Honcho

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• Announcements·27 Mar 2026Official

  Vignettes 0.3

  This post is taken from our Patreon page. Access to the demo is currently only available through Patreon, with access to the public coming to Steam Next Fest sometime this year. Thank you for your patience.Vignettes 0.3Apologies my end on how long this update is taking, there are big overhauls to the tycoon systems in the game along with a lot of polish and art replacements. These things, they take time.Meet your RivalIn 0.3, I'll be adding a corporate rival to the game, the Hanchō Corporation. Previous references to this corporation were written as Honcho, but have now been changed to reflect the intended narrative.The Hanchō Corporation is a conglomerate with dealings ranging from vending machines to the coffee industry and the banking system. The first vehicle purchased by Keiko will require a loan from their bank, with rates that are rather aggressive.Upon entering each town in Honcho, players will notice that the Hanchō Corporation owns a percentage of the vending machine locations found there. The spots they own are usually the most desired and therefore the most profitable. Keiko will either need to pay a hefty buyout fee to control these spots, or resort to "guerilla" tactics in order to lower the spot's value.With the goal for Keiko to control the vending machine territory in each town, adding a rival operator through the presence of Hanchō Corporation should strengthen Keiko's resolve to succeed.Vending Damage & RustVending Machines now simulate damage and rust. Both play into the consumer desirability of the machine, which ultimately determines the amount of sales a machine is likely to make. Machines can be repaired the same as the player's vehicle, through general maintenance with lubricants and wax, or sourcing repair parts to fix mechanical issues.The repair components table for vending machines is as follows:Assembly : Screws, Nuts & BoltsCore : Wiring, PlasticsFunction : Filter Element, Bearings, Gears, CoilsOperation: Panelling, Sensors, Springs, D...
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• Announcements·20 Feb 2026Official

  Auto Dealerships

  This post is taken from our Patreon page. Access to the demo is currently only available through Patreon, with access to the public coming to Steam Next Fest sometime this year. Thank you for your patience.Auto DealershipsI've just finished added Auto Dealers to the internal build, these will be coming to the 0.3 release over on itch to Patreon subscribers, no date for this yet.The Auto Dealers allow players to purchase second-hand kei trucks. Players can take on loans to purchase these trucks, and even sell their own truck to reduce the cost.Players can access the Kei Dealership by selecting it from the world map, and driving towards it. Much like routes, trucks have their rarity influenced by the route generation. Truck stock is refreshed daily.Each region contains a dealership which specialises in each type of truck currently in the game. Wadashima's kei dealership specialises in selling Batako Type 1 trucks, Mizunuma's kei dealership specialises in selling Batako Type 2 trucks and Yamanashi's kei dealership specialises in selling Daizo type trucks. Each dealership also has a small chance to spawn a truck from outside their speciality.With this first implementation, players must sell their current truck when purchasing a new truck. Truck storage - the ability to allow owning multiple trucks - is planned at a later date.With these auto dealerships finally in-game, I can now rethink how truck selection at the start of the game will work. Currently, players select from 6 trucks; Easy, Medium, Hard, Wildcard 1, Wildcard 2, Wildcard 3. Each of these slots generates a truck based on these factors. Easy generates trucks with a grading between 6 and S (almost new), hard generates trucks with a grading between 3- 1 (very poor condition), and wildcards generate at full random.The new game start selection will probably contain Batako Type 1 only trucks, with generation forced at 3-1 condition (very poor). Forcing players into the rags-to-riches journey with their truck fron...
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• Announcements·3 Nov 2025Official

