Update: Stream complete! You can now watch Alex and I take on Space Food Truck’s Thai Hot difficulty over on the OML YouTube channel.

Tomorrow at 2pm Central time, Alex and I will be live streaming our playtest of the latest build of Space Food Truck on Twitch. Here’s the link to tune in and see us in action! No biggie if you miss it, we’ll be throwing a copy onto our YouTube channel afterward for posterity.

Another weekly Space Food Truck Early Access update drops today as things are polished up both gameplay and graphics-wise for our target release next month.

The biggest change this week: Last Resorts are now 0/0 cards. Originally we had Sylk cards for adding Power to your collection and Ingredients for adding worth, but then Last Resorts were always on offer, for free, as a wimpy-but-balanced alternative. Not great for Power or Worth, but with no real downside. They were never meant to be enticing, so we’ve neutered them, and we’re liking the way it changes your purchase decisions. Let us know what you think by emailing bugs at spacefoodtruck dot com!

Gameplay

• Last Resort cards are now 0 Power and 0 Worth.
• Can no longer play Foresight, Research, or Fast Track with 0 Power.
• Updated achievements. Removed time-count-based achievements (too much luck involved), and added difficulty-based ones.

Improvements

• Can now click on draw and discard pods directly to jump to the inventory screen. Useful on event/arrival screens.
• Crises and broken doors/labs/pods are no longer re-rolled each time you reload a save (sorry cheaters).
• Cards with buffed values are highlighted green.
• Added small tutorial popup to the resupply screen.
• Sorted ZapMart items in resupply so empty slots are always listed last.
• Updated coloring of Error messages.
• Text description for “It’s All Relative’ is now dynamic and displays the amount of damage you stand to take if you choose to not dodge it.
• Polished UI for the Scientist’s lab.
• Current recipe has better highlighting in the recipe HUD.
• Updated tool tips for recipe HUD to clarify where certain ingredients can be acquired.
• Added animation for X-Ray Burnilizer card.
• Improved cooking screen UI.

Fixes

• Fixed bug where crises would incorrectly highlight when using diplomabot.
• Fixed bug where ZapMart would be shifted off screen.
• Fixed bug where warping to next system while healing would hang up game.
• Fixed bug where planet names would stop appearing or appear in wrong places.
• Fixed bug in recipe HUD where we were using wrong icon for PetriFlakes.
• Fixed bug where some events’ text was getting clipped.
• Fixed bug where recipe tool tip would sometimes render underneath the recipe HUD.
• Fixed bug where invasion ships would double stack upon reloading the game if you had 2 invasion crises active.

Some new polish and animation makes it’s way into Space Food Truck today, but the biggest improvement is actually under the hood. We’ve completely revamped the ZapMart’s resupply deck, reducing it’s size from 120 or so to 75. Functionally, this means that you can see everything the game has to sell you around turn 50-60 (depending how often you fly) instead of never seeing 40% of the stuff. Whether you find what you want early in the game or late is still up to chance, but now it’s all definitely coming if you can hang in there.

Gameplay

• Resupply deck has been re-balanced and concentrated, making items less likely to get buried under ingredients and sylk. Also reduces the luck involved in finding what you want.
• Cards can now be individually removed from dodging threats or power charging by clicking on them directly.
• It’s now impossible to add more power to dodge a threat than you needed.
• When cancelling Captain’s Orders, the card is now played. This allows you to use it as a Hall Pass to get to the bridge without moving anyone else.
• Removed ability to play Engage unless there is fuel in the engine or it’s played with power. This is to help new players learn to charge their job cards.

Improvements

• Added animation for the Chef’s Flambe card.
• Added some new recipe names.
• Updated ‘Bad Dream’ event illustration and text. Captain isn’t always in the bridge, and she was looking really lazy.
• Polished up Event and Flight Arrival UI.
• Polished up card interactions with event and flight dodging UI.
• Updated tutorial videos to include new rules and updated graphics.
• Adjusted scaling of background planetary elements.

Fixes

• Invasion ships are now removed on the Game Over screen.
• Fixed a bug with artificial ingredients changing when reloading a saved game.
• Fixed a bug that caused blurred view to be stuck after a crisis resolution in online games.
• Fixed a bug where clicking ZapMart button during turn ends could hang up the game.
• Fixed an issue where clicking ‘Damage’ was impossible during a dodgeable event if you had already met the Power requirement.
• Removed the movement requirement for the Engineer’s Duct Tape card.
• Fixed a bug in online games that would occasionally cause it to hang up for non-Captain players.

