♣️ Devlog Wednesday - Every drink is a build~
18 (eighteen) new items just went into Queen of Clubs!
Queen of Clubs has 6 base Drinks to serve (Beer, Sangria, Wine, Shorty Special, Milk, Coffee), and each one is getting a trio of items, each trio built around one idea!
🍺 Beer - Volume
Beer doesn't want finesse. It wants a queue.
Foam Skimmer rewards rhythm: 2 Beers back to back and the second gains +1 Power, 3 in a row and the third gets +2!
Foamhead Tap rewards the long haul, getting stronger every 5 Beers you pour during the Shift!
Brewer's Tally counts every 5 Beers as one extra Drink served when the shift closes.
How it plays: stop thinking about the perfect pour and start thinking about the queue. Beer builds want the same tap hammered over and over, and they punish you for getting clever.
🍷 Wine - Patience
Wine wants you to wait.
House Reserve keeps one slot of the Counter locked on Wine all Shift, so supply stops being a lottery.
Faun's Decanter is the engine: a Wine held in hand gains Power for every other Drink you serve while it waits!
Then Sommelier's Tray pays extra Swirlies for every Wine served, scaling with the Power it built!
How it plays: you will hold a Wine and not serve it, watching its power (and its size with it!) climb. The correct move is to do nothing with a Drink you are already carrying.
🍹 Sangria - Spread
Sangria wants to be shared.
Fruit Ladle -> every Sangria you serve makes the next refill more likely to be Sangria, and it keeps stacking all night.
Sangria Fountain makes every 4th Sangria splash across the other Patrons at the same Power, affecting the whole room.
Fruity Favor is the passive payoff: if you've reached all 3 Tables with Sangria at least once, take 1 Error off during the Scoring phase.
How it plays: wide, not deep. Turns a mistake-heavy shift into a survivable one, and they make the room feel like a party instead of a queue! Most effective when lowering the Errors from 2 to 1 or from 1 to 0, nuff said!
🥤 Shorty Special - Chaos
Shorty Special makes the night interesting~ Had fun with those!
Shorty's Fizzbomb raises the odds of Special Drinks appearing every time you pour one, up to a hard ceiling. +3% for each Shorty served until then.
Shorty Shaker: goblins are small, but they can fit two... bonuses! A Shorty that rolls Fizzy or Timer as bonus now gets both at once.
Tricky Crate cashes it in! Serve enough Special Drinks in a shift and the night's first loot comes up better than it should have (from Common to Uncommon).
How it plays: good luck with that~ Fair warning, the Fizzbomb raises the odds of every Special, including the ones you do not want (provided that chance wasn't 0 before).
Goblins, huh.
🥛 Milk - Reliability
Mmmm... Milk never betrays you.
Cold Cellar means Milk left on the counter never "goes bad", so it is always waiting to be grabbed, just like a Holstaur!
Holstaur Churn means it cannot be ruined either, ignoring Diluted, Polluted and Fading! Its base power becomes 2 too! Mooch reliable!
Warm Compress turns Milk into a tool: it sobers a Patron up instead of getting them drunk.
How it plays: drunk Patrons are how a shift closes, sobering them up keeps the Shift open longer and lets you serve more, but the night takes longer to finish! Balanced with items that help you regain precious seconds on your Timer, it may be a beast!
☕ Coffee - Haste
Coffee is about the seconds you are wasting.
Cold Brew speeds up how fast you snatch Drinks off the counter for 10 seconds after every Coffee.
Doppio Press gives the next Drink served within 5 seconds from a Coffee a +2 Power bump, and another Coffee recharges the window.
Rush Order waits for the room to catch fire: while all three Tables are in Party Mood, every Drink you serve counts double at Scoring.
How it plays: Coffee is a mood. Coffee is a tempo build. Chained, it turns a good stretch into a great one. Well yea, I'm a coffee guy.
Currently, I have NO IDEA which one of these builds will have more people committed to, but I'm glad I took the time to add so many heavily drink-themed items to the game! It's good to have those fairies, potions, bombs, and trinkets, but with these around, I feel the bartending theme much more!
I've also reworked how offer and demand are managed by the game, but rather than using words to explain it, I'll have you play it soon. The Patrons are now much more reactive to the Drinks you set the Counter with before the Shift, effectively allowing you to plan your builds and runs.
DANG, October is so close 😱! These items (+2 rewards from Dragon III and VI) are probably the last ones I'll work on before the Steam release; it's time to begin tying those ends!