Our first major post-launch update is here!
Patch 1.0 focuses on improving the overall experience based on what we’ve learned since release and, especially, from the feedback and reports shared by our players. Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to play, report issues, and share suggestions!
Weekly Challenges Improvements
Weekly Challenges have received a significant balance pass.
Challenges have been rebalanced to make them more challenging and give players something to work toward throughout the week rather than completing them too quickly.
Improved challenge variety and requirements.
Improved the Weekly Challenges UI for a clearer and more polished experience.
Additional improvements have been made behind the scenes to support the challenge system going forward.
And this is only the beginning! We have more ideas for Weekly Challenges and their rewards planned for future updates.
More Music!
We’ve expanded the soundtrack selection available across the different visual themes.
Each theme now has more songs in its music rotation, helping reduce repetition during longer play sessions and giving each environment more musical variety.
Achievement System Update
The achievement system has received an update!
Added a new set of achievement icons.
Fixed issues that could cause some achievements to unlock incorrectly.
Updated the achievement system to provide a more polished experience.
More Accurate Steam Leaderboards
Steam leaderboard times now use sub-second precision instead of being limited to whole seconds.
Previously, players finishing within the same second could receive identical times. Times are now recorded with much greater precision—for example, 00:27.682 instead of 00:27.000—which should significantly reduce unnecessary ties and make close leaderboard runs more accurate.
Because existing leaderboard scores were recorded using the previous whole-second timing system, keeping them alongside the new, more precise times would not provide a fair comparison. For this reason, we made the decision to reset the leaderboards so everyone can compete under the same timing system.
We apologize to everyone who had already earned a place on the leaderboards and lost their previous ranking as a result. We know those scores took effort, and we appreciate your understanding. We hope the new timing system will make competing for the top spots more accurate and fair going forward.
Tutorial Reminder for New Players
We’ve added a small visual reminder on the Main Menu to help new players discover the Tutorial.
Word Search Café is designed around selecting an entire word in one continuous movement, and selecting individual tiles incorrectly can affect your score. The new reminder makes the Tutorial easier to notice when first learning the game.
To keep it from becoming intrusive, the reminder only appears during the first two times the game is launched and then disappears permanently.
General Improvements & Fixes
Patch 1.0 also includes additional quality-of-life improvements, fixes, and polish throughout the game.
We’re continuing to keep an eye on your feedback and reports, so please keep sharing your thoughts in the Steam Discussions. They’ve already been incredibly useful in helping us decide what to improve next.
Thank you for playing Word Search Café and for supporting our small indie team!
— Big Oaks Studios