Beach Bar Simulator · published
Hello bar managers,
Beach Bar Simulator has always been a game you can play with friends: up to 6 players can run the same bar together. Over the last weeks almost all of our time went into co-op: making it easier to get into a game, giving hosts more control, and fixing the bugs that could ruin a session. Here's what we've been working on. A brand new multiplayer menu
The old three-step flow is gone. Everything now fits on one screen with two tabs:
Join a Game – Type in a room code, or pick a lobby from the list. Your friends' lobbies are shown at the top, followed by the lobbies with the most free spots, and the list refreshes on its own.
Host a Game – Pick a save slot, make the lobby public or private, set the player limit from 2 to 6 and hit Create Lobby.
Private lobbies get a 6-character room code that you can copy with one click and send to your friends. Your bar comes with you: host from your own save and keep building together. Progress is saved on the host's side.
A lobby you can open mid-game
In co-op, the ESC menu now has a Lobby button. It shows everyone in the session with their avatar and ping, together with the room code, so inviting a friend in the middle of a shift is easy. <h3>Host permissions</h3> The host decides what the other players are allowed to do:
Spend money
Build
Move furniture
Sell furniture
Hosts can also kick players. A kicked player can't jump straight back in unless the host allows it, and the host can lift a kick at any time from the Kicked tab. These settings are remembered, so you don't have to set them up again every session.
Stability fixes
The most important fix in this round: in some sessions a joining player could get stuck on the loading screen, unable to move, while the host's game kept going. We tracked it down to a networking bug where a single bad message could throw away a whole batch of messages, including the joining player's own character. That's fixed. And if joining ever fails now, you're sent back to the main menu with a clear message instead of being left stuck. Other co-op fixes:
Players who join a running game now see the correct state of coffee machines, host permissions and toilets.
Ordering several items at once from the shop as a client now delivers all of them, not just one.
A joining player no longer sometimes gets a generic name or sees the host as "Player_1".
The bar's open/closed status now stays the same for everyone.
Takeaway bags placed by a client no longer fall to the floor on the host's side.
Beach visitors sitting and lying down are now visible to every player.
When the host closes the server or kicks you, you now get a message instead of silently landing back in the main menu.
If a sleep request is denied, the message now shows up for the player who asked, not for the host.
What's next
Co-op is our top priority right now. Next up is performance: the frame rate can drop as your bar grows and more customers arrive, and we're working on it. We're also continuing to test co-op with more players and different connections. If you run into a problem in co-op, please tell us on Discord or in the Steam discussions. Every report helps, and a big thank you to everyone who has already sent one! Thank you for playing and helping shape Beach Bar Simulator. Don't forget to add it to your Steam wishlist to stay up to date!