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.

We’re rolling out an update today (0.8.142) with all sorts of improvements to Space Food Truck Early Access, which we’ve listed in exhaustive detail for you below. Our two most exciting additions are covered in previous blog posts about the new cards we’ve added and the Scientist’s new mutate ability. We’re curious what you guys think of the new difficulty curve, so be sure to leave us some feedback! And keep checking in with us, we’re working on more cool additions as we speak.

Gameplay Changes

• New Item Card: Exchangitron – Play to discard whatever’s left of  your hand and draw replacements.
• New Item Card: Unomas Remote – Choose one character to draw an extra card.
• New Engineer Card: Duct tape – Repair one item for free.
• New Scientist Ability: Mutate – Add 1 Power to any player’s card permanently.
• Captain’s Ask Around Ability no longer requires charging. It gives a flat 3 investigations each time you play the card.
• Claw of Duty now grabs any card from the discard, including job cards. Stat buffed as well to 2/1.
• Added an extra copy of Aegis Battery to the loot deck (3 from 2)
• Additional Mimicube added to the Scientist’s research row, replacing the extra research card.
• Added a new “watch and learn” page to the help screen. It links to our tutorial video series for Space Food Truck.
• Exterminator card tweaked to only require 1 power per vexyl.
• Sammich, Footlong Sammich, and Echonium removed. Enriched Echonium now buffs itself if sylk or ingredients are around.
• Short Circuit Event is now dodgeable for 4 power.
• Added crisis stories for crew crises (more to come).
• Artificial ingredients discovered in the lab now go to their respective player’s discard instead of the ZapMart, and are 2/3.
• Exotic ingredients are now 2/2 with 6 cost
• Fibonacci Fruit is now 3/3 for 10 cost
• All common ingredients are now 0/2 with 3 cost

Fixes

• Fixed bug with galaxy map path rendering that caused visibility issues.
• Fixed bug with delivery UI pop up stacking incorrectly using Backtrack ability.
• Added 5:4 aspect ratio support
• Cook, Discard Dive, Backtrack, and Upgrade Ship can no longer be played with zero power.
• Upgrade Ship will won’t let you play more than 1 power card with it.
• Fixed bug where Clue Reveals would switch to a white or black screen instead of panning to the correct star system.
• Zapmart music now obeys the music volume setting
• Smaller save files.
• Fixed bug where some save files would get corrupted
• Fixed invasion crisis tooltip being positioned off screen
• Fixed bug with Breakthrough ability causing online games to become stuck if used quickly.

Improvements

• Improved crisis rollover UI
• When hitting crisis-related events in flight, ship now shows crises triggering, if any
• Clarified text in crisis tool tips
• Cards in player inventory now highlighted correctly when using Claw or Claw of Duty
• More system and planet names added to the galaxy generator
• Events are logged into the chat window as well as turn markers for easier reading.

Another piece of feedback from our Space Food Truck Early Access users that caught our eye has to do with the Scientist’s role in the later part of the game. The Chef is scrambling to cook the last recipe and cull as many cards as he can. The Captain is jumping as fast as possible toward your final destination, maybe still hunting down that rare exotic ingredient. The Engineer is up to his neck in broken stuff. And the Scientist… well, most of the cards have been unlocked, the artificial ingredient has been found, and the store is super expensive. He doesn’t have much to contribute anymore.

It was that observation that led Alex and I to start work on a new facet to the Scientist’s Research ability. Coming soon to a lab near you, the Scientist will have the option of mutating cards in the lab using his research points. For every 2 points you spend, you can select a card from any crew member’s hand and add 1 Power to it permanently. Add 2 Power to a Cook card, and cook for free whenever you draw it! Craft a super Vexyl that you’ll actually want to draw! The possibilities are endless.

Best of all, your mutation station will never be broken, and the cost will never go up.  This will open up a whole new world of strategy for the Scientist to explore. Unlock new job cards or buff what you have? The choice is yours.

The new cards and mutate ability should be hitting Early Access in a few days. What do you want to see in the next update to Space Food Truck? Leave a comment, drop us an email, or get in touch on Steam.

The Indie of the Year competition on indiedb.com is wrapping up, but there’s still time to vote for Space Food Truck. Voters are also entered for a chance to win some Steam games. So maybe Space Food Truck will win something, or maybe you will! Just click the big button below to make somebody possibly a winner.

