Irregular Dev Log – Feedback and Direction

Hi everyone, this is Luminous Tales.

From the very first demo, through the new demo that changed a lot of the core gameplay, up to the current Early Access build, many of you have shared a huge amount of feedback. We’ve been reading all of it carefully, and we’re also整理ing things internally so it doesn’t just stop at “we read your comments.” Based on the feedback you’ve sent us, we’re putting together a roadmap that will take us all the way to full release.

We’ll go over the roadmap itself in detail in a separate post next week. Before that, we wanted to briefly share what kind of feedback we received for each area and what overall direction we’re taking in response.

Expeditions

We received a wide range of feedback about expeditions. In general, most of it pointed to needed improvements in controls, variety, quality-of-life, and hit feel.

For controls in particular, there were strong comments about keyboard and mouse like “it feels painful to play” and “camera zoom isn’t supported.” We plan to add key rebinding per input device, and we’ll adjust camera and player controls so they respond more smoothly and quickly.

Some players also pointed out that, even though there are many choices, they don’t feel motivated to pick between them, which they saw as a balance issue. Alongside balance, we also feel it’s urgent to add more genuinely appealing options. We’ll focus on offering more enticing choices while keeping balance in mind, so that picking things during expeditions actually feels rewarding and meaningful.

Wagon

The wagon is the area that drew the highest number of criticisms. Quite a few people said there are fun aspects, but overall it often comes across more as a “hindrance”.

Even though the wagon is a symbolic element that’s part of the game’s title, right now it tends to bring more frustration than fun. The original concept and the current design have drifted quite a bit over time, and we recognize that we haven’t really reworked the wagon enough to keep up with those changes.

We want to reshape the wagon so it fits better with how the game currently flows. Our goal is to turn it into a feature that doesn’t feel too cumbersome, but still brings a sense of freshness and enjoyment. We’re committed to getting it there.

Snacks (Cooking Buffs)

For the snack crafting system, the most obvious problem is a lack of guidance.

We introduced several new ideas like ingredient rotation, ingredient processing (changing shapes), pairing synergies, and fullness, but the system itself wasn’t intuitive enough, and the minimal in-game explanation made that even worse.

We’re going to broaden the situations where snacks are useful and improve the overall clarity of the system, so it can become a fresh and genuinely helpful feature.

Town

For the current shop content in town, a lot of feedback centered around “time”. Many players said things like “all the customers come at once and there’s never enough time.”

When planning, we assumed the shop gameplay would be highly repetitive and that expeditions would be where most of the focus lies. Because of that assumption, both the minigames and the shop time itself were designed to be quite simple and short.

However, for players who came in expecting a Food Wagon game with a strong cooking identity, that design ended up feeling like a real letdown, and it made us realize that, beyond strengthening the basic level of polish, the structure of the shop minigames themselves needs to change. We’ll look for reasonable alternatives so the tempo of expeditions and the town phase don’t clash with each other.

On top of that, there are also quite a few “objects that look like you should be able to do something with them, but actually do nothing” in town. We want to give these visible elements clearer roles and add interactions, so the town can feel more alive overall.

Core Game Elements (Story, Visuals, Sound, UI, QoL)

Many players felt that the game “lacks content and feels empty.” We agree that the current elements aren’t well connected, and that the story is presented too shallowly, which are both real issues.

We see this area as our top priority. The goal is to make Food Wagon feel like a single, meaningful, and enjoyable story experience from the player’s point of view.

In particular, we plan to add many more interactions with Panini and show a lot more of those interactions in the main story, so we’d really appreciate it if you could look forward to that.

In reviews, many of you gave very positive feedback on the visuals. We want to keep as much of what you’ve praised as possible, and build new content around further strengthening the visual presentation.

While preserving our strengths, we’ll also be working to补充 the current lack of variety and responsiveness. We’re tracking all the feedback we’ve received on sound, UI, and quality-of-life features as well. We won’t overlook these areas that directly affect the player experience, and we’ll be improving them alongside everything else.

There are actually a lot more detailed changes planned for each part, but in this post we wanted to keep it to the bigger-picture direction. Even though we couldn’t write out everything here, we really have spent a long time going through your reviews and feedback in detail. Thank you sincerely for playing for so long and for sharing even your critical opinions with us.

We’ll keep listening to your valuable feedback with an open mind, and work hard to repay you with a game that’s both engaging and has real depth.

Thank you again, Luminous Tales