Booker Blitz update: contracts, cloud saves, brand split

This is the biggest update so far on the road to Early Access in November. Contracts got deeper, your saves now follow you between machines, and the autobooker finally plays by your booking sheet.

Contracts

Deals aren't all or nothing anymore.

• Sign talent part-time or non-exclusive.

• Rival promotions can poach your roster. You get an inbox alert and decide whether to counter or let them go.

• Non-compete clauses, with warnings when you make an offer and waivers when you release someone.

• Show pay is its own line on a deal, and you can edit several contracts at once.

• Exclusivity costs extra. If you want someone locked down, you pay for it.

Steam Cloud saves

Save slots 1 to 3 sync to Steam Cloud by default. You can turn it off in Settings.

• Load Game shows local and cloud saves side by side.

• A newer cloud save never overwrites your local one. You get a "Newer cloud save" badge and you choose.

• Playing offline or without Steam running? The game saves locally and syncs next time.

• Export any slot to a .bbsave file and import it back into whichever slot you want.

Brand split

Split your company into brands, each with its own roster, PPV schedule and show colours. Development brands are in too, and staff who travel between brands follow exclusivity rules.

A smarter autobooker

The autobooker now respects your booking sheet: KO results, overbooking, show promises and hyped matches. It warns you before you break continuity. You can push through anyway, but the show takes the hit.

Storylines

The storyline desk is rebuilt around clear matchups. Suggestions pair talent from the same card tier, with face vs heel first. Champion, stable and tournament filters are back.

New Game wizard

A step-by-step setup where you pick your look and your promotion's theme. It ends with a short briefing on your company and a single Book it button that drops you into your first event.

Also in this update

• A full rebalance of match and segment ratings, including a heat cap and match exhaustion

• Send scouts out to find talent, and run your development show roster from one screen

• Take a holiday from the Continue menu

• Arenas get house draws and hometown bases, plus custom arena packs (.bbarenas)

• Booking quality of life: card runtime, 2 vs 2 vs 2 matches, opponent suggestions, and a Space shortcut to start the show

• The ring announcer names the real match type and introduces every side

• TEW .db and .mdb imports follow the new contract rules

• Sharper promotion logos and twenty re-shot title belts

• Faster loading

Fixes

A long list. The ones you're most likely to notice:

• Gorilla Position locks outcome, finisher and interference calls until entrances are done.

• Battle royal clocks wait for entrances.

• The social feed no longer shows a raw {name}.

• Tournament brackets book the same sides as Book Now.

• Show and holiday dates no longer shift with your timezone.

• Light mode has proper contrast.

Booker Blitz enters Early Access in November. If you want to book your own promotion, wishlist it on Steam.

Your promotion just leveled up — Match Wizard where Add Match used to live, sponsors writing checks per show, a storyline desk that drag-and-drops sides, and a medic for every injury. Strap in. We’re going live.

Strap in. We’re going live.

It’s showtime.

Main Event — Book the Card, Call the Finish

Forget the old Add Match button. That gimmick’s been buried.

Match Wizard is your full-screen heel authority figure: Setup → Participants → Flow → Finish. Drag talent onto sides like you’re building a WarGames cage. Put the title on the line. Lock the ref. Dial pacing and entrance order. Then call the finish. Period. Layout’s tighter now — compact participants and step 3, smaller title pedestal, self-scrolling suggestions that sit above the roster on the wrestlers tab.

Wizard shortcuts keep you in the headset: shared key set + on-screen legend, Space to advance, Ctrl+1–9 to jump, highlight while Ctrl’s held.

Segment Wizard is the promo/angle machine: Duration → Sides → Location → Parts. Up to six sides. Up to eight drag-and-reorder parts. Shared minute budget. Storyline suggestions. One-click Start Storyline. Managers auto-attach with their clients. Every part drives live-feed narration.

Special Matches — debuts, returns, retirements, career vs career, loser leaves, dream matches, storyline blowoffs. Debut checkboxes per side. Dedicated live-feed beats. Post-show fallout that sticks.

Ringside managers: auto-booked with clients; tag sides share one ringside manager; Ctrl/Cmd+click adds to the last side.

Money & Angles — Sponsors + Storyline Desk

Sponsorship deals: obligation contracts, monthly fee plus per-show bonus. Book a named sponsorship segment on the card — it pays out when it’s booked.

Storyline side builder: drag-and-drop sides, roster panel, suggestions by card position (upper / mid / lower), with POP / CHA / MIC on the cards so you book heat, not vibes.

