both late-game and newer players.