We’re very happy to bring you another polish update to Broken Roads, including increased font size when using the Large Font setting (especially handy on Steam Deck), improved companion reactions depending on player choices, removing some of the ‘teleporting’ moments that some players found rail-roady, TONS of combat, weapon and consumable balancing, plus a couple of spoilery bits and pieces we won’t mention here.

What’s Been Happening with Broken Roads’ development?

We have racked up hundreds of pages of feedback, notes, suggestions and draft material for improving Broken Roads, and now is the time to implement. We’ve been focusing on improvements that don’t require translations for now, with a lot of focus on improving the weapons and consumables (in terms of AP required, damage, range, reload time, and dollar value).

We’ve also worked on removing some of the moments in the game that used to instantly transport the player to the next location or to complete a quest objective. This approach involves a lot of testing as many things can go wrong, so it’s slow work, but there’s more of this to come.

We’ve also identified some specific quest, journal and objective issues that can still be made considerably clearer for players (we’ll be focusing on Lake Deborah, Merredin and Southern Cross for the next patch).

Steam Deck Verification Update

Broken Roads is now officially classified as Playable on Steam Deck, with the feedback that some of the text and controller glyphs were still too small even with the Large Font option enabled. We’ve addressed all of the points requested by Valve and are resubmitting for full Steam Deck Verified status along with this patch going live.

What’s Next?

More polish and bug fixes, but also the bulk of the work to expand on and improve pretty much every area of the game. We’re doing all of this in English only at first, and will be releasing these updates on the English-Only branch. There’s a new feature in Steam that allows players to seamlessly switch branches without any technical knowhow, and that’s what we’re focusing the next update on.

Without having to get the text translated or put through localisation QA, the turnaround will be much faster. We’re also no longer limited by word count restrictions and can flesh out all of the dialogues we couldn’t at launch, and have the freedom to completely rewrite entire characters, conversations and quests to make the game as good as it possibly can be.

Once this is done, we’ll get to work on localisation and translation and of course patching consoles to get to the same point.

Thanks again for your patience and to everyone who continues to support us as we press on with making Broken Roads the best it can be.

Patch Notes

WARNING: SOME SPOILERS INCLUDED AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PATCH NOTES:

• - Increased various font sizes and controller glyphs for Steam Deck. These can be accessed by all users when the Large Font checkbox in the settings menu is ticked.
• - Increased the size of some tutorial images for better readability on portable devices.
• - Reworked all companion reactions in the Merredin convoy banter to make them considerably less likely to respond unfavourably towards the player.
• - When leaving Merredin interiors, the game no longer teleports the player character back to the convoy area for convoy events. These now only occur when returning to Merredin from the overworld map, except for two specific story cases.
• - Gated certain rude or tactless player options behind low Charisma checks.
• - Fixed a bug where characters could incur attacks of opportunity when getting closer to their targets.
• - Adjusted the contents of Col’s shop (Hunters and Collectors) and various Vendor inventories in Merredin.
• Adjusted the prices of many consumables in the game.
• Adjusted HP recovery and secondary benefits of various consumables.
• Adjusted the prices of almost every weapon.
• It now costs less AP to switch to secondary weapon than to reload for all weapons except Pistols.
• Changed Blasers and SR98s (as well as the upgraded versions) to require 2AP to reload.
• Changed min and max damage for numerous weapons, including Spiked Clubs, SR98 upgrades, and Hunting Rifle upgrades.
• Changed the Min, Max and Optimal ranges between weapon types to further distinguish between them and require differing strategies.
• Reduced the damage of the SR98 +3 to be more in line with other max upgraded weapons.
• Reworked Revolvers to now have a small Knockdown chance, a larger optimal range and a wider damage range than Pistols.
• Revolvers now require 2AP to reload.
• Pistols are now the only ranged weapons that require 1AP to reload.
• Shotguns have from 10% Knockdown chance to 30% Knockdown chance depending on the upgrade.
• Spears are now optimal between 1 and 2 units away from the target.
• Mad’s Bat and Makeshift Axe have a range from 0 to 1.5 units and are always optimal when in range.
• All other melee weapons require being 0 to 1 units away from the target and are optimal in this range.
• All Cleavers now inflict bleeding.
• Hammers have from 10% Knockdown chance to 50% Knockdown chance depending on the upgrade.
• Spiked Clubs have 5% Knockdown chance to 30% Knockdown chance depending on the upgrade.
• Many small tweaks to difficulty of various combat throughout the game based upon where the average player level and party composition would be at that point.
• Small adjustments to enemy combatants' equipment and loot throughout the game.
• Changed a few animations for some of Merredin’s residents and NPCs.
• SPOILER: Priss no longer kidnaps the player if they talk to Scott Measure a second time. This can still be triggered by antagonising Angela Smith after the first meeting with Priss.
• SPOILER: Fixed a bug what was incorrectly determining Angela Smith’s reactions to the player when they threaten or antagonise her prior to the pub debate.
• SPOILER: Removed a dialogue break when talking to Mick after Priss first threatens the player.
• SPOILER: Reworked companion calculations in the final dialogue in Kalgoorlie to decrease their likelihood of abandoning the player character.

PLAY NOW:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1403440/Broken_Roads/

That's all for today, ‘ol cobber! Follow Broken Roads to stay updated and don't forget, your choices are the key.

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- Craig Ritchie,
Game Director - The Drop Bear Bytes team