Hi everyone!
On Monday, August 17, a big new demo update for The Headlands goes live. This will be the last major demo update before the Early Access release in September.
Here's what's new since the previous demo:
Weather
The game now has real weather — clear skies, clouds, fog, rain and thunderstorms, all shifting as you play. Rain isn't just a visual: it's a free sprinkler, and watered crops grow faster. That said, you can't harvest while it's raining — you'll have to wait it out.
Other tasks still run as usual, but reduced visibility makes vehicles drive a bit slower than normal, especially on dirt roads. So it's worth rolling those all-wheel-drive trucks and tractors out of the garage!
Machinery repair
Machinery now wears down and breaks, and Sydorovych at the service station helps with repairs. The worse the condition, the more expensive the repair — and broken machinery can't do its field jobs at all. Keeping an eye on your fleet actually matters now.
New machinery
The garage has grown — 8 new tractors and one big harvester have been added. And more on the way!
Production
The first step toward a full production cycle — a sawmill where you can make boards, and a mill where grain turns into flour. There's also a new warehouse on the farm for produced goods, and trucks have a new job: hauling goods from production buildings. This is only the beginning!
A bigger map
The farm has grown — more space, more fields, more room to work with. Including some genuinely huge fields that will need equally big machinery!
The QoL improvements you asked for most
The hottest topic of the past few months has been waiting. I already tried a skip-to-next-morning feature and removed it: the game became dry and turn-based. But now I've added faster time flow — so there's less waiting while the game still feels alive. I'm really looking forward to your feedback here, and I hope the waiting really has gotten shorter.
On top of that, there's a new interface that gathers everything about the farm in one place, a separate window with details for each vehicle, and a pile of small fixes and improvements that piled up along the way. Balance wasn't forgotten either!
The updated demo will be playable this Monday — August 17.
This demo is the final step before The Headlands enters Early Access.
Why Early Access? Because there's already a lot here, I'm working on the game alone, and getting everything to the quality it needs will take a good deal more time. Early Access lets me add new content gradually and factor in player feedback, to make the game something you actually want to play.
Thanks to everyone who plays, writes feedback and waits — the game gets better with every version because of you 🙏 And do write what exactly you'd like to see in The Headlands!
If you haven't added The Headlands to your wishlist yet — now's the time 🌾