The feedback from Space Food Truck’s Early Access is pouring in, and we’ve already got our sights on some big changes. Rolling out as soon as possible: our least popular cards are being retired to make way for some cooler ones.

New in the ZapMart

The Sammich, Footlong Sammich, Echonium, and Enriched Echonium buff your card values if you happened to have sylk or ingredient-type cards in your hand. But that isn’t happening as often as we like. So to improve the usefulness of these cards, their powers are being combined. The new and improved Enriched Echonium will give big bonuses if you have sylk OR ingredients in your hand, making it twice as useful!

The Claw of Duty lets you pull job cards from your discard pod, but it doesn’t really feel stronger than the regular Claw. So to make it worth the purchase price, we’re buffing it to pull any card you want from your discard. And if your pod happens to be empty, it’ll now be worth 2 Power to charge your abilities.

Lastly, two new items are in works! We hate the Prime Accelerator as much as you guys. So we’re removing it from the game completely, and replacing it with a sweet new card called the Unomas Remote. You’ll also soon be able to reach your favorite cards even faster with the powerful and flexible Exchangitron.

New Job Cards

Another issue that’s been brought to our attention: there are a few boring cards in the Scientist’s lab. We agree, so here’s what’s being changed for each character.

The Captain’s Ask Around will no longer have a Power requirement. You’ll get 3 free picks around the galaxy map, so you can save your Power for travel.

The Scientist had plenty of Research cards already, so we’re replacing the one in his lab row with a second copy of his powerful Mimicube card.

If you’re like us, you avoid unlocking the Engie’s third Upgrade Ship card if you can help it. So that’s been replaced with a brand new card called Duct Tape, which can be used to fix any single broken item on the ship for free, no matter how expensive.

We’ve got a few more changes in mind that we’ll be ready to post about soon. Huge thanks to everyone who’s supported us and sent in feedback so far. Let us know what you think of these changes, and keep an eye out for new builds on the way to Space Food Truck’s Early Access!

Space Food Truck Early Access is underway, and the response so far has been amazing! We’re getting a lot of helpful feedback about the various systems at play. But the biggest feature request so far is the ability to seeing what the current player is doing when it’s not your turn in an online game. So today we’re rolling out a WIP solution. A “watch” button has been added next to the current player’s turn icon:

Click this to follow your teammate’s point of view. If they go to the map, you’ll follow; if they go to repair something, you’ll see it, and so on. You won’t be able to see their hand at the bottom of the screen, and some screens (like the inventory) don’t show you everything they’re doing yet, but more networked functionality will be added as we move forward. Our goal is to eventually let you watch everything your teammates are up to.

And if, at any time, you want to deviate from the current player’s screen and plan ahead for your turn, you can click any nav button or toggle the ‘Watch’ button off to resume control and explore the ship on your own.

Patch notes (0.8.132):

Gameplay

• Added first pass of spectator functionality so online players can get a better sense of what the current player is doing.

Fixes

• Fixed bug with galaxy map path rendering that caused visibility issues.

Space Food Truck, a cooperative culinary adventure for 1-4 players, is now available on Steam Early Access! Your crew will warp around a procedurally-generated galaxy in search of exotic ingredients, crafting gourmet recipes while dealing with space pirates, wormholes, the terrifying monster that lives in your vents, and more. There are four roles to choose from: Captain, Engineer, Scientist, and Chef; each with their own unique play style and contribution to the mission. You can find more information on the official game page.

Check out these tutorial videos to learn the ropes of the fascinating and dangerous business of space food trucking:

• How to Play Basics (5m)
• Playing Captain (4m)
• Playing Chef (3m)
• Playing Scientist (3m)
• Playing Engie (3m)

Features

• 1-4 players locally or online.
• Games last 1-2 hours, save and stop anytime
• Resume your offline games online, or vice versa
• Invite friends or match randomly.
• A procedural galaxy holds new surprises every play through!

What’s Early Access?

Steam Early Access is a chance for us to get the game in the hands of as many players as possible (at a discounted price) before it’s completely finished. Tell us what you think! Your feedback will directly affect the game’s final balance and content, helping us find that perfect mix of fun and challenge. We’ll be tweaking the galaxy generation, adding new effects, and doing technical performance stuff; all based on what our Early Access users care about most. And at the end of it all, you’ll have the full release version of Space Food Truck that you helped shape. We’re launching Early Access at 10% off, so it’s a great time to jump on board!