Shady Deals

Shady Deals v0.7: Personal Heat

Added 2025-06-06 06:21:51 +0000 UTC

v0.7 is kind of a “cleanup” update - lots of balancing changes, fixes, and some QoL stuff. Most of the new content is basically hidden behind fail-states, which you’re not really supposed to trigger that often. So yeah, it’s more of a “transition” update.

You can check some of the screenshots in the sneak peek!

Changelog

Faction Heat

Starting with v0.7, each gang now has its own heat level. It’s a hidden stat - you’ll only see a rough description of your standing in the “Competitors” tab on the whiteboard.

Doing illegal stuff on turf you don’t own will raise heat with the gang that controls it.
Any meaningful interaction with gang leaders (like trading with the Distributor) will reduce heat. That includes naughty interactions, yes.
During turf war, your heat with the enemy gang ramps up fast.
Faction heat also decreases slightly each day, with the reduction scaling based on your reputation.
Your coin washers, boosters, racketeers and thieves will now randomly increase heat a bit if they end up working on another gang’s turf. (At first, I planned to let you assign turf for each worker manually, but ditched that because it turned into unnecessary micromanagement.)
Dampers, on the other hand, will reduce one random faction heat type in addition to lowering general heat.
Labs and moonshine trailers will increase heat specifically with Bikers.
You can also now send gifts (money, or weapon/jewelry shipments) to any gang once a week to help reduce tension.

What happens when you hit the spoopy heat threshold?

Here’s what each faction can do:

Gangs: Can block your racketeers or coin washers.
Mafia: Can block your car boosters.
Bikers: Can block your lab or moonshine trailer.
Cartel: Can block your warehouse or thieves.
All factions can block the entrance to their HQ.

The heat event trigger checks your current status (whether you already have a gang or not) and owned properties (like labs or trailers) to decide which blocking event will be in a pull of events.

Only one active block per faction can be in place at a time. But: heat keeps stacking, even while an event is active - so once you resolve it, another one might follow shortly if your heat’s still high (tho i doubt that this can happen if you're not at war for the turf).

To resolve a block, you’ll need to visit the specific location (listed both in the heat event description and on the whiteboard) and confront whoever’s interfering with your operation. There are two ways to deal with it:
- Pay them off - the cost scales with your reputation, and you might get a discount if you pass a charm check. Each faction has its own short scene for this, but they're relatively small compared to others.
- Fight the "blocker" directly. Unless it’s an HQ entrance block.
Also, if your gang strength is way higher than the faction blocking you, you can just send someone to handle it for you. Idk why you haven’t taken their turf already at that point, but you do you.

Other stuff:

New "Workers" tab on the whiteboard. It now lists all non-accomplice crew members: mechanics, crypto technicians, chemists, taxman and moonshiners. More importantly, you’ll find hints on where to find NPCs with the right job backgrounds and how to unlock the necessary equipment or enterprises.
A new trait you can get by selling crypto. It boosts your Cunning. Different coins give different amounts of experience.
All clothes in your possession will now be auto-sorted by slot - from neck to misc.

UI:

A new Whiteboard UI with a few tweaks:
- Moved the Journal and list of Strange Notes to the Bedroom passage.
- The button for the sabotage menu now changes depending on your current sabotage status (yay).
- Ability to access your accomplices list directly from the Whiteboard.
- Pre-gang whiteboard has been changed too, now it'll highlight completed tasks in green and uncompleted in yellow.
New UI for the nightclub’s "Upgrade" menu.
Replaced the “something new” text on the PC with an icon.
Money gains and losses are now colorized for all businesses and all the stuff on the whiteboard, as well as heat gains.

Other changes:

Added detailed messages explaining why you can’t recruit certain girls to your crew (if you can’t).
Removed the ability to buy stolen wheels from the Auto Center (I forgot to remove this when I added car collections).
End of Day logic reshuffled:
- Coin washers now work at the very end, so if you’re low on dirty cash, you still have a chance to launder what your racketeers earned.
- Dampers now operate after everyone else.
Added chauffeur’s cheeky commentary activation checks to every spot I forgot to earlier.
Added a new hint to the red phone about how to get your crew out of jail.
Swapped out some leftover low-ql media and threw in a few new vids here and there.

Balancing changes:

Mostly aimed at making things easier. My critical thinking clearly wasn’t enough to realize how slow everything was progressing in the game - mostly because my test playthroughs were done in the most "efficient" ways, duh.

Decreased the cost of the nightclub by 33%.
Increased turf capturing speed by 33%, and reduced both the initial and maximum possible strength range for competitor gangs by 15%.
Reduced potential heat gain from burglary, auto theft, and personal drug sales by 25%, 15%, and 33%, respectively.
Decreased the price of the one-storey house by 33%, fence and pool by 50%.
Reduced the required bribe to get your crew out of jail by 80%.

Fixes:

Fixed broken </span> tag for heavy car collection.
Fixed the issue where no time was being consumed when selling car collections.
Fixed an issue where discarding clothing always removed the last item in the wardrobe.
Fixed missing event description when getting info about gang locations at the downtown nightclub.
Fixed incorrect item being sold in the Gangs shop.
Fixed broken display of the right-hand's name during the introductory gang meeting.