Wednesday 1 April 2015

Game update: 01/04/15

It's the first day of April, and that means that not only is it April Fool's Day, but also the start of the April Showers.

This is a goals update, so anyone who has reached level 12 is going to be kept busy over the next while trying to unlock some of the new content. Here are all the additions:

Tables:
  • Rainy Day Table - 5,000 coins
Chairs:
  • Cozy Chair - 4,000 coins
Wall decorations:
  • Stormy Window - 6,000 coins
Floor decorations:
  • Umbrella Bin - 5,000 coins
  • Blanket Fort - locked by goal
  • Candle End Table - locked by goal
Wallpapers:
  • Cats n Dogs - 2,000 coins
Floor tiles:
  • Puddle Boats - 2,500 coins
Appliances:
  • Stormy Stove - locked by goal
  • Windy Oven - locked by goal
Counters:
  • Blustery Counter - 8,000 coins

As I alluded to, accessing some of the new stuff will require you to work through a new quest.

Introduction to Rainy day goals

For all the details on this new set of goals see here.

The goal content will be analysed in its entirety in a later goals content report, but we can still get stuck into the other items now, all of which can be be seen in this image from the Storm8 Blog:

Items from update as shown on Storm8 Blog

I'm going to start with that lovely Umbrella Bin. It's a really ornate piece thanks to the curvature of the bin and the royal red of the umbrella. To make it all the better this decoration is a perfect match for the Tea Hat Stand from the Tea Party goals almost a year ago. With the only other available umbrella holder - the Umbrella Stand - costing gems this is a great opportunity for players to add a nice item to the entrance of their restaurant.

Once the umbrella has been disposed of, the customers can then settle down in a Cozy Chair. With a shade of mahogany about it, this chair has a grand appearance which I really like. The curve on the back helps add to the majesty too. And what makes this chair all the better is it's flexibility. There are dozens of settings in which it could fit, making for an excellent addition in my book.

The Rainy Day Table shares the same characteristic, although this time I do have some reservations. Yes, the wooden texture is well-executed, but I feel that this table is too bulky. Indeed when I first saw it in the teaser I assumed it was a counter! There's not any room for the bots to tuck their feet into! I suppose I could always use this table as a pretend counter!

Talking of counters, the Blustery Counter is a world away from the table and chair in its design. Predominantly a deep blue, this is a strange looking counter. Depicted on the sides is a tree being battered by the wind, which is causing some of its leaves to break off. My problem is that this counter actually makes me think of Autumn! The leaves have a tang of orange and the tree is bare enough that this design evokes feelings of the nights getting longer, not shorter!

 Rain themed updates
 16/04/14 April showers

The weather isn't any better outside either. The Stormy Window has a good solid window pane in white, with a bolt of lightning from a sullen looking cloud illuminating an otherwise dreary sky. I do quite like this decoration, and believe it would be a great choice for Halloween. However not for the first time the effect is mostly lost because we can see the surroundings beyond our restaurants, and it's bright as you like out there! Maybe offering different weather conditions on the outside to the market would be a better idea...

One such type of weather is Cats n Dogs. Until the gamemakers start altering the outlook outwith we'll have to settle for this extreme kind of rain in the form of a wallpaper. A metaphor taken literally, this wallpaper depicts a heavy shower which includes some cats and dogs. Maybe some will find this an amusing addition, but for me it's a shocker. I can say with much certainty that I won't ever be displaying this wallpaper. It's just a ludicrous image which can't really be combined with anything else.

Perhaps more useful is the Puddle Boats floor tile. Here we have some paper boats bobbing along in a (surprisingly clean) puddle. The square nature of flooring in the game means it's kind of difficult to represent puddles, so I'd actually be more interested in trying to use this tile for a river. At least then the boats could be going somewhere!

I know that some players will be disappointed at the lack of Easter or more cheery Spring updates to bring some vibrancy to their places, but I personally am quite happy with this update. We had a small April Showers update last year too, so combining them gives a nice pool of content to work with.

Returning to the subject of the goals, there's some early good news and bad news to deliver. We start with the bad which is that there are again two new parts required for the appliances.

New parts required for appliances in this update

Only the Stormy Knob is needed for the Stormy Stove, while the Windy Oven may require both fresh parts. This has very much become the norm with the goals, and isn't something that I'm entirely satisfied about. It means the existing parts are utilised much less frequently, and this leaves me wondering why I've bothered spending years accumulating eye-boggling numbers of some of the most used parts.

To add to the annoyance, these two new parts are located at the back of the gift list, so some serious scrolling is needed to reach them. All these little niggles add up!

Update: The position of these new parts has been updated! They're now located right at the start of the gift list. Phew!

The good news comes with regards to the first recipe you unlock in the quest. The Beef Pho is a bog standard goal recipe, but crucially it delivers 4 coins per plate. That breaks the recent trend of 2 coins per plate dishes, and hopefully that will be replicated across the rest of the recipes in this goal set.

Before I sign off, a brief warning: I'm away this weekend which means my progress through the goals is likely to be slower than usual. This means that the goals content report will probably be posted later than usual, maybe even after next week's update. So please don't fret when your wait for it goes on longer than normal!

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