Perfect Toast 3: a lot more toast, a little more polish

 





Play the game so far - https://arthurs2000.itch.io/perfect-toast



Over the last few weeks, I've been working on adding levels and their respective mechanics to my indie job simulator game 'Perfect Toast!'. 

Since my last update, I've;
made 4.5 levels
made 4 game mechanics
made a manager to help the player
improved menus and logo
added some sound effects


The levels:
The four levels that I've added to the game are 'Germans', 'Fire!', 'Sliced bread', and 'Just a lovely day'.

In 'Customers', the level before 'Germans', the player is introduced to a German customer who, having a different culture, orders their toast as a percentage as appose to showing the player how toasted they want their toast. In 'Germans' the player will be faced with a lot more Germans, about 60% of customers will order in a percentage. In further levels percentage orders do still happen but at a much lower rate. 





In the next level, 'Fire', the manager warns the player that the toaster is a fire hazard but 'good news, you have an extinguisher'. While the player is using the toaster, there is a chance every second that the toaster catches fire and burns the toast. The chance gets higher every second that the player is using the toaster. The player can put out the toaster with the extinguisher. 



In 'Sliced bread' the toaster can still catch fire but adds another mechanic, slicing bread. When the player activates the bread generator, instead of being presented with a slice of bread, they're given a full loaf and must use the new slicing machine to cut it to a customers requested thickness. I'm not 100% happy with the UI for the bread slicer, as I feel that it needs a more 'bread slice-y' element, but I am very happy with the fingers to indicate 'this thick'. For this level I decreased how many customers the player will have to serve, since slicing the bread adds extra time and complexity which can get mentally tiring for the player. 













'Just a lovely day' pretty much does as it says on the tin, the toaster has been fixed, and the bread slicing is gone. This level is meant as a little pallet cleanser since, after the stress of a toaster that can spontaneously combust, a level where you're literally just making toast is comparatively relaxing. During this level however, the player will serve one green customer, hinting at the next level.

The level that I'm currently working on [although I've been alluding to for a while] is 'Zombies'. Essentially the player will be serving toast to customers as usual, but occasionally a zombie will walk over to a customer and try to eat them. The player can pick up a machine gun and shoot the zombie to keep the customers safe, although this will obviously keep them away from the toaster. However programming the zombies proved to more complicated than I'd anticipated because of how I'd previously programmed the customers, that operated on a sort of conveyor system, where when one is served toast the next ones are moved up. Although I've got this system working, I'm running several tests to make sure to eliminate all bugs. 


The mechanics:
I've added the toaster catching fire, the bread slicer, zombies, and, a mechanic I haven't added to any levels yet, a timer. When the customer makes an order, a bar will start filling up with red. if the player takes too long to make the toast, then they'll lose a little of their final toast score. However this is a mechanic that I've only just introduced so will ultimately have to do extra play testing to see how the time limit works with other mechanics.


The manager:
At the start of most levels, the manager will be present to update the player if anything new is happening in game, before leaving to hang out in his office. I've programmed the manager to be able to be dropped into any level, and to allow me to give the manager any amount of dialogue. In future updates, I plan to add a speech bubble to the managers dialogue box since the text sometimes overlaps black parts of the level making it harder to read the black text.


The UI:
Last update the menu UI was based on a black peg board with white text which, although thematic, aesthetic, and readable, felt a little oppressive. Since then I've swapped the UI to have a white peg board background with black text, as well as created a scrolling toast background to give menus a little movement and keep them from feeling too static.  



Sound effects:
Since last update we've also added a couple of sound effects to the game, specifically;
- toaster down
- toaster 'ping' up
- toaster 'hmmm'
- customers ordering toast
for the toaster sound effects I wanted them to sound heavy duty and springy and punchy, with the goal to make the toaster feel powerful and give it some personality. 
As for the customers, I wanted them to speak a little like 'animal crossing' characters, partly because there's no real way to describe a shade of toast in English. I made the effect by finding an 'alien speech' sound effect [ specifically https://pixabay.com/sound-effects/weird-alien-talking-102375/], changed the pitch, cut it up, and made three effects where the clips are in different orders. When the customer orders, they will play a random effect at random pitch. Currently the sound effects are a bit rough and I'll want to change them at some point, but they serve their purpose and ultimately translate the idea.


What's next:
Coming up I aim to: 
-Finish making the zombie levels
-Add more sound effects
-Polish UI [use one type size, check it scales right, etc.]
-Make a few more visual effects [toaster fire, unhappy customers]
-And, very importantly, get a lot of playtesting done

A lot of the playtesting that I've done is just me playing the game, seeing what works for me, what I thing looks good etc. So it will be very interesting to see how someone who's never played the game before will approach it, and what they would ultimately change if they could, since someone who isn't me may find something that's just confusing/isn't fun, or they may try to break the game in a way that I wouldn't have thought of. 

Again I hope that you get the chance to play the game, and I hope that you have a good day.


Play the game so far - https://arthurs2000.itch.io/perfect-toast

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