itch.io

We're honestly not sure how this happened... We're going to keep an eye on it because it might be another memory related issue. We've tested all our scenes for memory leaks and did a lot of optimization in the latest build. Let us know if you hit this again. P.S. We sent you an email.

We definitely hear your concerns about the new event system breaking the rhythm of the core game. It seems like we got a little too excited about the new minigames and went a bit overboard with how many were getting spawned. We made some adjustments that we think will improve how it feels, but are still mulling things over for future updates. The timeout duration is increased, spawn rate is decreased, and there is now a cooldown between events so they cannot spawn rapidly back-to-back. We also increased the reward for the Heimlich maneuver minigame.

With less spawning and more freedom to choose when to address them, you don’t have to break your rhythm on your current customer unless you need to, and you can choose to use them strategically. For example, maybe your satisfaction is low and you just went slightly over on a customer, so you are at risk of getting fired. Instead of finishing the customer, you could jump into the event to get a quick boost of satisfaction (as long as you do well), which may be enough to save you.

We are also considering trying out having a “Manager” that appears between customers instead to trigger a minigame. This would simplify things for the player in not having to manage events, but doesn’t really address some of your other concerns. There would still be an unknown amount of events, and they would still just essentially be additional obstacles in your way to finish a shift. Them being obstacles is currently by design, but we do of course want that to add to the overall fun of the game and not just be annoying.

The cheese in the cheese grater actually moves down with the supply amount, but it may not be apparent enough. If you look at the cheese block and crank handle, you can see it go down as you grate cheese. As a loading screen tip: “peek at the cheese block quickly between customers to see if you’re going to reload soon”.

We were a little hesitant on making a crank sensitivity setting from the start, because we don’t want it to throw off balance, especially when we add leaderboards, but we do want our game to be accessible to everyone if the default crank setting is just too much for some. We definitely don’t want everyone to have to use the lowest setting to be competitive, so we will have to watch out for that.

The intention for a lot of the modifiers was to have trade-offs and interesting ways that modifiers could work together. In this case, you’re right that if you are good at reloading and you use Perfect Reload, having “Extra Cheese, Please” would decrease the benefit you get, so those modifiers don’t really work well together. We wanted options that different players at different skill levels might like taking. The “Extra Cheese, Please” modifier would be more for beginners who aren’t good at hitting perfect reloads consistently.

We also want players to be able to put together “builds” that take advantage of the way certain modifiers play off each other. This is something we want to keep expanding on as we add more elements to the game.

We do see the concern with overwhelming new players, so we are aiming to add a short intro tutorial with the Catalog release to give players a better sense of their objectives and how the game works. There is definitely a lot that is left up to the player to figure out right now. We’ll always give you the option to skip or replay the tutorial.

We are considering delaying the urgent events to give new players some breathing room, but we did also get some feedback that seemed like players were disappointed by not getting to any minigames early in the game, so we want to find the right balance there.

We agree that giving the player a sense of progression is a really good idea. We definitely want to do more with that. Here’s some ideas we are thinking about:

• Adding achievements. Let us know of any you’d like to see in the game. We have this partially implemented and should be coming soon after the catalog release.
• Unlocking modifiers and special customers as you play and/or through achievements.
• Permanent passive modifiers unlocked by achievements. Maybe you have 1-3 slots, and you can choose which small bonus you want to get for each one.
• Customers and modifiers that are only introduced after a certain shift.

We’re glad you like Try Havarti! It was a good recommendation. We’re always reading the feedback and adding it to our backlog, even if we don’t reply.

We debated quite a bit whether we actually wanted to let the choking customer die. We were hoping it was goofy enough to not get too dark, so if you’re still laughing hopefully that is a good sign lol! We were talking about creating a ghost customer that can spawn if you fail the minigame. Not quite sure what the special ghost customer will do yet though, so let us know if you have any good ideas.

“Not my shift, not my problem” one only gets rid of the penalty for the ones left over when the shift ends, so at the most it will just let you opt out of a few if you didn’t already take care of them, depending on how they spawn.

For the urgent events, we thought the mechanic of having to choose yourself when to take care of them was interesting, but we can see how it could be a little too much to manage. There may still be a piece missing from this formula we need to figure out to make it feel fully fleshed out and fit the flow a little better. It sounds like at the very least we need to decrease the urgent event spawn rate. We are thinking of adding a cooldown after one spawns so they can’t spawn back-to-back.

