Coffee Shop Tycoon News

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Hello!

Welcome to another update for Coffee Shop Tycoon, this time we focused on three major areas: Addressing feedback, bringing the game to more players, and modernizing the game. With that, let's start with some changes to retirement.



We’ve heard your feedback loud and clear, "Employees are retiring too soon". Retirement is supposed to help balance the game to prevent having god employees that can single-handedly do everything after playing the game for a while. It is also a mechanic that tries to simulate employee rotation in real life and put some economic pressure to make the game a bit more challenging. For those reasons we are not fully getting rid of it yet, first we want to try something out. Starting from this update, any new employee that you hire will have a significantly longer retirement time, this retirement time depends on the level of the employee when you hire them. (Pro tip: Use the budget slider during the hiring process to scout for candidates with a higher level)

• For employees between level 1 and 2, retirement time will be up to 8 years
  
• For employees between level 3 and 5, retirement time will be up to 6 and a half years
  
• For employees level 6 and up, retirement time will be up to 5 and a half years
  

We hope this change lessens the burden of hiring new employees while keeping a fun and challenging balance.


As native Spanish speakers and with a studio crew that is originally from Mexico, we wanted to make the game available in our language. This work also helped us find some gaps in the localization tech and fix some controls and screens that were truncating text or formatting it incorrectly. With this change, Coffee Shop Tycoon is now available in Spanish, English, and Chinese. We also leveraged AI technology to help speed up the process and we plan to keep using it to bring the game to new languages. We know there will be some errors when we first roll out those new languages, but we are confident that these tools will help us get the game to more players with our limited resources.


When reviewing the graphical fidelity of the different shop locations, we felt like the first location was feeling outdated and rough. Naturally, that was the first location we added to the game. We wanted to keep the same layout and overall look while making it look more polished. Without any further ado, here is a before and after. We hope you like the result!




Finally, here is a list of other changes in this version.

• Fixed the materials of several plants that were rendering as opaque planes
  
• End of Trend notification ("The market has normalized") is now a popup and no longer pauses the game
  
• Localization fixes
  

We are still working on the following things:

Achievement Bug Fixes: It has come to our attention that some achievements are not working as expected, we will prioritize getting a fix ready to unlock anyone from achieving 100% completion.

Localization: Continue adding new languages to the game. We'll announce what those languages will be later this year and create new beta branches for people who want to test them out and provide feedback.

Steam Deck Verified: We are working to have CST appear as verified for the Steam Deck; we hope that this will help bring the joy of coffee to new homes.

64-bit support for macOS

Investigating gamepad support: We are testing out several approaches to support gamepads in the game. We are still far from achieving this, but we believe it will improve the game experience for those playing on mobile consoles like Steam Deck.

Thanks for your support, suggestions, and bug reports, please keep them coming. Enjoy your coffee!

Hello!

We are back with another update for Coffee Shop Tycoon! This time, we wanted to address some of the top requested features from the community, starting with roasting and the end-game loop.


We follow the reviews and comments very closely, and one thing that immediately jumped to the top of the list for us was that the end of the game feels grindy, and roasting stops being fun; for that reason, we made several significant changes.
First, we rebalanced all the roasting milestone challenges to reduce the roasting required to complete the milestone by half in most places; this still provides a challenge without feeling like a chore to complete. Secondly and most importantly, we added Auto-Roast when creating roasting profiles for employees with the "Roasting Expert" specialization. If your employee is level four or higher, you can specialize as a "Roasting Expert." Once you do that, you will have the option to auto-roast from the HQ.



The final grading of your roasting profile and the score of tasting notes is determined by the roasting skill of your employee. Higher-skilled roasters can create roasting profiles without negative notes and with a high grading score.



Another feedback we received was about the requirement of roasting points (RP) when roasting high-quality coffee varieties. We decided to change what varieties require RP, and now only Exceptional varieties require 100 RP (this number used to be 350 RP); the rest of the coffee beans can be roasted using money.


Another significant change we are making with this update is removing the employee level cap. Before, employees couldn't go past level 6; we did this to prevent the game balance from breaking once employees reached a very high skill. However, this has caused some confusion for players, and it can become very annoying if you try to level up an employee to create higher-quality beans. Therefore, we decided to remove the level cap and introduce a new game mechanic, "employee retirement." Each employee can now retire; the time depends on the employee level at the time you hire them. Higher-skilled employees will retire sooner than more junior employees. When an employee is close to retirement age, you will get notifications to help you prepare to hire a replacement; you can also click on your employee to see the time remaining until their retirement.








