Greetings citizens and tourists!

This month's build brings some much-needed quality-of-life changes to Retroronto! Along with plenty of bug fixes, The Target Arrow system in the overworld has been overhauled to help guide you more clearly to locations. We've also added a toggleable World Map to help you find your way around the city more easily. Lastly, we've finally closed the rent-paying gameplay loop, so be sure to pay your bills in 7 days lest you get evicted from your apartment!

This month was spent mostly tackling all the bugs, feedback, and suggestions from players at this past Toronto Game Expo, where we got to have hundreds of people check the game out on the showroom floor. Much of that visibility led to several showcases of the game on social media, namely a semi-viral one on TikTok. Feel free to read our devblog to learn more!

Looking ahead, we're prepping to potentially show Retroronto at XP Summit in June, and Get On My Level in July. We're also exploring an educational edition of the game for classrooms, focused on real-life city landmarks and Toronto history.

As always, you can:

🕹️ Play the demo: https://starspray-studios.itch.io/retroronto

📰 Read our devblog: https://www.starspraystudios.com/devblog/retroronto-report-7

📣 Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/KyCAE4YRaS

Thanks for playing and stay tuned, this summer is going to be a big one for Retroronto!

CHANGES/FIXES:

- Fixed bug where food vendors wouldn't regenerate their appearance as well as highlighting themselves when approaching them

- Adjusted auto-opening doors so they don't close unpredictably when colliding with them

- Fixed bug where player could keep moving after interacting with fridge, softlocking player in fridge UI

- Fixed bug where player couldn't sleep in bed ever after initially declining to unless leaving apartment

- Fixed bug where player could leave mid-minigame carrying produced items, essentially getting free food

- Fixed bug where store cash registers would flash when colliding without carrying items to buy

- Fixed bug where player would get a newspaper but couldn't leave store as they had to 'buy' the paper, but it costed 0 dollars which the cash register wouldn't accept. Newspapers are now 1 dollar

- Fixed Player Feedback to not play previous feedback when leaving/entering interiors

- Adjusted Computer station dialogue in Library to mention [INTERACT] instead of [SPACE] to not confuse players using gamepad

- Adjusted colliders of cars so players can walk easier off roads

- Adjusted player animation speed inside and outside to double when moving

- Bike Objective in demo now skips when player enters an apartment

- Adjusted Target Arrows to now show above buildings

- Fixed bad bug where player wouldn't spawn outside banks when leaving them, softlocking the game

- Adjusted spawn rates back to default in minigames to avoid bug where customers would overlap other customers and never order anything, softlocking the player and minigame

ADDITIONS:

- Updated Target Arrows to show icons of overworld targets and to point to target locations when in view

- Added Target Arrows to stations and cash registers when they're meant to be interacted with, after producing items, submitting orders, and buying in stores

- Added bouncier animations to Target Arrows

- Energy UI has been adjusted to now fill/deplete and flash when gaining/losing energy, and perpetually flash when running out

- Added player feedback for trying to get into places while riding a bike

- Added Map feature using TAB/Select to instantantously see whole city map and locations

- Discovery Places now allow players to keep moving, zooming out and in when player moves away from area

- Fonts have been redone and cleaned up, including some new characters and other adjustments

- Main Menu now has Audio Settings

- Landlords will now ask for a rent deposit when leasing an appartment, taking the rent cost away from the player upon leasing They will show back up every 7 days for rent payment, and will allow an extra day to pay rent before evicting the player

- Players now start with 900 dollars to afford whichever apartments they want

- The Demo objective now asks the player to deposit the same amount of money as their rent into the bank.

REMOVALS:

- Removed arrows from left doors in bank locations

- Removed camera controls using Mouse/right joystick

- Removed nightstands besides beds in some home interiors