In a rare moment for me, both Careening & its demo have been updated at the same time, so let's crack on.
Changes to both versions:
Tutorialisation and Narrative The initial control segment of the tutorial remains the same, however the game now tutorialises some elements when you first reach them using the dialog system this patch introduces. There are also short vignettes that play to cover some of the narrative when you start runs, which mostly unlock based on achievements.
Camera & Movement
The camera has been reworked a little to be more stable as framerates fluctuate, as well as a switch so that it changes FOV along with distance as speed increases, to help give a better sense of speed.
Performance While the last update did improve performance across the board significantly (particularly late game), it came at the cost of sometimes causing micro-stutters. This build has reduced the severity & frequency of the stutters, which combined with the above camera changes can make the game feel a lot smoother in motion.
Buff Changes The Repeatable buffs were added during the early demo period to solve the problem of there not being enough buffs to go around, but as the buff count in the game increased they've become increasingly pointless. As such they've been replaced with Risk/Reward buffs, which offer the chance to sacrifice percentages of stats to buff others.
Quest Notifications The game didn't do a great job of drawing attention to Quests as a mechanic, which results in players being comparatively underpowered. So on top of tutorialisation on them I've added a short trill that plays when they start.
Early Access version:
Weapons Two new Weapons within the renamed "Toys" category have been added, the second of which is quite deranged.
Buffs To go with that, three new buffs have been added, two weapon specific ones for the new ones, and a Toys meta buff.
Achievements And surprising no-one, two new Achievements have been added to unlock the new weapons.
Unrelated to the above, I'm thrilled to share that Careening is part of the Steam Event for Melbourne International Games Week, which means it's a great chance to check out some incredible Aussie made games. https://store.steampowered.com/sale/MelbourneInternationalGamesWeek2025
Drive Safe!
-Sean