Another area we focused on for this update is UI. This update includes several bug fixes for tooltips and addresses some potential crashes. Additionally, we added new functionality that will make adjusting your store prices much easier. If you have played CST long enough, you have probably come across the message "Price is low" when checking your menu. Now, instead of raising or lowering each drink or food price individually, you can apply the new prices to all your menus!




We started working on CST many years ago, beginning with the first location you see on the game and progressively adding new locations throughout the years. Naturally, some of the first locations don't look as flashy as the rest. In this update, we started upscaling some textures and replacing some old models. The changes are notable on the start screen and the first location. We plan to continue doing this process while keeping the existing charm of the game.



Other bugs fixes

• Fixed the price of the training called "Roaster, you are our only hope."
  
• Fixed a bug where new drinks created in the HQ did not receive a bonus for the trending ingredient
  
• Fixed a bug where the preview of new custom drinks could be smaller depending on the resolution of the game
  

We are working on three major things:

Localization: Our plan is to finish the Spanish localization and use AI to generate some of the most requested languages. We'll announce what those languages will be later this year and create new beta branches for people who want to test them out and provide feedback.

Steam Deck Verified: We are working to have CST appear as verified for the Steam Deck; we hope that this will help bring the joy of coffee to new homes.

64-bit support for macOS

Investigating gamepad support: We are testing out several approaches to support gamepads in the game. We are still far from achieving this, but we believe it will improve the game experience for those playing on mobile consoles like Steam Deck.

Thanks for reading this far, and enjoy your coffee!

Hello everyone, we hope you are enjoying Summer in the northern hemisphere! To compliment your ice creams and cold brews, we are releasing update v1.2 Full Crew.
Towards the end of last year, we celebrated the full launch of Coffee Shop Tycoon, a game that started from a simple idea while I was beginning my journey as a game developer. Along the way, I was able to partner with great people to bring this idea to you. A couple of years ago, we founded Riff Studios, and now we are glad to announce a new member, Gaby, just joined the team! While we are working on cool new concepts and games, we still care deeply about Coffee Shop Tycoon, and we wanted to delight you with this new update.


If you have played Coffee Shop Tycoon, you might be familiar with the two faces behind the counter of your shop. We felt it was time to see some new faces, so we added four new character models for your employees. So without further due, say hello to your new crew!




We also updated the hiring screen to show icons for all the employees you are recruiting.




If you have already reached the Moon, congratulations! If not, you will have very disappointed interplanetary customers waiting for that mesmerizing aroma of fresh ground coffee. But even with that new cool moon base, you might have realized that there aren't any space-themed decorations. We are certainly aware of this so we decided to fix it. With v1.2, we are releasing several new items, including a new counter, condiment station, two new tables, four new chairs, and ten new decorations.



Finally, Coffee Shop Tycoon is 40% off! Take advantage of this opportunity, and start building your coffee empire one cup at a time.

As always, we are very grateful for the support you have given us over the years, and we are looking forward to building new experiences that you will love. Please share your feedback and any bugs that you encounter.

Enjoy your coffee.

Hello everyone! We hope the beginning of 2023 is turning out nicely for you. Here at Riff Studios, we have been working on two new updates for Coffee Shop Tycoon! With v1.1, we are addressing some of the top concerns and bugs you have encountered during your game play-through. We have been monitoring the forums and noticed some recurrent problems we wanted to fix.

Here is a list of the changes we are making:

• Customers now complain about specific missing services. The "wifi" icon is no longer used as the "services" icon for customer thoughts. This will clear some confusion about the customers' expectations.
  
  
• Adjustments to fix the problem of price volatility, old products now have a lower impact on price.
  
• The objective for the teen demographic mission in Akihabara doesn't show a percentage anymore; instead, it will only show a checkbox. This percentage was confusing because it showed the percentage towards the goal of achieving 70% teen demographic rather than showing the "teen market percentage."
  
• Fixed some crashes
  

Additionally, we also updated the Mac version as it was missing these two critical fixes from v1.0.1

• Fixed a problem where the moon remained locked in early access saves even after completing the "Emerald City" missions.
  
• Fixed a bug where the "Best Roast of the year" award wasn't not updating correctly.
  

We also wanted to share some news about the next content update! We hope that by now, you have been able to visit the moon and expand your coffee empire to the stars. If you have done so, you might notice that you don't have many sci-fi-looking items in your store, and we want to fix that!

For the next update, we will be releasing new furniture and decoration for your store, including a circular working station that will make all your customers question the origin of the universe. Here are some early renders of the new models. We are still working on finishing the list and texturing them.



Thanks again for playing Coffee Shop Tycoon. We are looking forward to sharing more exciting renders with you. Until then, we hope you have a great week and enjoy your coffee.

-The Riff Studios team