Anonymous interference from Match Wizard or Gorilla Position: half the crowd pops, +6 rating bonus per storyline touched.

The Mic, The Bell, The Broadcast

Ring announcers are Key Staff. They run Announcement / Injury / Hype. Interviewers own Interviews. Commentators stay on the desk — they fill the announcer slot only if there’s no ring announcer booked.

Going live: show logo burst + commentary broadcast intro before segment one. Talent voices their own promos and interviews. Commentators alternate calls.

After the bell: the ring announcer calls the result — different call for a new champ vs a retain — and re-announces if you change the booked finish.

Match history remembers sides and tags the bout like a real card: “A & B vs C & D.”

Locker Room — Contracts, Trainers, Medics

Contracts with teeth: unhappy talent refuse renewals; happy talent re-sign at a discount; popularity shapes the ask; rival talent off-limits until within 60 days of expiry (Expiring Soon filter); staff on the same table; AI poaches → inbox Counter or Let Them Walk. Contract Improve is gone (future endeavored gag still allowed).

Trainers: up to four trainees per trainer (Staff → Trainers, trainer detail, or wrestler-header picker). Trainees can grow Charisma, Mic Skills, and Hardcore after matches — gated by trainer skills, morale, and facilities. Trainers and scouts now share a single Staff tab.

Medics: dedicated per injury, staff assignments, can shave recovery, inbox when cleared.

Roster Tools & Presentation

• Roster columns: mic skills, condition, injury proneness, morale

• Free agents filter on Talent

• Bulk roster actions: wishlist + bulk-selection in context menus

• New Game promotion preview rail (champions / staff / shows); seed from .bbdb archive (wrestlers / promotions / alliances / start date / image path); wider custom DB modal

• Achievements: per-achievement artwork on toasts + list; locked dimmed

• Title cards: belts + champion portraits behind stats

• Custom themes: import .bbtheme from Settings → Theme

• Navbar: full promotion name; shortened balance expands on hover; k / M hover polish

• Staff screens overhaul; ringside on booking cards + Live Event columns; refreshed default datapack

Called Up — Playtest & Exit

Playtest builds: six-month cap, build badge + support banner, build-limit modal until start date.

Save and quit: themed dialog replaces the native OS exit prompt. Quit from title/menu? No save nag — save-on-exit only in session.

Fixes — Housekeeping After the Bell

Live event switch resets sim + screen; show intro tracked per event. Special-match stipulations save at booking; modifier survives into Gorilla; debut doesn’t override your retirement pick; loser-leaves lands on the right promo. No unknown-wrestler interference when nobody interfered. Trainer pairings clear on release / promo change / role change. Dialog positioning, wrapping tab borders, missing Key Staff labels cleaned.

Also cleaned: cards layout; undo/redo participants; title history seed; referees only assigned to show; contracts persist past AI budget gate; tag/trios tournament sides; wrestler picker Enter/portraits/team filter focus; storylines VS badge/gender filter/reset; New Game preview sticky + light theme text; dashboard top wrestlers = in-ring only; light theme build banner; Alt-tap focus ring; space leaves results; build-limit modal timing; datapack start date/image path reset.

Backstage — The Production Truck

DataStudio spun out of the game build in 0.2.0 — own app, own versioning, released / out now, download from the Booker Blitz landing page. Cook datapacks without waiting on a game update. Game no longer ships it. Release tooling versions game / DataStudio / docs separately. Playwright E2E on every PR. CI pins Node 22.

0.3.0 sharpened Datastudio further: configurable DB export / import, remembered export folder, self-updates, writable workspace in packaged builds, mdb-reader. Game asar no longer carries Datastudio modules; packaged output trimmed.

build:game target wizard: steam / internal / playtest / demo. Signed build-target manifest. SteamPipe upload. Locked builds block inspector and remote debugging.

House style: neon → theme tokens, shared components, docs literary staff-portrait prompts.

Closing Bell

Match Wizard. Segment Wizard. Special-stip theater. Real announcers. Trainers who matter. Contracts with teeth. Sponsors on the card. Drag-and-drop storylines. A medic on every injury. Anonymous interference that pops half the building. DataStudio free on the landing page — and sharper every drop.

You book the chaos. You call the shots.

And still… your show.

It’s showtime.

Booker Blitz just hit v0.1.4, and it's a big enough update that I want to start doing what I said I would back in the intro post: actual devlogs. This one covers the last few weeks of work: the Gorilla Position rework, unlimited saves, a wrestler database curation pass, contract negotiations, Datastudio, and a full roster/staff screen redesign.

