We've been working hard on the game and I'm very happy with how it's going! Much like actual offroading, the journey is the best part. :)

As we go into the new year, I'm really looking forward to getting this big update out. I know I've been talking about it for like half a year but it's a big move. We upgraded the engine and overhauled a lot, tons of assets got optimized, many features were added, tons of fixes - it's been a huge push forward. We're just finishing up the last area that needs work on it before the update so there's enough gameplay to enjoy after the update comes out. Aside from the area work, we're spending some time testing some of the new gameplay flow features as well as making sure the enhanced saving/loading works.

{ Areas }

The update will include five areas which will replace all existing content. They're of various sizes with some probably taking ~15 min while the largest possibly taking an hour or more. All of them take much longer if you do all the objectives - I know a solid group of you who are playing are completionists like me. So a good chunk of gameplay will be available in the new version. We won't be replacing full areas anymore after this update, so all future updates will just be adding new areas or fixing previous ones if there are problems or tweaks are needed.

I'm really excited for people to play these new areas. The early ones that are trying to teach you how to play and get people accustomed to the game are relatively limited, however the areas really open up and you start to feel the true gameplay shine making your own trails and figuring out routing to get things built or objectives completed.

I think a good balance has been struck between having enough stuff in areas to be interesting but not overcrowding them with content or missions, letting the gameplay breathe a little. I tried to make sure there were segments where you can just enjoy driving for a bit before having to figure out another challenging section.

{ F.R.O.G. Missions }

One of the five areas is a challenge-esque mission where you are sent to an icy mountain peak and have to help recover an artifact.

I wanted to include missions you could unlock in any order that have no dependencies where you could enjoy a sort of stand-alone challenge, often that are short or very specific. We started this by just adding one challenge area that gives players a taste of a snowy ice environment on top of windy mountain peaks. It's VERY different than Mars: Ice patches are very slippery, the terrain is rough, has tight trails, tricky to navigate and frozen solid.

{ Saving/Loading, Testing & Streaming }

We introduced a saving/loading system that's much better - it specifically saves the location of your vehicle including wheel/axle position, exact supply locations, exact physics object locations, and build progress. The challenge here was we wanted people to be able to save their game and leave anytime, while being able to return to the same scenario they left. This is important because the details of placement matter, and progress of where your vehicle is can be extremely important even in short distances. It actually turned out really well but there's still some rough edges to work out. We want to do some more testing on this specifically to hopefully squash some of those problems before people experience them. Overall, because with how specific the game can be in its gameplay, it's very worth the ability to keep your progress accurately.

I know it's early access and people expect issues but I'd like to eliminate as many game-breaking ones as I can before people are playing.

This goes for testing other features, including running through the areas when they're done and doing test playthroughs. This month we'll be starting up some live streams of testing, as well as development too. It should be a good way to connect to people, field some live questions and initially be a time for me to get used to streaming :) News updates are good and I'm going to keep them up, but streaming will hopefully add another factor to the connection to those of you who are watching us make this game.

I'm excited! Right now, we are doing no marketing aside from these posts. We don't have normal social media, just a website and a discord. I'm planning to do some streaming which I think will build a nice connection to people who are interested, but this is still pretty minimal in terms of outreach. We'll expand these things in the future but for now, we're happy to have a few dedicated people randomly finding us and following along. The input we're getting is very helpful. We are focused on getting a nice solid base of gameplay, getting to good performance on a steamdeck or equivalent PCs, getting better input support like for gamepads, squashing issues or instabilities, THEN starting to try to get more players.

We're okay with things taking more time in exchange for a better game. So at this point, we're feeling really good about the direction things are going. We just are very excited for this next big upcoming update, to fix the issues that show up from it, and to then continue getting smaller updates out layering in new areas, vehicles and features.

Below is a raw changelog with all the changes made since the last post.

Thanks for reading & following along!

raw changes since last post:
- areas for update
- - driving school: basics (done)
- - driving school: license test (done)
- - road to frontier station (in progress)
- - time trial canyon (done)
- - snappys artifact I (done)
- towable rocks, for clearing out rocks in the road
- in level vehicles reset to their initial spawn point if you recover before you've unlocked a recovery pad
- foliage support added, including bushes that slow you down, break apart as you drive through them over time and are eventually destroyed (needed to be re-added after engine overhaul update)
- add frog contract/challenge missions to map and mechanisms to purchase unlock them
- dialog added to many npcs
- adding encyclopedia entries and some new situations to discover them (ex: Towing)
- time trial gates light up correctly based on state the time trial is in to make it easier to understand where to drive and how you're doing on time vs previous laps
- new biome added, earth mountains, for "snappys artifact I" mission
- vehicle tires and chassis use different visuals depending on the type of terrain you're in, so while driving in the snow you get snow on your car, not mars dust :)
- adding pine trees for the earth mountains biome
- add ice patches and transportable artifacts
- places in an area you can unlock another area are more clearly marked on the map and in game
- a bit of weather effects including wind, blowing mars dust, and blowing snow
- tweaks and fixes to the pickup truck, particularly the suspension
- adding the metal trailer, so it is more stable (to be used to haul wood blocks to build bridges in frontier station)
- make trailers be able to be unlocked and spawned similarly to vehicles into vehicle yard spots
- adding a long electric trailer cart for use in road to frontier station to be towed to a generator
- improve the visuals of the small electric trailer
- add wires to a few levels to connect electric generators with what they power