Greetings, 👋

In this episode, we explore the exciting fusion of nostalgia and modern design in Business Heroes. Imagine a collaboration  between Lemonade Tycoon 2, The Sims 1, and Capitalism. That’s Business Heroes – a landscape of strategic opportunities wrapped in a retro-inspired interface.

Let’s dive right in.

Design Decisions

Designing strategy games is always a balancing act between complexity and accessibility. In our case, we chose to spotlight the management aspect over extensive 3D navigation and typical tycoon-style building.

Our goal?

To present you with a comprehensive overview of data for effective decision-making, echoing the true essence of our influential predecessors.

We also introduced the Dashboard UI, a single location where you can manage operations and make those crucial decisions, to maximize efficiency and ensure no one gets lost in the labyrinth of decision-making screens.

We, however, continue to refine the UI guided by player feedback.

Visually, we went minimalist with Neumorphism, a design style that quickly helps players identify interactive elements.

Character Art

For the character art, We aimed to portray them in a modern style that players could easily relate to. And for this task, we relied on digital caricaturist extraordinaire, Xi.

Xi is known for his ability to extract the essential features of a face. He then presents these features in a sometimes humorously exaggerated style, crafting recognizable and irresistibly engaging character art.

The result is a gallery of characters that, while echoing the nostalgia of classic games, exude a contemporary appeal.

Environment Art

Sehar, our environment artist, had the formidable task of transforming real-life references into a mesmerizing 2D environment. The goal was to achieve a seamless blend of modern design and classic tycoon charm.

She successfully married these elements, creating a vibrant, appealing environment reminiscent of the games we all loved growing up.

This philosophy of intertwining old and new was also applied to our stands and customer segments.

By merging elements of nostalgia with modern features, we’ve created an immersive experience that seamlessly weaves between the treasured gaming memories of the past and the intriguing possibilities of the present.

Or at least we hope so. 😄

And that’s a wrap for today, Cheers 🥂

Don’t forget to wishlist the game if you haven’t!

Live Long and Prosper 👋,
Kunal & Team

Greetings, 👋
So, it’s been an exiting couple of weeks after the release of our Open Alpha playtest. We are so grateful to everyone for playing this early development version and taking out time to provide fantastic feedback. 😍

Special thanks to:

• Pkay Outlaw
• Serzal
• David Maza
• Dennis Ho
• Klebb
• Orcosauraus
• Roogna
• Seth
• Brian
• Lopata_eu
• Marcacia726
• Yash
• Fiery
• Eleven
• ItsMegs

The median playing time is 2 hours and 22 minutes! 😮 Quite a bit more than we expected considering the current development progress.

Hall of Fame 🏆

We currently have 7 players in our playtests Hall of Fame. These are players who have completed all Master Lee’s missions in the playtest and have successfully unlocked Sandbox and Multiplayer modes.

Massive congratulations to everyone on the list🎉:

If you’ve completed Master Lee’s missions and your name is not on the list, join us on discord and let us know when you completed them. ⭐

You deserve recognition. 😉

Also, our discord is the place to be if you’re looking for tips and tricks to help you complete any of the missions. ✅

Bugs, bugs, bugs! 😭

Although we tried our best, many of the players found several bugs 🪲, some more serious than others. Here’s a screenshot of our bugs/feedback tracker:

We have already addressed the most important bugs through updates. 💪 We started the playtest with build 0.104 and we are now on build 0.106.2.6.

Feedback Request 💌

If you’ve played the game and are yet to tell us what you think, we are anxiously waiting to hear from you. 🙈

Whether you enjoyed your experience or have any suggestions on how we can improve, we would deeply appreciate it if you could share them with us. 😁 Your feedback is our compass. Without it, we can’t refine our game or create more you’ll love.

You can simply reply to this email 📧 with your thoughts and/or improvement suggestions. 💓

Improvements 📈

Over the coming weeks, the team will gradually start implementing many of the improvement suggestions you’ve provided.

It’s vital to us that new players are able to easily navigate through the game and your gameplay insights will be instrumental in making the gaming experience more enjoyable and accurate for them.

Interested in participating? 🎮

If you are interested in participating in the playtest, but haven’t been able to do so, you are in luck! 😃

The playtest is still ongoing. Albeit with a limited number of keys 🔑 left.

Please respond to this email with your preferred playtest mode and we will send you a Steam key.

We have two playtest modes available, Gold and Regular.

Gold:

• Your first playtest session is live and recorded with team members providing assistance and assessing your interaction with the UI.
• You can schedule a playtest session at a time that suits you best.
• You can playtest further on your own with no assistance or recording.
• Discord Gold Membership access: All our gold members get instant access to Alpha and Beta builds, have their names included in the game’s credits, and will receive all future Visionaries games FREE.

Regular:

• You will be able to playtest on your own with no assistance or recording.
• Regular Discord Membership

And that’s a wrap for today, Cheers 🥂

Don’t forget to Wishlist the game if you haven’t.

Live Long and Prosper 👋,
Kunal & the team