I have downloaded the demo a while ago but sadly didn't get to play for a while... Really only got to try it out few days ago and had a lot of fun with it! Al <333 Pirate kitty <33 ... So I decided to make a post and hopefully help by commenting.
Let's see...balancing... I think everything worked out pretty well for me and didn't really find anything happening too much or so. I found the 25 items maximum a bit low too. The numbers are just unrealistically low I guess. At first from the tutorial I thought 25 batches really means batches so like 1 batch of cookies has...I don't know..12 cookies or so while 1 cake is 1 cake and they sell separately. I think it would make a lot more sense that way. ... At least to me ^^''
leon wrote: It's hard to make good decisions without some sort of history of sales for previous days. Also the list of unsold things from yesterday (day-old rack) could be present, when making a selection of what to bake for the current day. I think 25 items is pretty low, for the number of custumers comming in (I think this may have changed with the update?), especially if one doesnt want to overwork the staff.
As leon mentioned, some kind of history of sales and list of unsold items (though I rarely had any...) would be a good touch that would make it again a bit more realistic. Honestly I felt sort of like a failure of baker when I had 50+ customers and only about 10 bought something because I couldn't bake more in order to not have my workers crashing. Again...the batches actually working as batches and therefore being able to sell more would help, I think. How is bakery selling just a few items going to survive when the costs for even using the oven and paying the coworkers would go way over the earnings.
Sadly I guess I got kind of involved with some baking bug...? It got me a lot worried. I accidentally closed the game at some point after not saving for a while and decided to start a new game and do things a bit differently. On the first day I baked about ~20 items..I think max 3 of some cookies and then when it came to the part where Al says what was sold and what not, somehow it said there was 13 unsold items of .. maybe 3 or 4 items so I ended up heavily in neg just after the first day. When I tried starting the game again, similar situation happened (again it was 13s). After that I deleted the demo and now installed it again and it seemed to work perfectly again. At first. Windows ver btw. And I think it was the 1.1 version already. After that though I noticed that while baking I got a result of having ruined more than I was making to begin with or having burnt something I wasn't making at all...accompanied with crashing overworked people even though I was only making about 10+ items. Actually regarding that, it would be good if there was some sort of meter how tired Elise and her coworkers are to pay more attention to it. Actually not only burning things I didn't have on my list....but also selling something completely different. It was really strange.
Well...all in all besides the baking bug (it worked all so well before the 13s thing happened the first time, I just don't get it ;___; ... or maybe I just didn't notice) I had a lot of fun with this and I'm definitely looking forward to the full game
Edit: I accidentally baked my old list which made me reload to previous day where I gained a recipe before the reload (after the point when I saved). I followed the same choices that day, but didn't learn the recipe again. Considering that when I started a new game the recipe showed up there as learned, I guess that could be a bug? Not too sure.. To test it out I tried it at few points where I knew there was a new recipe (including the Croissant one) and it reacted the same way - when reloading I wouldn't learn the recipe. Also when replaying demo to talk with other guys I noticed the recipes from previous playthrough only appear when you learn new recipe you didn't know yet
(So I don't learn the croissant but it appears along with other previously gained recipes once I learn a new one from a guy I didn't play with...talk with yet.)
Good luck with finishing and polishing the game! ^_^