Relax everyone, thanks for sticking up for it, or for telling us you don't think you'd like it, the game as described doesn't have to appeal to everyone, that's fine.
This post is the equivilant of you walking into a Mom & Pop run Bakery and explaining to them why you don't want to buy their bread: Rise Bakery [interior] Bakery Owner Hi can I help you? Bigrand1 I dunno. I've baked bread for 20 years in real life so I don't see any reason to get any bread. Bakery Owner (Confused) Aahhhh ok..?? Bigrand1 Guess that's because of the 'been there done that' feeling I have when it comes to this! Maybe kids might think it's cool, though. But I'm an adult. Bakery Owner You're wearing your big boy pants today? Bigrand1 Can't be bothered by some little bakery when it comes to this. Bread is a serious thing to me, and I eat a lot of it. Bakery Owner Why are you telling me this? Do you want to buy bread or not? Bigrand1 When you've actually made at least 20 different scones yourself, you don't need toys. Just sayin'! Bakery Owner Then why did you come in here and waste everyone's time, presumptuously voicing an opinion about bread you've never tried? Get the hell out of my store.
So ANYWAY, back to this game, here... The feeling of accomplishment that comes from "hangin' with the best of 'em" in each new market stays around throughout the game. I remember thinking "Holy crap, I can't make anything close to that quality.", and now some recipies are twice as good as the competitions beer in those locales.
Wonderful game. I am stuck on the Malty Magnate Event though. I just cannot figure out how to place the ingredients on the grid. Any help with that would be highly appreciated.
You first buy ingredients and then drag them to the grid. The recipie he gives you prettyuch gives away the first word of all the ingredients. Also like 2 pages back some talks about what's in it. Great game this was a complete surprise and having a blast. I have spent more time with this than any other game in recent memory. Now back to the brewery, my sewer line broke, I gotta talk to a man about a boat. I think. Grrrr
Lol Glad there are so many who are enjoying this game! I was looking at the markup calculation and it would be helpful to have the game list that as you change your price. I keep jumping into my calculator to figure out the best price.
I've just started new game + Lost an employee because I didn't manage to pay the loan in the beginning but I'm working on employing her again. You could raise the requirements for the challenges. I just skip through everything because the quality of my beer is so high now.
Sorry about that, I've just added a much improved step by step guide for that here. Coming in the next update! Wow, how did you manage such a high quality batch in the first playthrough? I'm surprised (and impressed)! The story events and challenges don't change requirements, but the randomly selected ones do. I actually never considered raising the difficulty of the story portions because I was modeling it after my favorite game, Chrono Trigger, where the difficulty stays the same but it's fun to just wallop everything. I'll have to consider adding the option to play through again in increased difficulty!
Oh man, I love kairosoft games too, this looks right up my alley. Our own stab at a more casual kairosoft-y type game didn't work out so well so I'm hoping this does!
I don't get why the concept of "markup" is used in customers preferences. People in the real world don't know an items markup so it's kind of strange. If I reduce my costs why should I be punished by not being able to keep my price the same?
Been playing this non stop since I got it and just wanted to say its excellent. Very similar to the kairosoft stuff but an increase in production value while retaining the playability. Great combo! I have a question tho. Trying to get the banshee's tear but can't figure out what the correct beer is. I've breezed through the rest but not sure on this. I've read every description 3 times and tried a few randomly that might have related. Anyone figured it out?
You're right, it's odd that they know what markup is -- truthfully it's the only part of the game I'm not completely satisfied with. The short reason is that I tried to balance the game so that customers shopped with price instead of markup and couldn't do it after many attempts, I could never get the game to be the right amount of challenge for a range of players at any time that way. Markup has the advantage (from a design perspective) that it scales as you improve, so it keeps the competitors competitive. If it was based on price alone, once you reduce costs, you just blow everyone out of the water, especially if you go back to old marketplaces. I think if you treat the markup system as more of a "game rule" instead of a realistic depiction of how shoppers would behave, then it lessens the annoyance of it. I think it actually is fun to figure out ways to keep your markup low, such as adding recipe modifiers to your batches to increase the cost per unit (there are a few other tricks, too). In the end though I would much prefer you to have to figure things out like that while maintaining the realism. Before releasing, I almost delayed the game again to rip out the markup system and take another crack at replacing it, but I just couldn't afford to delay it any longer, and I didn't know if I would be successful anyway. Plus I would've had to redo all the work I had done over months of balancing the 26 marketplaces. So I resolved to fix it in the sequel, if we make one. I have some ideas for a sort of global marketplace where you compete with other brewers, and where certain ingredients come in and out of season, or raise prices based on real time supply and demand, but that's getting way ahead of myself for now. I hope that explains a little about it. It's definitely not an oversight, it was the thing I struggled most with making the game.
This one is hard because the main hint is in the story, and you can't re-read it. I'm working on making the story messages replayable. In the meantime, we have a hint here: https://bitbybitstudios.freshdesk.com/solution/categories/145349/folders/239148/articles/174895-hint-for-twelve-bells-and-ghostly-tears Also, as a warning, one of the two crashes I'm aware of in the game randomly happens when selling at ghostly tears. It's fixed locally but we're still testing the patch before submitting it to apple. In case the game crashes for you there, we have a workaround available here. Sorry about that!
I'm hoping that as I move on there will be more ways to optimize brewing so I can reduce cost. I kept pricing things too high and it wasn't until I looked at the markup on competitors that I finally started pricing better. It just seems that tuning production and cutting cost should be rewarded. I'm hoping that the game gives you better breweries later on? And will there be any way to use marketing for brand awareness so perhaps customers are willing to pay more markup to get your brand? A research and r&d lab would be better than the mice finding recipes as we'll I really like the game and can't wait to see what you do! Hopefully a solution around the markup will be in the sequel. (Maybe incorporate soft drinks and other types of advances)
I like that reasoning, great way to think about it. I've been good and addicted to this since I got it a few days ago, and I'm not normally a fan of this genre, so well done! You've created a really enjoyable game which makes you use the ole noodle, I'm loving it.
I'm really loving this game! The one regret I have is that I've invested a heavy amount of time playing during the day on my iPhone, but I'd rather switch to my iPad for evening play. Are there any plans to add iCloud save syncing to the game? I'm sure iFunbox will make manual transfer possible, but so many games have iCloud these days, I'm feeling a bit spoiled.
