A new build is out, v0.1.1-alpha.239. The lounge can go wrong now, in ways you can plan for, and every new unlock comes with a reason to try it.
Accidents and fire
A busy room has risks. A hard bump into a guest, or two hires crowding the same spot, can shatter a hookah: it leaves your stock, the glass has to be cleaned up, the order goes back in the queue, and the table is not happy about the wait. Dropped coals can start a fire, and a fire now spreads if nobody deals with it. Walk over empty-handed and stomp out a smoulder before it catches. Your hires fight fires too, and extinguishers mount on the wall from the build shop.
Lounge Cover and safety training
Lounge Cover is an optional insurance policy, billed with the rent. When an accident costs you, it pays back part of the loss at the end of the day. On the Staff screen, a safety course lowers a hire's accident rate, so a careful crew is a real choice.
Try-it goals
Every item a level opens becomes a one-step goal on the objectives card: pack the new flavor, light the new coal, pour the new drink. It pays when you use it. A recap card lists what each level opened and where to find it, and you can reach it from the ticker or the day summary's "New today" line. The XP chime is quieter too.
A faster register
The Contactless Reader, Commercial POS Terminal and Quick-Confirm Pad now speed up your own register, not just your cashier's. The Workshop shows the real seconds before you buy.
Story visits
Later story scenes now wait until your lounge has grown into them. When a friend drops by in the evening, the camera follows them in instead of freezing on the door.
Fixed
- A guest can no longer pin you in place, and hires sent to the same station no longer stack inside each other.
- A table sharing one bowl is stock-checked against the bowl it will actually get, so the prep station no longer refuses it.
- A shared bowl's hookah comes back when the last smoker leaves, instead of showing "In use" after close.
- Hookah reviews judge the wait against how long a guest will really wait, so a calm guest is no longer scored a failure after 30 seconds.
- Idle hires lean on a wall they can reach instead of standing in the aisle.
- Rosewater Tape is back on the Hookah Lofi station. It never made it into the last build.
- The delivery tracker shows a hookah instead of a black square, and the price chart and prep list draw correctly again.
Under the hood
The download is about a fifth smaller: the Windows build goes from 3.2 GB to 2.5 GB and the Mac build from 3.2 GB to 2.6 GB, because we stopped packing art the game never loads. Textures also use less video memory and load faster.
Come hang out
Tell us what belongs in your dream lounge: discord.gg/uVThPXvWgN
Build shots and small wins go up daily on X: @HookahHouseGame
If you haven't yet, add Hookah House to your wishlist. It's the single best way to support the game before launch.