  Vignettes V0.2

  Vignettes v0.2Hello dear Steam reader. Sorry for not visiting for such a long time. I do enjoy our interactions, but sometimes it is best for me to spend my time writing code, making models and designing features. I hope you understand and don't hold it against me. Ultimately, we all want to breathe life into something special, lasting and unique here, and me quietly beavering away is the best way to achieve this. I've grouped up a bunch of footage recorded over the last few months. It showcases some of the changes coming to the development build (Not currently available on Steam). I hope it excites you. However, If you'd like to show your displeasure with the project, you can insult me with the period appropriate slang by calling me a "silly banchō". What is being worked on then?Well compared to the last Patreon build, which only contains the Wadashima prefecture, the internal build now has two more; Mizunuma and Yamanashi. These new prefectures allow players to fully traverse the world in search of parts from abandoned Kusahiro (草ヒロ), allowing them to maintain and upgrade their trucks. Players can also now engage with the world economy, responding to the world economical events in order to maximise their profit through commercial vending machine tycoonism(tm). As we all know, life's not all sunshine and rainbows. Some days, the invisible fist of the free market hits back. My advice? Try to stay on top of your debts. Keiko's customisation has been given some more love and attention. With new outfits, hairstyles and accessories. If playing as a girl is a dealbreaker, worry not, you can now also play as a sentient block of Tofu.Along with fully customisable headlights and indicators, the truck's licence plates now generate according to real-world rules. I'm aware I have a reputation for making scrappy games. A lot of you were not happy with my output on Jalopy or Landlord's Super. That's a fair criticism, and I'm trying to address this with Honcho by allowing myself ...
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• Announcements·14 May 2025Official

  DevLog May 2025

  https://i.postimg.cc/nhXbBWX4/audio-Template.png This update is taken from our free Patreon. Sign-up for earlier access to updates and news. Spatialized audio demo Unity 6 Finally got around to upgrading to the new Unity LTS of Unity 6. LTS (Long-Term Support) provides developers with the best stability and support for their projects. Unity 6 also provides the benefit of being able to replace the Unity splash screen with our own Minskworks splash screen. Upgrading Unity versions is almost always a mini nightmare. Everything is now working as before with the exception of screen-spaced fog on the rain effects for the interior of the truck. This should return in time, I'm just waiting for the asset we use to be updated. https://i.postimg.cc/CKK0PKrq/Delivery-Goods.png New Deliveries Deliveries, the early-game method of earning money and upgrades, have had a slight design and visual rehaul. Previously, deliveries were all packaged in cardboard boxes, sharing the same visual style. This was pretty dull, so I've created a bunch of unique art assets for deliveries. These include: Newspapers Beer Eggplant Radish Rice Fish Deliveries now need to be taken to various locations, rather than depot to depot as it was before. The location will be shown upon accepting a delivery job. The delivery locations currently include farms, markets and izakayas. The way this is all setup in-engine makes adding additional delivery locations and produce to the game fairly trivial. So expect more in the future. https://i.postimg.cc/k5P8KkTz/Depot-Redesign.png The depot also got a much needed visual overhaul, as it was originally built to function as a scrapyard, but got repurposed into the current depot functionality. https://i.postimg.cc/cLy6bff8/lightGif.gif Frob Animations "Frob" is a verb used in game development (especially in immersive sim games like Thief, System Shock, and Deus Ex) to mean "interact with an object", such as pulling a lever, opening a door, or picking up an item. Keiko n...
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• Announcements·20 Dec 2024Official

  Dev Log - December 24

  This update is taken from our free Patreon. Sign-up for earlier access to updates and news. Hello all, There's been a bunch of work on different areas, so I thought it best to group all of these together into a single post. Hopefully the wait since wet weather was implemented hasn't been too tough! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/45006914/f0674b38c541cc1d68e982dc3448b6238816bc47.png UI improvements Honcho has ARPG design deep in its DNA. Players will spend a lot of time scavenging, purchasing, repairing, modifying, and upgrading all sorts of components on the truck. Each component affects the truck in a number of ways. Each component also has its own condition, rust level, weight, value, and various unique characteristics. Within "Condition" and "Rust" are also specific part requirements that need replacing in order to repair their status. All these complexities can be a lot for players to keep track of, so it’s important that we provide a dynamic yet easy-to-parse UI. Iconography has been added to show unique attributes, which are the attributes that directly affect the base stats of the component. Iconography has also been added to the "Condition" and "Rust" issues to indicate that action is required. A broken gear is currently used as an icon for a part breaking on a component. I still need to think of a good icon to represent rust issues. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/45006914/61dc9ba3c9df9a045768370bf72ab598c841adbb.png {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/45006914/af9c3f383ad1917f34245acde8e3817003f66963.png Vending Machines I’ve previously been using a pretty basic vending machine for building the end-game system. I was getting a bit tired of looking at placeholder art, so I decided to spend a week adding some more variants. Vending machines can be found along various generated routes. The player can bring them back to their garage, repair them, and put them to use. They can also be purchased. Each vending machine has various attributes such as stock amount, vend time, energy consumption, weight, etc...
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