All posts tagged in Catch & Release
Nov 1, 2019
Rolling Hills, a village-sim game created by indie developer Catch & Release, has come a long way and gone through some changes since their previous updates that I covered. To date they’ve revamped their sushi-making interface and added Customer I.D. cards. Their most recent October Patreon post even shows us the latest on the town’s design. With that, I wanted to take a step back and take a look at everything we know about Rolling Hills so far!
In Rolling Hills, your restaurant will be placing dishes on a conveyor belt for your customers. This way, you can load up the belt with tasty dishes, then run outside to take care of other things. This includes: purchasing ingredients, gardening, fishing, interacting with other characters, and beautify the town, all while receiving updates on what’s happening in the restaurant. This doesn’t mean you can neglect your restaurant entirely however, check back to clean dishes, arrange your furniture, and get to know your customers to cater to their needs!
Create and Customize Your Character
Not only can you now customize your character’s skin color, hair type, and hair color, but now you can also change the appearance of your shoes and apron! Throughout the game you’ll have opportunities to collect cute aprons that you can add to your wardrobe. The developers add: “We think this is a super cool way to customize your character’s outfit while still making sure they remain on theme as a sushi chef.”
Shop for Ingredients
Take a look at one of the shop’s interior in Rolling Hills! At the Fresh Market you can purchase ingredients and condiments for use in your restaurant. The store’s inventory changes often so you have to make creative decisions about what to serve your customers with what you have! Prices fluctuate both randomly and based upon what you buy. Meaning, you can’t over-saturate the market and need to keep experimenting with alternative ingredients.
Roam the Town and Make New Friends
The adorable animals in this unique town are unseen mountain spirits known as muses that grant people the courage to follow their dreams. Your restaurant happens to be in the exact location where their shrine was a thousand years ago, so they mistake the first dish you serve as an offering to them. Help the human characters to reach those dreams by giving them your magically imbued sushi chock-full of bravery!
Make Your Own Sushi in Your Own Restaurant
There’s a lot more description and organization now in creating a new sushi dish. All the individual ingredients are listed as well as the overall quality and price. Your customers have unique personalities and will want very specifics things but also be on a budget.
Serve and Satisfy Customers
Whether a customer adores or despises a dish, it’s important to know why. These simple messages are very helpful if you pay attention! With receipts during check-out, you can take another look at which dishes the customers ate and the resulting bonuses received for their favorite dishes, serving them in a timely manner, and their mood based on certain factors like the environment.
One of the things that the developers are working on going forward is exactly how you can make a difference to the score. You can already pick up trash and place it in the recycling bin which will improve the town. Therefore, maybe there will be more mechanics added like this, such as watering flowers. Stay tuned as we learn more about Rolling Hills’ progress and what platforms we can expect (for now it’s probably Steam).
- Aug 3, 2019
In our last article here on this life simulation game about owning your own sushi restaurant and getting to know your customers, created by indie studio Catch & Release, we had mentioned that the crafting mechanics were getting an overhaul. Now when you make your sushi, the flavor, richness, and complexity will change when you switch ingredients. With the most recent Patreon post, Matthew Taylor goes into details with the revamped Customer I.D. card and the “Mood” section.
Customer I.D. Card
As stated, “All of these changes are in an effort to make furniture, food, and customer interactions (both with you the player and with other customers and the environment) as meaningful and interesting as possible.” See below for everything that will affect your customers’ moods and expectations when visiting your sushi restaurant. We’re also loving the wicked name of this wizard character if you catch our drift.
Comfort
Has the customer been standing for a long time waiting for a seat? You’ll see their comfort level fall steadily. Look for some comfy furniture when you’re shopping in town. Customers will be thankful!
Environment
Although the act of expressing yourself through customizing the restaurant’s interior is already fun, knowing that your customers appreciate the carefully crafted ambiance is a big plus.
Fun
In Rolling Hills, you serve a wide variety of customers. That includes children (and playful adults) who value having fun and being entertained. The most obvious examples here are music coming through a jukebox or a pinball machine in your waiting area, but even chatting with customers and serving extravagant dishes can make things more fun for your clientele.
Food
Saved the best for last! Managing a customer’s hunger is your #1 priority in Rolling Hills. Richer dishes will fill this bar even faster, so keep this in mind when crafting your next masterpiece!
Mood
This combines all of the previous stats, weighing food a little more heavily than the rest (it is a restaurant, after all) so that you can see at-a-glance how your customer is feeling.
Appetite and Budget
They are similar in that they determine how much a customer can consume. When a customer has a full belly or an empty wallet, it’s time for the check!
Expectations
These are kind of like the customer’s difficulty level. The reason we display each subcategory is because different customers expect different things. The Caveman character won’t be too concerned about the ambiance of the restaurant, but he’ll have high expectations when it comes to food. After all, he’s used to the freshest ingredients possible!
The developer has noted that there is an “Info” and “More” screen where the former is a summary screen with all the things you’ll want quick access to, and the latter is a secret for now which you’ll unlock as you level up the customer. We’re definitely looking forward to trying this game out on either Steam or through the PlayStation Store whenever it releases!
- Jul 11, 2019
Rolling Hills is a sushi simulation game where you own a restaurant, meet new characters, and form friendships. The game is created by indie developer Catch & Release who have done a complete overhaul of the previously mentioned “mini-game” players had to complete to make their sushi. Although many things have been changed or added, as explained in detail in their June Devlog, there has also been some work done on the conveyor belt we here at myPotatoGames where excited to learn more about.
“What felt like a big change a month ago now seems like small potatoes! When I talk to people about Rolling Hills, they normally say what excites them most is the prospect of being creative with their sushi making.”
Matthew TaylorConveyor Belt Sushi
Instead of someone coming in and telling you exactly what sushi roll they’d like to order, you’ll get to be more creative and find out what kind of ingredients they either love or hate. If you make a dish with that in mind and place it on your conveyor belt, customers will consider all dishes as they pass them by. Therefore, not all customers will be terribly picky unless they make a specific special request which you can either accept or refuse.
New Cooking and Crafting Gameplay
The old way of making your sushi was to play a timed mini-game and then place the dish in your menu. As long as the dish was in your menu, you didn’t have to replay the mini-game. This was to give you the feeling of physically making your sushi by chopping/rolling. However, the developers say it lacked creativity that the fans ultimately wanted.
Now, as you are crafting your sushi and you add or take away ingredients, you can actually see the results of that change in your dish. You can even add condiments that change the dish in a variety of fun ways. This is definitely what was more exciting about Little Dragons Café in our opinion; changing the ingredients around.
If you mess up adding a dish to the menu, you can recall it from your conveyor belt! Phew, it won’t go to waste!
Customer I.D. Cards
Customers no longer shout out their order so now there’s an I.D. card that displays when you interact with them. It shows their name, some stats that are still subject to change, and their ingredient preferences. The blacked out ones are ingredients they haven’t been served yet. It’s up to you to experiment and see what they like!
Rolling Hills is still in early development and does not yet have a release date but will be coming to Steam and the PlayStation Store. If you’re wondering what else is happening with other amazing indie games on our radar, check out Snacko, Alchemy Story, Ooblets, & Button City Indie Updates.