Title Screen & Saves

First thing you'll notice: the title screen isn't a stack of buttons anymore. It's a card dashboard now: Continue, New Game, Load Game, Settings, Datapack Editor, Documentation, all as their own entry points, styled to match the rest of the neon-cyberpunk UI.

The bigger change is underneath it. Booker Blitz used to cap you at 3 save slots in IndexedDB. That's gone. Saves are now real files on disk (.bbsave), so you can have as many as you want, name them, and see a proper recent-saves list with the promotion, in-game date, playtime, and last-modified time for each one. Continue loads whatever you played last. If a save file goes missing or gets corrupted, it shows up greyed out instead of silently breaking. Old slot-based saves still load fine, they're mapped internally to virtual paths so nothing gets orphaned.

Segment Simulation Goes Full-Screen

This was the biggest chunk of work in the update. The segment simulation dialog, the screen where you watch and steer a match live, got rebuilt from a centered modal into a full-screen production experience.

Structurally, the match now moves through five visible phases: Entrances → Early Match → Spots → Match Ending → Post Match, shown as a bar instead of a clock ticking down. Around that, I added a bunch of new levers:

Referee state: refs can now get knocked down mid-match. While they're down you can wake them up or make the call to send them out and bring in a new one, which has real fiction attached to it depending on who wins and what you chose.

Interference: managers and ringside personnel can throw a towel, start a chant, distract the ref, or throw in a weapon. Distracting the ref too many times costs you crowd rating, and chants are capped so they don't get spammed.

Wrestler pace controls: slow down, pick it up, taunt, work the crowd, each with its own rating tradeoff, live, from the Gorilla Position.

Weapon flow: throwing a weapon opens a choice modal depending on whether the ref is active or down. Throw it out, use it and take the DQ, or counter it.

Everything routes through a new match production engine with its own set of narrative results per action, so the play-by-play reflects the calls you made instead of describing a generic match.

Database Curation

Wrestlers were the focus of this pass. I went through the roster in the default universe and did a full manual curation sweep: new portraits, cleaned-up names, capped duplicate finishers so you don't see the same move on five different wrestlers, proper champions, key staff, and promotion rosters. Free agents, powerhouses, comedy wrestlers: each got its own pass rather than being generated and left alone.

This is a "wrestlers first" release. The next curation pass is aimed at staff, plus fixing the issues that came out of the closed playtest. I'd rather ship the wrestler-facing stuff now than hold everything for one giant pass.

Datastudio Update

Datastudio is the companion app for building and editing the databases Booker Blitz runs on, and it got a substantial update this release. The promotion editor went from one long scrolling form to proper tabs (Overview, House Shows, Key Staff, Shows & Titles, Teams, Facilities), there's a new Arenas section and a Stats panel showing database health at a glance, and the wrestler/promotion lists now support keyboard shortcuts (search, save, arrow-key cycling), the same keyboard-first philosophy as the main game.

On the import side, Datastudio now supports .db databases directly and .mdb support is in as an experimental format, alongside the existing "create a database from a save" flow, so you can pull a running game's roster out and turn it into a fresh datapack to edit or share.

Contracts & Negotiations

Contract negotiation used to be closer to a single yes/no roll. Now it's a real back-and-forth: talent can counter your offer, negotiations run over multiple rounds, and I rebalanced the odds of an offer landing versus getting rejected outright so lowball offers get pushed back on instead of failing silently.

Non-exclusive contracts now behave like actual monthly renewals instead of fixed terms: they show appearance rate and booking cap instead of a progress bar, auto-renew every 30 days, and releasing one carries no penalty (exclusive early terminations still cost you the remaining wages). Expiry notifications now fire 10 days out, and you get pinged when a wrestler joins or a contract renews.

Roster, Talent & Staff Redesign

Roster, Wrestler Detail, Staff, Staff Detail, and the External Talent/Staff screens all got a visual and functional overhaul. The headline feature: you can now group your roster by card or by orientation, on top of the filters that were already there. Avatar hover-previews, checkbox multi-select with a bulk-action bar, column visibility toggles: all the datatable screens share the same set of components now instead of each one reinventing selection and bulk actions. Staff Detail also picked up a real assignments card that shows every show, PPV, and promotion role that staff member currently holds.

What's Next

Staff curation is the next big content pass, plus working through the backlog from the closed playtest. If you want to follow along or push feedback into what gets built, join r/BookerBlitz or wishlist on Steam. A lot of this release came directly from people telling me what felt off.