Read about our shift to PC development and the making of Space Food Truck in this riveting interview with Jason Love of Co-optimus.com.

Some snazzy new planet artwork and separate difficulties are coming your way in today’s update to Space Food Truck Early Access! Now you can choose between Mild, Medium, and Thai Hot. Events, items, and arrival cards (the core game) will stay the same between each mode, but you’ll find there are plenty of differences:

Mild

• Begin the game with 9HP, 4 shield capacity, and 4 FTL capacity.
• You get 4 free card flips in the Scientist’s lab to help kick-start the search for your favorite cards.
• All labs and mutation costs start at 1.
• Your ship begins the game in perfect shape.
• Your recipes require less ingredients and few rare cards.

Medium

• Things begin to heat up. Start the game with 7HP, 3 shields and 3 FTL.
• No free peeks in the lab, you’re on your own.
• One random player starts the game with a broken draw pod.
• Recipes require more ingredients to complete, and you’ll need more hard-to-find ingredients to win.

Thai Hot

• You’ll start the game with 5HP, 2 shield capacity, and 2 FTL.
• All labs and mutation costs start at 2.
• Right off the bat, we’re breaking a random door, lab topic, and draw pod.
• Recipes require lots of hard-to-find ingredients.

Take these for a spin, and don’t forget to let us know what you think by emailing bugs at spacefoodtruck.com! As always, we’ve got a number of fixes and improvements thrown into this build for good measure. More lists!

Gameplay

• Duct Tape can now be played from any room.
• Added 3 new difficulties.
• Game no longer forces you to dock the ship for common exotic ingredients, and will let you destroy them if you want.

Improvements

• Updated options menu UI.
• Added an option for vertical sync in video settings.
• Added error state when trying to charge FTL after it’s maxed.
• Added new card sound effects.
• Added more detailed planetary art.
• Trusty wrench/duct tape text updated to clarify their movement exception.

Fixes

• Fixed bug where game would force docking on exotic ingredients that were already cooked.
• Fixed bug addressing some silliness with Flux Inverters and Scientist’s Mutation ability.
• Fixed bug where invasion animations would ‘stack’.
• Fixed a bug in online co-op where players spectating could potentially get stuck.

The promised ingredients update drops today for Space Food Truck Early Access, along with a few other tweaks. Now each game you play will select its own subset of ingredients to use. There are 4 different rare ingredients you might be searching for, 6 different exotics, 7 common ingredient types, and 9 unique artificial ingredients. Hope you have as much fun discovering them as we did designing them!

Next update we have our sights set on multiple difficulties to help tailor the challenge to your preference and skill level. I’ve also got some more detailed planetary artwork in the works.

Here’s a full list of what’s new today:

Gameplay

• 16 new ingredients were added
• Rather than just fixing 1 item, Duct Tape and the Handyman event now give you 3 repair points to use as you wish
• Mutate now starts at 1 cost, like everything else in the lab.
• Common ingredients found via resupply now have 3 Worth, up from 2.

Improvements

• Clarified wording of Free Sample card.
• Added a cooking animation for the Chef.

Fixes

• Fixed a bug where UI buttons would disappear after triggering the Handyman event.

We have a few items in our sights for upcoming Space Food Truck updates. One: the difficulty is too hard for some, but too easy for others. This is always the case in games, but in order to provide something fun for everyone, we’ve decided to add multiple difficulties. We had scrapped that for time reasons, but it feels like it’ll take just as long to hone in on one difficulty that works for everyone. Not sure if this will be ready in our very next update, but it’s high on the list.

Two: our enormous galaxy doesn’t have a ton of variety when it comes to food. For that reason I’ve been feverishly outputting new ingredients, and now we’re up to 26 different kinds! Coming next update, our galaxy generator will select a subset of ingredients to be used in each game, which is good news for those of you who are sick of chewing on space kale.

Keep an eye out for a fresh build of Space Food Truck later this week!

It’s just about time to start writing the wrong year on everything again. 2015 was definitely a busy year (I don’t think we know any other kind): We made an abundance of working game prototypes. Outwitters came to Android. We were included in our first Humble Bundle, we created our first Kickstarter campaign, and we’ve got our first Early Access PC release. That’s a lot of firsts!

