A la Card news & patch notes

New Content:

Added the Waffle Truck, complete with a unique deck and trinket:

• Chocolate Chip

• Pancake Mix

• Boysenberry

• Chicken Thigh

• Mix

• Waffle Iron

Added 9 new cards to unlock by vanquishing bosses with the Waffle Truck:

• Apple Juice

• Evaporated Milk

• Fig

• Frozen Waffle

• Hazelnut Spread

• Peach

• Soy Milk

• Turkey Bacon

• Walnut

Added 8 new trinkets to find in your runs right away!

• Cask (Boss)

• Day Olds (Boss)

• Free Starter (Shop)

• Gummy Anchor (Event)

• Lucky Cat (Event)

• Pot of Seed (Event)

• Scanner (Event)

• Syrup Dispenser (Event)

Added a Steam achievement for beating all Star Challenges with the Waffle Deck!

Other Changes:

• Added 6 new Special Events

• Added 4 new Customers to Home Town

• Lowered requirement for unlocking Nugget Truck from 8 stars down to 6

• Improved text rendering quality

• Card Effect Animation Speed is now adjustable (replaces Slow Mode)

• Boss Effects are now viewable before the meal

• Adjusted sprite for Chicken

Renamed some cards for clearer distinctions between similar foods:

• Beef -> Porterhouse

• Chicken -> Chicken Breast

• Chocolate -> Milk Chocolate

• Onion -> Red Onion

• Pork -> Pork Loin

• Potato -> Russet Potato

• Tomato -> Beefsteak Tomato

Fixes:

• Updated some mismatched boss icons

• Fixed wobbling miniature Sushi Truck

• Fixed an issue where cards could become confused about where they were

• Fixed an issue that could cause cards to sort improperly

Introducing a new truck with a saucy play style and more processed food than your doctor would ever recommend.

New Content:

Introduced 2 new triggers:

- Never

- Wild

Added the Nugget Truck, complete with a unique deck and trinket:

- Chicken Nugget x2

- Chicken Nuggets

- Dip

- Dunk

- Mr. Nugget Toy

Added 9 new cards to unlock by vanquishing bosses with the Nugget Truck:

- Beef Patty

- Breadcrumbs

- Cheese Product

- Chicken Paste

- Rehydrated Onion

- Skim Milk

- Spray Cheese

- String Cheese

- White Onion

Added 3 new trinkets to find in your runs right away!

- Cosmic Dip

- Jar O' Grease

- Trading Card

Added a Steam achievement for beating all Star Challenges with the Nugget Deck

Fixes:

- Runs saved and quit during the first meal of a new zone no longer load from the previous boss

- Sour Cream now correctly draws 3 cards per dish in window

- Improved card preview placement when viewing trinket and customer effect details

- Adjustments to some descriptions

- Adjustments to some sprites

Major Changes:

Players can now seamlessly pick up their runs wherever they left off! Progress is automatically saved at the start of every event.

Fixes:

• Fixed Charcoal made via Coalfire counting as a multicoloured food for customer complaints

• Fixed an issue where the all-trays-full customer complaint would fail to fire Fixed Replace Stats event not permanently overwriting card colour

Changes:

• Lamb now gains calories instead of directly setting them

• Almond now gains calories instead of directly setting them

Notes:

Now that we expect players to be continuing old runs, we'll have to pivot away from daily content updates which could invalidate their saves. Going forward, we'll be releasing much larger content updates with more spacing between them!

Keep an eye out for plenty more to come!

During development, we had several discussions about how to handle the saving of progress during runs, or whether or not we should. It's the sort of super interesting art/design problem that will seem to have one obvious answer to everyone who hears it, but then we all say ours out loud and realize they're different.

It was difficult to wrap our heads around a solution that wouldn't bring an unwanted air of severity or seriousness to a game we wanted to feel fun and lighthearted. Runs should be disposable! That last one didn't go well? No problem, whip up another one!

Implementing a save feature felt to us, at the time, like communicating to players, "actually this run is super important, you'd better not let anything happen to it", which we weren't sure we loved.

We also recognize that certain types of save systems can incentivize fun-ruining behaviour in some people (one of us is one of those people), and although it's easy from the outside to say "well, just don't save-scum if it'll ruin your own fun", actually following that advice can be really, really hard. Hard enough to sour the experience anyway.

We'd hoped the seed system might act as a stand-in for "continuing" a run, but it seems it won't, haha. Fair enough!

We think it's become easier to want to implement this feature by thinking of it as a matter of accessibility. Not everyone is able to commit to an extended play session, and some of us play more cautiously than others and need even more time! Players should be able to enjoy A la Card for 15 minutes at a time, if they need to, and have a fulfilling experience.

So! We've talked about it again, and we think we've settled on a design that we're comfortable with for allowing players to continue runs where they left off. We can't give a firm timeline yet, but it's on the way!

Thank you so much for your interest, kind words, and feedback,

The Shook Loose Team