After releasing 0.2.7 we've started making the largest feature in our game - city map. Probably some of you remember it from previous versions. That map transformed into a navigation bar at the bottom of the screen. Map was completely removed from game. A lot of improvements been made since that time and recently we started adding more content to a game. We faced a problem of how to visualise different levels, select them, and wrap everything up in a story. And map fits great for it.
In near future we plan to wire up all different levels with a story, each level with its own objective and sub-quests. Player's decisions would strongly affect availability of new levels. Sandbox mode will be still available.
The next feature was frequently requested. It's time control. Now you can speed up or even pause gameplay, to make some decisions.
One more feature that strongly affects gameplay is money storage. In illegal business you work with cash, and you need to store it somehow. Now you have a special room for it.
There are some changes in selling, you'll be able to set product selling priorities, junkies quantity is fixed, you will never get out of them, also each drug affects junkies for different time.
We've spent lots of time implementing those features, it took us more than month to finish. Recently we've received lots of messages with questions like are we still developing game, is it abandoned and so on. That's the answer - no, we're still working and there is no reason for us to abandon it. We have enough resources to finish development and deliver great game. We'd like to thank again all early adopters that supported us.
P.S Update is in testing right now and planned to be released by the end of week.
Room upgrades
In this update we're finally ready to introduce the most anticipated feature - room upgrades. Currently we're testing upgrades functionality and you'll be able to choose from all upgrades currently available. In future releases we'll add more of them with an ability to unlock through researches and seizures.
In previous version we've removed strict class differentiation of characters and merged them in a single hire list. Any employee is able to do any work in game, but most of them are only good at one thing. To make it easier for you to distinguish their abilities we've made new character avatars and added their main speciality in description.
According to your feedback, we've figured out, that spread mechanic is redundant and way too complex. So we've removed it, from now, customers count is strictly bound to room characteristics.
Also we've added a new type of room. It's healing room, similar to restroom, but with more emphasis on heal speed. And it's important, cause stamina consumption is now differs from character activities.
A bit more notable little changes and improvements:
Q,E buttons to move between districts with snap
Select free, Select All shortcuts in move/attack windows
Cycling selection of free employees
"Clear" button that cleans less filled shelves in storage rooms
Club room (new dealer room) added
Fixed camera view after resolution changes
And as usual we're very glad to see your feedback, bugreports and suggestions!
0.2.5 Bugfixing update
There was a game breaking bug in the previous version, that caused characters to halt while being moved to attack the other district. We fixed it and added a few additional improvements, that would make gaming experience a bit better.
You can now use x2 scale in options, to make it comfortable to play on huge screens, especially 4k/5k. Also employees, assigned to production/sell rooms can now be sent to rest without losing assignment (they’ll come back to work after full rest)
Below is a full list of improvements:
Fixed bug with raids got stuck
Fixed bug when you could sell any garage and fire any car
Fixed crash that sometimes occurred on Hire employee press
Fixed crash that may be caused by building garage room on top left cell
Minor improvements for “Hire”/”Hire truck”/”Build” buttons
Options window now closes on “Apply” button press
Increased scrolling speed for some windows on windows ;)
We've started working on room upgrades, but due to large amount of work, we've decided to split that update in two. Now, you'll be able to play around with some new rooms, including training room, that was so frequently mentioned by you. Characters assigned here, would be getting a real beasts. Those rooms, in the next update would be also upgradable, we’ve already made a huge amount of work to make it happen.
The largest change in current version is about characters, and upgrades of their abilities. Your employees now gain experience and improve their abilities separately, depending on their activities. Producer becomes a better cooker, doing his job faster with each level. Dealer - sells better and attracts more people with time.
The next thing is character unification. We've introduced an employee room with lockers for your workers. Each locker represents an employee slot. Also there is no more clear separation between security, dealer and scientist. As result, you'll need to carefully check character stats and choose those, who will fit your requirements. They look different now, too.
Next, we've added an ability to remove garages and trucks. And garage now is not a requirement for delivery.
We've made some improvements to UI. Now you have the most useful commands right under your cursor (but select room first).
Thanks for patience and attention, have a nice time playing Basement!
p.s Thanks for your feedback and bugreports. We're reading all your messages here on Steam. There are some rare bugs related to constant camera movement and immortal Steam process. We still can't reproduce those, but keep working and searching for solution, thanks for your patience.
Update 0.2.2
Hello,
After previous update, that took almost month, we’ve decided to make them shorter, with less features, but more frequent. Interesting changes in 0.2.2:
An ability to build garages
And to buy trucks there. (Just click on garage and press Truck shop button in context menu)
Improved management windows, with category sorting and more useful info. (You can toggle them, by clicking on different counters in the upper HUD)
We also fixed some annoying bugs you’ve mentioned
Rebalanced game, it’s now a bit harder than previous version
Motorcycle! A new delivery medium.