With the added minigames, do you think reloads now happen too frequently? We could increase the default cheese amount to balance it out and make it a little less hectic.

It’s good to hear your feedback. Thank you, as always. This is giving us a lot of ideas, and we will be doing some experimenting. We are thinking about adding a way to download a beta release to let people playtest new, potentially unstable updates if they want to. Would you be interested in that?

Thanks for the feedback! That’s a good idea on the customer repetition. We’ve also got some things coming with the next update that should help with adding more variety in general that we are excited about, so stay tuned!

Always appreciate your feedback! Thank you

You probably already saw we made an adjustment to the cheese lover mini game to not give an advantage to the slower crank speed setting, but we will probably revisit this at some point.

Also your idea about adding some variety is right in line with plans we have for the next big update :) That mini game would fit right in

Thank you so much for playing. We're happy you and your kids are enjoying the game. Let us know if there's anything else you'd like to see in the game.

Good to know about the Cheese Greatest mod. We could definitely make the bar ever so slightly larger to balance that better. Really appreciate your thoughtful feedback.

Achievements are high on our priority list, but we’ve been really busy on getting the new difficulty modes in and trying to fix the elusive memory leak you’ve run into. These ideas of yours are definitely going in our backlog for future updates. Your modifiers ideas are really good, and the puns are fantastic haha

We are currently working a new update that will bring an easier mode and a mode that scales up the difficult as you play. We hope those will be more fun for people just getting started while they get used to the mechanics or anyone who just prefers the slower pace. 

We actually do have that one in the game already as the “Cheese Greatest” modifier! That’s a great example of one that has a good risk v reward aspect to it. If you think of more please let us know!

I don't have the "all I need" description in front of me at the moment, but if I remember correctly, if you have only this modifier your shift score will get a 4x bonus after your shift. Basically you get this modifier at the start and then keep getting "stay employed" option. We should probably raise the 4x to a 10x to make this modifier worth it.

We saw the duplicate modifiers in testing. This seemed to be due to logic we use to make testing easier. Just added it to the list.

I agree. Can you think of any modifiers you'd like to see in the game? We'll name one after you.

Thank you both for the feedback! We are going to look at adding some new modes in the next update with varying difficulties. We want to strike a good balance of challenge and fun for sure, and giving more options will let us achieve that for more players.

We also like the idea of adding an option to adjust the required crank speed. We’ll plan to get that in as well. This will probably make the game easier as well, so you will be able to use this in combination with the new modes to find your preferred way to play.

As far as that modifier goes, it seems to be worded in a confusing way. The “Stay Employed” modifier fills your job satisfaction bar (at the top) back up some, but does not prevent you from getting fired in the next shift. If you end a shift with low satisfaction, the idea is that you can use that option to get some back so you can make it through the next shift at the cost of not being able to choose another modifier. We will change the description to get rid of the “don’t get fired” phrasing to make it more clear.

There is another modifier called “Second chance” that does actually save you from getting fired one time.

In the “Reload” mini game, your goal is to press B in the highlighted zone. It is a risk vs. reward mini game where if you let it complete on its own it will go slow, if you hit the zone it will go fast, but if you drop it then it will go very slow, wasting more time and draining your bar. We will slow this down in the easy mode as well.

We do have a devlog section now with the details. I had made a draft post but apparently forgot to make it public, so thank you for the comment! We will post updates there as we make changes.

The only change in this update is a fix for a crash that was happening because the game was taking too long to load at the start.

https://smashtoadstudios.itch.io/say-when/devlog/952780/loading-crash-fix-v101

Added a How To Play section. Let us know if you want us to go into more detail

We'll add a section to our page :). Glad to hear you're liking the game.

Let us know what you think. Please take the time to give a honest rating.

Tell us what you would like to see in the game!

Let us know of any bugs you find, and we'll get 'em squashed. Please provide us with the following info if possible:

1. Steps to Reproduce
   1. In as much detail as possible, what was happening when you encountered the bug?
   2. What happened as a result of the bug, and how serious was it?
2. Screenshots and/or error logs

After resolving any bugs, the corresponding posts will be deleted to improve visibility for future and ongoing issues