It's been quiet on the news front for a few weeks! Due to a certain part of the game getting some development focus on it, it's been head down programming to get it done. But, now that I can resurface from the depths of programming, I should have more time to give updates on the progress of Cascade Cafe. So what was it that was taking up so much time?
Cascade Cafe now has a single player story mode!
The current build on Steam includes the first 5 days of the story. Over time I'll be slowly rolling out the remaining days of the story. The beginning days of the story are fairly basic, but the plan is to:
- Tell a full story over the 31 days.
- Let you try out all the board layouts.
- Collect all the abilities.
- Add story-specific gimmicks to certain levels, like the batteries in the board game going flat halfway through a match, someone spilling a drink on the board, or a time limit when the cafe needs to close but the game isn't done yet.
- Unlock challenge missions for the characters with small side-stories so you can get to know them even better. If anyone has played the challenge mode in games such as Duelyst, this is what I have in mind.
Now at the moment, as mentioned, the current version only contains the first 5 days. It also comes with a few other limitations that will eventually get lifted:
- You can't replay levels you've completed right now.
- When you unlock abilities, there's no 'ability inventory'. Later once the story gets past 3 abilities you'll have the option of picking and choosing which abilities you want to take into the match.
- Once you are in the story sequence, there's no back button to the main menu - you have to go into a match first. Silly I know but I'll get that fixed in the next update.
- Right now if you've already completed the tutorial, either in a previous version or through the new story mode, you can't skip them. I know this might be a bit of a pain, so I'll be adding some prompts in the future version to check if you want to skip the tutorials.
It was a surprisingly large amount of work to get this mode in (even with the small amount of content that exists), so I'm happy to finally have this build up. Over the next few weeks, I'll be working towards a few other items such as:
- Rolling out some incentives for the newsletter. At the moment it exists..but it's been neglected. I'll probably be putting up a PDF artbook for those who sign up, and start giving the newsletter list some attention.
- Multiple language support is technically in the game, but is currently disabled. Once development gets a little further along I'll be switching on the language toggles.
- At some point I would like to add some colour-blind options. I've never tried implementing this before, so I might see if there's anyone in the community who can help.
Since this is a new feature in the game, there's also the potential for bugs. If you notice anything breaking or not looking quite right, you can always send me an email at [email protected] or send me message on twitter @spectragate or @CascadeCafe.
Have fun!