Coffee Shop Tycoon v0.9: The final stretch towards full release

Good morning, coffee lovers:

Today we have decided to surprise you all by launching the new update you have been waiting for, so you can consider this entry as its respective patch notes. Coffee Shop Tycoon’s full launch is finally coming this December, so we wanted v0.9 to include a lot of relevant changes to help you manage your coffee business in a more complete and efficient way. You'll soon realize why we decided to release a simpler patch last time!

In our previous entry, we gave you a preview of the customer dashboard and the new fan-based progression system that will take over from the traditional levels starting today. But now, it’s time to go deeper into this matter and the other features left to introduce — featuring more screenshots and GIFs that will help you understand them better!

New leveling system
Until now, the progression system was exclusively driven by reputation points and it was limited to 11 levels despite all the new items, machines, and coffee types you were able to unlock through roasting challenges or rival company acquisitions. The new fan-based system allowed us to say goodbye to these limitations because your business growth has no limits.

Every item requires a certain amount of fans to be unlocked instead of reaching a level. On top of that, the reputation of your business will play an important role in the status of your follower counter. The more famous it becomes, the more demanding your customers will become. As you see, this new system makes the game more challenging than before!

Existing save files will be automatically updated, and your current level will be converted to an equivalent number of fans. For our next update, we’re planning to introduce new items that will be automatically unlocked if you have enough followers once the patch comes out. Additionally, there will be a new achievement for those players aiming to build a huge community of coffee enthusiasts.

Customer thoughts + Customer dashboard
Customers in Coffee Shop Tycoon care about many aspects of your store. We felt that sometimes this was not very clear, and you had to click on every customer to find out exactly what was important to them. You still have that option, but now essential thoughts are displayed over your customer's head; this includes things like "Good service," "No coffee," "Bad quality," and "Old food," among others.

All these thoughts are aggregated into a new summary screen that you can access from the manager menu. With this new information, you can cater to all your customer's needs and react promptly when there is a coffee crisis. With this change, we also decided to update the "I'm stuck" icon that popped over your customer's head, as many players were confused by the previous design.

Improvements to the store icons
New icons are now visible next to the requirements of each item to better communicate how to unlock it. Store items are unlocked by fans, roasting challenges, and buying rival companies.

Sugar tables are now functional
If you have condiment bars in your shop, you will notice that some clients will take a detour to pay a visit. This simple action will help you gain additional reputation points, so it’s strongly recommended to have one at every shop! A new animation for this interaction will come soon to the game.

Employees with custom names
This has been a highly requested feature and one we are happy to announce — you can finally rename your employees! You can click on any employee and edit their names in the "Employee Info" screen. Just think twice about firing an employee that has your name on it. We would not want you to start hating the world of coffee…

Additional pathfinding fixes
This is a very elusive bug that has frustrated you and us for months. There was a slight chance that customers would end up frozen in front of the cashier; the only way to fix this problem was to close and reopen your store. Well, we are happy to communicate that the bug has been zapped. While testing the update, we were able to reproduce the problem and add a fix that should prevent this from happening again, no more stuck customers!

And that’s all for now, we hope your verdict is good and you enjoy playing Coffee Shop Tycoon! As usual, we want to remind you that feedback is always welcome here, because it usually helps us identify new bugs or features you might like to see in a game like ours.

That said, remember that these last few months of development are very important to us and we would love for you to recommend Coffee Shop Tycoon to your friends. Every addition to your wishlists counts!

Have a great weekend,
The Riff Studios team