Can't Take the Heat, ehhh?

During development, we had several discussions about how to handle the saving of progress during runs, or whether or not we should. It's the sort of super interesting art/design problem that will seem to have one obvious answer to everyone who hears it, but then we all say ours out loud and realize they're different.

It was difficult to wrap our heads around a solution that wouldn't bring an unwanted air of severity or seriousness to a game we wanted to feel fun and lighthearted. Runs should be disposable! That last one didn't go well? No problem, whip up another one!

Implementing a save feature felt to us, at the time, like communicating to players, "actually this run is super important, you'd better not let anything happen to it", which we weren't sure we loved.

We also recognize that certain types of save systems can incentivize fun-ruining behaviour in some people (one of us is one of those people), and although it's easy from the outside to say "well, just don't save-scum if it'll ruin your own fun", actually following that advice can be really, really hard. Hard enough to sour the experience anyway.

We'd hoped the seed system might act as a stand-in for "continuing" a run, but it seems it won't, haha. Fair enough!

We think it's become easier to want to implement this feature by thinking of it as a matter of accessibility. Not everyone is able to commit to an extended play session, and some of us play more cautiously than others and need even more time! Players should be able to enjoy A la Card for 15 minutes at a time, if they need to, and have a fulfilling experience.

So! We've talked about it again, and we think we've settled on a design that we're comfortable with for allowing players to continue runs where they left off. We can't give a firm timeline yet, but it's on the way!

Thank you so much for your interest, kind words, and feedback,

The Shook Loose Team