Custom Cursor!
Hope you’ll enjoy this update, don’t forget to leave us some feedback. Remember, you can track bugs and features in progress here: https://trello.com/b/0Za3dGyq/basement
0.2.1 Hotfix
Whoops, it was our first broken update, thanks for your patience, we've just released a hotfix. Also, some people asked us to describe new mechanics in details, here is how it looks like now: You've got 3 types of employees: workers, security and dealers, they have same amount of characteristics, but differ in their quality. Workers and security are already known to you.
Dealer is a new type with domination in sales skills. It also introduced new character characteristics: spreadability and sellability. Spread is an amount of progress for each district that raises each time dealer sells stuff there, when progress bar above district fills up a new junkie appears. Sellability is just a speed of selling stuff.
Junkies and citizens are also of new type. Citizens become junkies, after being attracted by dealers. Junkies continuously want to get some stuff, and when they are not able to get it, they spend their patience. When they are going off their patience there is a chance that they'll become angry and will destroy your lab. Otherwise, they'll wait and suffer, and will finally die or become a usual citizen. Death of junkie automatically attracts police.
To open up manage windows, just click on counters in the upper hud.
Basement 0.2.0
Finally we're able to show you another update. This one was pretty big, so we passed through some minor versions and upgraded it to 0.2.0.
This time we've improved and deepen sell mechanic and introduced 3 new types of characters: citizens, junkies and dealers. Do you remember those strange guys walking on backyard of your buildings? Now they are your potential customers. Set a dealer to a specific room and he will sell stuff engaging more junkies to your venue. Remember to supply your dealer with enough stuff - angry junkies can easily bust your lab.
The second major feature is manual truck control. At the beginning, we wanted to make automatic only delivery that would keep balance of supplies among your districts. It worked for most situations, but sometimes you needed a direct control. Now you're able to choose specific product types to deliver, set pick up and drop locations. Additionally we've added 3 more management windows for employees, districts and trucks, that let you see and control everything you own.
Also we've added fog of war, refreshed some interfaces, pushed up a bit of new content and visuals, fixed lots of bugs and brought some new.
Hope you'll enjoy that update. Waiting for your feedback as usual. Thanks!
Version 0.1.7 Saves and more
If you've been following the development process on trello, you are already aware of what we've prepared for you. But for those who don't, we prepared a short description below.
With the release on Steam we've received lots of feedback, thanks for it. It helps find the most important things to do and improve. Special thanks for those, who made videos and streamed gameplay, we've watched lots of it and found plenty of issues in previous version. From now, basement is recognizable by twitch, so, if you make streams there, don't forget to mention us.
We've processed lots of feedback and found that the most requested feature was game saving. During testing period, we've managed to finish sessions in 30-45 minutes and thought there was no need in it. But we were wrong and did our best to solve that issue. For now all game progress saves automatically, so you can continue playing from the last save clicking on "continue" button on title screen. And we've added a
title screen. You can notice another track there by Matt McLean, and one more during gameplay.
Next, we've added some features that'll increase variations of gameplay. For now each time you start a new game you'll get a random set of districts in the city with various layouts on start. Scientists and security has now different settings and there are a few new types of trucks. It was a bit dumb to deliver drugs only in ice vans.
The last thing, is that we've started rolling out localization mechanism. And we've added russian language as the first one to test on.
Russian-speaking gamers, you may notice some issues with "long words" not fitting in UI, just let us know. What concerns other languages, we'll provide more details later.
Full changelog:
Saves
City generation
Different characteric for characters
New trucks
Main menu
New music themes
Minor UI fixes and changes
Known issues:
When main districts was placed on most right side of city, the game will start with "grey" screen. Just move camera anywhere else, and everything will bounce back.
Some issues with building/removing rooms not in main district. Avoid building producing rooms and removing storages in other districts.
Thanks for your attention. The game should already been updated in Steam. Waiting for your feedback and don’t forget to vote for features on trello!
Development roadmap and how to use it.
Hello! In Basement’s description you might noticed that we’ve launched Early Access with an idea to develop game together with you. We’re constantly reading your feedback and reviews on Steam discussions, picking out the most interesting ideas, listing most critical issues and suggestions, that go close to our vision. Hope you understand that it’s only 3 of us making Basement and it’s physically impossible to answer all the reviews and feedbacks, but trust me, we’ve read them all.
And now just to keep everything in order, we’re opening our trello-board to public, so you can track what we’re doing now, what is planned and what is already done, or is going to be published. The most important list there is Backlog. It is a place for some ideas, suggestions that we picked from Steam discussions and also key features. You can leave votes on those cards. Features with most votes, will be a priority for us in development. To vote, you just need to login with google account, or register in an old fashioned way with login and password.
