Devlog ·
Four final bosses, and colleagues who only call in sick for a sprint
Version 1.15 went out today: the last engagement of every round is now a final boss with a rule of its own, a colleague who burns out is back after a single sprint, and the partner levels each get their own price for certifications and their own pace of scope creep.
Koonsultancy (automated)
The last folder of every round.
Every phase ends with Evil Corp's proposal: the black folder with the red ribbon, double the target and a condition drawn at random. Phases one to six still work exactly like that. But the last phase of a round felt the same as all the others, only with bigger numbers, and a round never really built up to anything. So the third folder in the final phase is now a final boss: not cardboard but a director's folder in oxblood leather, with a double frame and corners in gold leaf, the name in large gold letters and a black ribbon that says TOP SECRET. The button says FACE THE FINAL BOSS. Each round has its own, with a fixed rule instead of a random one.
Big Four Audit.
The boss of the first round, the one everybody meets, even on Bronze. Every combination may be played only once in this engagement. A combination that has already been booked is rejected and earns nothing, and the preview tells you before you book: the name of the hand with REJECTED behind it. The auditors want to see everything exactly once, so you have to use your whole hand instead of playing your favourite pair five times.
Global Template™.
Round two is the rollout, and head office wants no local variants. The first combination you play is locked in, and after that only that same combination counts. It is the mirror image of the audit: there you had to vary, here you have to have found your approach already. Choosing a rare hand first is a bold move.
Big Bang.
Round three is the migration, and in ERP a migration done in one go is really called a big bang: everything moves over in a single night, with no way back. Every sprint must deliver at least the target divided by your sprints, and the minimum is shown in money next to the engagement. A sprint below it is rejected. No saving up for one big hit at the end.
End of Life.
Round four exists only on Platinum, and its boss has no condition at all. Just the highest target in the game: three times the phase instead of two. After that, Platinum keeps going with Change Requests, and their bosses are called Restart: one of the four rules, drawn per seed, so the same run always meets the same one without anything else in the run shifting because of it.
Sick for a sprint, not for the rest of the engagement.
A colleague who reached 100 fatigue used to call in sick for the rest of the engagement, and so did anyone you lost to scope above 300% or to a promise that your own team would take over. In practice that meant a colleague you had built a run around could simply be gone for half a phase. Now they are back after the next sprint, fully rested at zero fatigue, with a short "back at work" when they return. Scope above 300% still costs you someone at the start of every engagement, but only for the first sprint.
Above 200% scope a card used to be locked in every sprint. That is now every second sprint.
Each partner level its own pace.
The higher partner levels used to differ mostly in how much they charged for certifications: half as much again on Silver, double on Gold and Platinum. The prices now follow the targets of each level: 15% more on Silver, 30% on Gold, 50% on Platinum. Scope creep per sprint now climbs with every level too: 3% on Bronze, 4% on Silver, 5% on Gold, 6% on Platinum. And from the second Change Request on, Platinum no longer takes away team seats or hands out debt cards for every engagement won; the doubling targets are hard enough on their own.
What the robot thinks.
The bot that plays the game to measure the balance knows the bosses now: a hand the boss would reject is worth nothing to it. Over 128 runs it won about 69% on Bronze, 28% on Silver and 13% on Gold, and it got through all four rounds of Platinum once. Its report now says exactly where it went down: which round, which phase, and which of the three engagements, the boss included. Most runs that end on Bronze to Gold now end in the final phase of the first round. The bot picks its combinations for the audit without thinking ahead; a person does that better.
A deck of your own.
Later the same day, version 1.16 went after the plain playing cards. You could already buy extra cards and copy them, but there was hardly a reason to: one card more or less in a pile of 52 changes nothing you can feel. So the deck is now really yours. Every card has a number of its own, the whole deck goes with you into the next round, and a new Deck window under your hand shows all of it in four columns, one per discipline. Two copies of the same card show as ×2, and you can tap them to see each one. Debt cards sit apart underneath and don't count towards the size of your deck.
A paper clip, a stamp and a post-it.
A card can now carry one thing, always in the top right corner and always about the same size, so you recognise it at a glance. A paper clip gives you one extra card in your next hand. A stamp, an approval mark in stamp ink with the K, adds $100 to your rate. A post-it adds hours, three at a time, and Lessons learned now writes on that same post-it, so it stacks. Each of them only works when the card is played and actually counts: a card that sits in your hand or doesn't make the combination does nothing. A copy takes the item along, and a card you throw away takes it with it. The Legacy Partners overtime stamp now writes its six hours on a post-it as well, and never on a card that already has a clip or a stamp.
Clearing out.
On the map, next to Descope, there is now Clear out: two cards out of your deck for good, $50,000 the first time and $10,000 more every time after that. At the drinks you can buy an Archive box (one card from your hand) or a Clean desk day (up to three selected cards), and those don't refill your hand and don't count as reprioritising. There is no lower limit. Thin your deck down to nothing, and if your hand and deck run empty while you still have sprints left, the engagement has failed. That's on you.
Instead of a single extra card, the drinks now sell a pack of cards: a casino card with a question mark on it. Open it and pick one of four, or none at all. About one pack in five holds a card that already carries an item.
Big decks and small decks.
Three new things care about how big your deck is. The Minimalist, an epic colleague, doubles your rate as long as your deck has 40 cards or fewer, and is unlocked by clearing ten cards out in a single run. The Archivist, a rare one, adds three hours for every card above 52, and turns up once you have a deck of 65. Lean Office is a certification you have from the start: $100 more rate for every card below 52. Alongside them come four new one-off items: the Archive box, the Clean desk day, the Paper clip and the Approval stamp. The numbers are a first guess. The robot that measures the balance now clears out cards to build a small deck, picks from the pack and puts items on cards. It still never buys the Minimalist, the Archivist or Lean Office, because it judges them by the deck it has now, not the deck it is planning to build. A longer measurement with and without each of the three is running.
And the refactoring sprint at the drinks is now a clipboard, with lined paper, two reminders and a pencil. Buy it, and a red pen crosses both reminders out.
A second look the same afternoon.
Version 1.16.1 followed a few hours later. The scope bar is now as thick as the revenue bar. The little i and the status label are gone, but the six dots that fill up per threshold stay, and tapping anywhere on the scope panel explains it. The pack now shows its four cards in the colours of their discipline, with the same frame and corner indices as the cards in your hand, and the one you pick gets the same stamp as a selected card. The pack at the drinks has a single question mark. Descope and Clear out are always on the map, also at the very start of a run, and greyed out until you can use them. Combinations and colours now has a section on the paper clip, the stamp and the post-it. And the guide for beginners grew from 8 tips to 24, each shown the first time you meet the thing it explains: your deck, items on cards, the pack, Crazy Time, promotions, tired colleagues, the order of your team, the final bosses, the tender, client requests, the Knowledge transfer and going over target.