Claw Machine Prizes, Party Reservations & More!

Hey everyone!

We’ve been busy improving the alley over the past few days. This update brings new claw-machine prizes, better party management, quality-of-life additions, smarter employees, and plenty of fixes across bowling, food service, saving, controls, and more.

New Claw Machine Prizes

The claw machine now awards collectible prizes you can keep!

• Bouncy Ball
• Bubble Machine
• Stuffed Bowling Pin
• Pixel Strike Plushie

New Picture Frames

Picture frames are now available, giving you another way to decorate and personalize your bowling alley!

Parties Now Reserve Bowling Lanes

Accepted party bookings now reserve the lanes they’ll need during the two hours leading up to the event.

Employee cashiers will respect these reservations, helping prevent situations where a party arrives to find every lane occupied. The front desk also displays how many lanes are currently reserved.

Food Service Improvements

• Cooks can now hold up to 3 items at a time, making them more efficient at preparing orders.
• Food left beneath a heat lamp or on a hot dog roller overnight will now become burnt and spoiled.
• Prepared food on heat lamps is properly restored when loading a save during the same day.
• Nacho cheese and topping stations now unlock alongside nachos.
• Fixed hot dogs sometimes being difficult to pick up.
• Multiple cooks will now work on different parts of an order.
• Cooks no longer prepare duplicate copies of the same order.
• Cooks avoid closed trays and recover more reliably when an order cannot be delivered.
• Ingredients and condiments are taken from the emptiest compatible station first.
• Food registers can no longer be moved while customers have active orders.
• Food waste now sits properly inside trays instead of floating above them.
• A hint is shown any time a cook has run out of a needed supply.

New Help Menu

A new Help panel is available from the pause menu. It keeps a history of the gameplay hints you’ve encountered, with the newest hints shown first.

The panel displays controls for your current input device and can be opened using:

• Keyboard: E
• Controller: X / Square

You can also open the Skills menu directly from the pause screen using Tab or the controller View button.

Skills & Progression

• The Manager’s Touch capstone now automatically clears nearby messes and resets stuck lanes.
• Player movement speed now properly benefits from the Move Speed skill.
• End-of-day XP now includes reviews and party ratings awarded while the alley is closing.
• Fixed cases where a level earned at the end of the day would not appear correctly in the summary or save.

Smarter Employees

• Cashiers tidy loose shoes more efficiently and prioritize waiting customers.
• Cashiers now face customers and shoe racks correctly during interactions.
• Maintenance employees can move directly between multiple stuck lanes.
• Employees re-check maintenance targets before working, preventing them from cleaning something the player already handled.
• Broom and mop interactions now reserve a mess while the player is cleaning it.
• Tutorial employee Mia now appears correctly in the employee management menu after being hired.

Bowling & Customer Fixes

• Pin setters now restore pins knocked down while a lane is idle.
• Fixed a pin-setter error that could occur when a game or customer was removed.
• Waiting groups are no longer immediately recalled after being asked to wait.
• Bowlers now search a wider and more accurate area for nearby seating.
• Customer queues correctly rotate with repositioned registers.
• Professional bowlers now require their exact shoe size for a flawless visit.
• Fixed customers snapping their heads after certain camera transitions.

Shops, Storage & Deliveries

• Shopping carts in the furniture, item, and lane-decoration stores are now scrollable.
• Improved controller cursor behavior around overlapping and scroll-clipped buttons.
• Mouse-wheel scrolling is more reliable across menus and lists.
• Additional vending machines can now be purchased for $1,000 after receiving the first free tutorial machine.
• Storage shelves can be placed normally inside the storage room.
• Bowling shoes now display the correct storage icon.
• Fixed oversized food trays after loading.
• Large deliveries now spawn in controlled rows instead of stacking high enough to fall onto the roof.
• Stranded delivery boxes can now be recovered.

Save & Load Fixes

• Repositioned sign boards now retain their transforms after a daily reload.
• Shoes left in the front-desk request tray are no longer lost when saving.
• Saved field of view settings are correctly reapplied after reloading.
• Improved safety when loading furniture or objects unavailable in the current build.
• Fixed several errors caused by objects being destroyed during animations or asynchronous loading.
• Improved persistence for claw-machine rewards and prepared food.

Additional Fixes & Polish

• Reduced employee wage costs.
• Fixed 0.25× slot-machine wins not being counted correctly.
• Fixed small remaining loan balances that could become impossible to repay.
• Improved the Shoe Cubbies model and materials.
• Taxis now appear with a variety of randomized advertisements.
• Improved Bubble Machine visuals and textures.
• Fixed an input bug that could cause the player to walk automatically.
• Various collision, navigation, placement, UI, and stability improvements.

Thanks for playing and for continuing to share your feedback. We’re keeping a close eye on your reports as we make the alley smoother, smarter, and more fun to run!