The demo was de-listed on Thursday, March 12th. If you already have the demo in your Steam library, it will continue to function normally. You won't lose access!
Thank you so much for all the wonderful feedback. I’ve learned a ton from hearing about your experience and I’m already busy applying it to move the game forward. This may feel like a step backwards but I think it's one of those one step back to take two steps forward kind of things.
Why the Demo is Coming Down
Reducing Overhead: Patching the demo takes a surprising amount of time away from core development. Treating the demo like an Early Access product isn't the right strategy for me right now. I need to better focus on building, not maintaining.
Aligning with Dev Blogs: My recent updates are showing content, like breaking big rocks, that isn't in the demo. This is causing confusion for new players looking for mechanics that seemingly should exist in the demo but do not. Addressing that is time consuming in ways that doesn't really help me ship the game in the near term. A better designed demo will fix that.
Quality Standards: The current version has been fairly described as more of a "tech demo" than a full gameplay experience. Rather than applying quick fixes, I want to pause the demo and re-focus on a "functional leap" that does a better job of meeting Steam demo expectations.
What's Next?
There will be a new demo in the future that better represents the expanded game, including mechanics like industry, resource gathering, and steam power.
Thanks again to everyone who played, tested, and shared their thoughts. Your support for this weird tedious job simulator train game has massively exceeded my every expectation and I can't wait to share a reworked and more expansive demo in the future!
Josh