PC development and Early Access have been particularly exciting. On PC we’re worrying less about short user sessions and our moms being able to figure the game out, which is liberating. We’re also getting great feedback for Space Food Truck from our EA users (keep it coming) that’s already helped us identify some changes we’d have overlooked.

Space Food Truck Update

Speaking of Space Food Truck, it’s still 10% off a while longer and we’ve just pushed a quick fix to help with the difficulty. The door repair cost has been reduced back to 1, which sounds like a small change but it has ripple effects all over the place. Keeping the doors operational helps resolve damaging crises and keeps people from being locked out of their rooms, pretty painful stuff if it gets out of hand. Alex and I will be discussing difficulty more in-depth first thing in the new year.

What’s ahead for 2016?

Space Food Truck’s official big boy PC release is first on our docket. Then we have an idea for an additional gametype we might explore, or we may go right for a tablet port. Or maybe we’ll jump straight into Game 6. We have a few turn-based, Outwitters-esque prototypes that are showing a lot of promise. Nothing is decided until it’s decided!

Thanks for keeping up with us on the blog, we’re nothing without support from fans like you! We wish you all the best in 2016. May your dreams come true and your resolutions be unbroken. Unless you made an unrealistic resolution, in which case we  support your decision to give up. We’re not here to judge.

Gameplay

• Test your skills against 28 new achievements.
• Arrival events are slightly harder, giving less outs for the Engy.
• Captain’s Overdrive works differently: it now fills your FTL to the max capacity and lets you travel.
• Ask Around is now in the starter deck for the Captain
• Backtrack is moved from the Captain’s starter deck to the lab

Fixes

• Fixed text clipping issues with crises events in UI pop ups
• Fixed bug where ‘connect the dots’ or ‘not enough juice’ errors would spring up when selecting ‘done’ during engage actions.
• Fixed bug where dock/punch it buttons would disappear during ‘Spacetime Flies’ FTL Arrival events.
• Fixed hitboxes for selecting crises during diplomabot and in the ship in general.

Improvements

• Steam tradings card support has been added. Collect all 8 and craft your badges!
• Added error message for Captain’s Backtrack, so players can’t add more than the 3 power needed.
• You can click on flipped/researched nodes in lab to peek at the card in addition to hovering over them for some time.
• Added more polished animation for trashing cards in resupply phase.

We received a lot of feedback on difficulty for Space Food Truck’s Early Access, and having monitored the win rates we’ve decided to chip away at a few advantages. Mutation was totally out of control, so we’ve reined that in. The Engineer had 5 or 6 different ways to repair things for free, so we’re chipping away at those. Returning to visited planets was a no-brainer when backtracking, so we’ve stripped them of their loot. If you want good items, you’ll have to explore the unknown! And crises now spawn in smarter, harder-to-solve locations, dealing double the damage from last build.

Right out of the gate you should notice the new event distribution. More vexyls and cyber punks at the start of the game. More crises, damage, and broken items toward the end. Give it a spin, and leave us some feedback on the latest balance! Here’s the full list of changes:

Gameplay

• Events have been redistributed and rebalanced for better early and late game experience.
• Crew crises now deal 2 damage, 4 if it’s an All Hands crisis.
• New crisis stories added.
• Crisis generation is smarter; it now aims to make more diverse crises and avoids making crises that are already resolved.
• Door repairs now cost 2.
• New planet and system names added.
• You can no longer discover new resupply cards when revisiting planets.
• Cost structure for Mutate now functions like normal research nodes. It increases with each use and can be reduced by the Scientist’s Breakthrough card.
• Power Cycle and Manual Override have been removed from the Engineer’s lab cards and replaced with a second Quantum Nucleonic Core and Duct Tape. Good luck engies!

Fixes

• Fixed sizing issue with Foresighting duct tape in the lab.
• Fixed bug where recipe HUD wouldn’t update when getting an artificial ingredient from research or ‘Eureka’ event.
• Fixed instruction wording for Claw of Duty.
• Fixed UI layout issues with some cards obscuring arrival event text.
• Fixed UI sound bugs in Engineer’s workshop.
• Playing Gamma Toaster with it being the sole card in your hand now throws an error.
• Fixed bug where some “ghost” crises would hang around in online play.

Improvements

• Added safety checks to toggling cards for ‘trashing’ so you can’t accidentally trash a crucial recipe ingredient.
• Some UI refinement for when cards are drawn during flight.
• Tool tip added for the Terrifying Monster That Lives in Our Vents.
• Added event log notifications for when the Scientist mutates a card.