Hi Ranchers,
I know it's been a little while since the last update, but I can assure you I've been cooking hard behind the scenes! 😄
In addition to the incremental updates released over the past two months, a new major update is now available. Make sure your game is updated to version 0.8.10.420 or later.
Let's dive into what's new!
🚗 New Driving Mechanics & Vehicle Rebalancing
One of the biggest focuses of this update has been driving.
Every vehicle in the game has been rebalanced and upgraded with a completely revised driving system designed to make vehicles feel more stable, responsive, and enjoyable to drive while preserving the unique personality of each vehicle category, whether it's a sports car, muscle car, pickup truck, or utility vehicle.
This overhaul represented a significant amount of development work, and I'm genuinely happy with the results. A huge thank you to everyone who shared feedback during the demo. Your comments helped shape many of these improvements.❤️
📱 New Smartphone App: My Garage
Introducing My Garage, a brand-new smartphone app that allows you to manage all of your vehicles in one place.
With My Garage you can:
- View every vehicle you currently own.
- Send broken, destroyed, drowned, or stuck vehicles to the mechanic for repairs.
- Repaired vehicles will automatically be returned to the nearest Car Pound parking location.
- Manage vehicles that have been seized after being left outside your ranch or outside designated Overnight Parking locations.
- Recover impounded vehicles directly through the app.
A quick reminder:
- Starting with this update, vehicles left outside your ranch or outside a designated Overnight Parking location will be impounded and transported to the Car Pound. To help with this, 17 Overnight Parking locations have been added throughout the map.
- Stolen vehicles must first receive new license plates at AutoHue before they can be managed through My Garage.
- Stolen vehicles with forged license plates that are left outside your ranch or a designated Overnight Parking location will be permanently seized by the police. There is no way to recover them. Crime doesn't pay! 😄
⏩ New Feature: Skip Quest Driving
When a main quest requires you to drive from one location to another, you can now choose to skip the driving segment.
Your vehicle, along with all passengers (players, NPCs, and farm animals), will be transported directly to the destination.
This feature is designed to reduce downtime and let players focus on the parts of the experience they enjoy most. Available only in selected quests.
🚇 New Feature: Subway Travel
Getting around Sunvale just got easier!
- You can now use the Subway for local travel. 🎉
- You can travel together with your attached or roped animals. 🐄
- Added 8 new subway stations, bringing the total to 15 stations, providing much better coverage of the current world map and points of interest.
🎮 PlayStation Controller Support
Added full support for:
- PlayStation 3 controllers
- PlayStation 4 controllers
- PlayStation 5 controllers
Including proper PlayStation button icons throughout the game.
🐞 Bug Fixes
- Reduced traffic density near the airport to prevent traffic jams.
- Fixed an issue where bicycle front wheels were not turning correctly.
- Fixed several edge cases where abandoned or failed quests could not be restarted properly.
- Fixed an issue where vehicles with broken engines were not displaying smoke effects.
- Quest vehicles now correctly fail related quests if their engine becomes irreparably damaged.
- Fixed an issue where player-owned vehicle icons were not always displayed on the map.
- Fixed a major bug where NPC-owned vehicles could be incorrectly saved into player save files.
- Multiple minor bug fixes and stability improvements.
🔜 What's Next?
My current priorities remain:
- Auto-harvesting for plantation crops, so vegetables can be collected all at once instead of one by one.
- Jump mechanic improvements.
- Additional bug fixes and quality-of-life improvements.
I've also got a big announcement coming later this week 👀
For now, I simply want to thank everyone who has taken the time to play the demo, leave feedback, report bugs, and share their thoughts. The amount of feedback we've received has been incredibly valuable and has helped me identify exactly where the game needs the most attention before Early Access.❤️❤️❤️
⏳ Last Chance to Play the Demo
The demo will be taken down on Friday, 12 June 2026, so if you haven't had a chance to try it yet, now is the perfect time!
Thank you once again for your patience, support, and belief in The Ranchers. It truly means the world to me.
See you soon 💚
Ethan
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1501310/The_Ranchers/