Build 25159037

Hey everyone! Last time I posted here was in August, before the demo was out. It's free to play now, and I've just put out its biggest update so far.

A lot of drawing

Every game cover in the demo and all 99 cardboard cutouts are now hand-drawn by me.

The whole game is about being a kid in a game store again, so I wanted the art on the shelves to come from that same place instead of looking professionally made.

The demo previously used AI-generated artwork. After the feedback on that, I've been replacing it with my own drawings. Era 1 is done, including the cutouts, so the covers aren't the only things in the store with that look anymore.

Later eras still have the old placeholder covers. I'm redrawing those one era at a time, oldest first. I'm doing this around two jobs, so I'm not putting a date on the rest yet.

You can actually afford to run the store now

I went back through the demo's economy, and it wasn't giving you much of a chance.

You'd run low on stock after day one, struggle to afford another order, and by day four have customers leaving because there wasn't enough to sell them. Playing through the whole thing could leave you with less money than you started with.

That's not much of a chance to build the store you wanted.

You now start with more money, stock costs less, and the demo's level restrictions are gone. It also runs for six in-game days instead of eight.

If you tried it early and spent most of your time broke with empty shelves, give it another shot.

Other changes

Furniture now goes where the placement preview shows it and stays there when you reload. The register text is properly on the screen, and customers' speech bubbles no longer show through the person in front of them.

There are also 38 Steam achievements with hand-drawn icons, and the store page is now available in Spanish, Latin American Spanish, and Brazilian Portuguese.

You can also press F10 anytime to send me a bug report without leaving the game. It includes the build and recent errors automatically, which helps me figure out what happened. I read all of them.

The free demo is on the store page. Thanks to everyone who's tried it, sent feedback, or stuck around while I work on it.