- Patch: Small Fixes To School Areas - 20 November 2025
{ Status }We're pushing out a small patch to quick fix a few small issues with the recent release. I'm sure more of these will be coming in the next few weeks! :] { Changelog } - fix hint tower objective count and re-enable missing hint towers in first school area - fix mower spawning instead of pickup truck in second school area - add npc near fallen tower in first school area - fix title screen bug that would give the mower over-sized tires ------ Thanks for reading & playing!
- Update: A large overhaul, new content, improved features, optimizations! - 18 November 2025
{ Status }This is a very large update which includes many improvements across all features, including upgrading the base engine version, rebuilding the terrain system's physics, unifying all objects' rendering methods, starting to push core gameplay systems into mechanics that are needed for stable area development, improved save/load, improved vehicle and driver physics, and much more. This ALSO includes all redone areas to match the new systems - a necessity of the updates which I leveraged to build some better areas.This update at its core was about upgrading and improving many of the core systems. I went through every asset, optimizing, unifying and improving the base tools used. Beyond overall better performance, this enabled more impactful graphics options. We rebuilt these options to allow for heavier hitting choices like restricted draw distance. We haven't validated & optimized…
- Trail Notes: Areas, Saving/Loading, Testing - 17 January 2025
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 t…
- Trail Notes: Areas, Encyclopedia & Side Quests - 9 October 2024
Work is progressing well on the game. We've finished all the core feature updates that needed to be made and now we're focusing on making sure there are a solid few areas to enjoy once it's updated. Well, and fixing issues that show up along the way :) These are new areas and replace the previous ones, mostly. Some parts of previous areas were carried over but 95% of the area content is new. { Areas } Because some key gameplay factors are changed that modify the flow of the game, design of areas needed to be changed to fit this. We've gone through and extracted parts of areas that make sense to keep and built new areas as well. The update will wipe out save games and the areas included in the update will be these new areas. There will be at least 4 areas in the update to play, all taking place on Mars. These will include the Driving School areas that provides relatively guided objective…
- Trail Notes: Garages, Improved Feedback, Out Of Bounds, Torque Path - 6 September 2024
We spent time on mostly fixes but added some key things that allow us to give better feedback to the player regarding the driver's state and contextual control information. We also got into some features, like garages, that are key elements in how you'll tackle areas and manage your vehicles. { Garages } Garages are used to customize your vehicle with different unlocked parts, replace broken parts, and repair. They're placed in some areas by default and likely will be a building you'll be able to build. In the second driving school area, you start with the pickup truck. It has "road" tires, very smooth tires that get great grip on equally smooth surfaces like roads or metal. However, they are pretty horrible off road, especially in something like sand. A bit into the area, you can unlock a different type of tire that works quite a bit better on loose & rough surfaces. Nearby, there's a…
- Trail Notes: Vehicle Parts, Stats, and Vehicle Yards - 16 August 2024
It was suggested that we do some form of smaller, more frequent, updates. So we're going to try that out. These will be more informal, frequent posts with a bit about the most recent things we're working on. This one may be a bit longer cause it's been a month since the last post but.. I'll try to keep it brief.. :] { Vehicle Yards } Vehicle yards are how the player brings vehicles into an area. In most cases you start in an area on foot, walk to a nearby vehicle yard and that yard has one or more spaces. These spaces are where you can bring vehicles that you've unlocked into the area. Once you use a space to bring a vehicle in, it is used up unless you reset the whole area. This creates a strategic set of choices to make when choosing vehicles, when you bring vehicles in, and how you manage those vehicles once they're in the area. When you bring a vehicle in, you're able to customize i…
- The eighteenth update: Progress! - 11 July 2024
No update YET but we're working hard on it still. We're aiming in the next month or two to get it out. It's been tricky deciding where the line is on what to include in the update and what not to, but I am very eager to get back into pushing smaller updates to the game versus this larger update. There's a lot we've been doing, many things under the surface to get better performance and to allow for future features and content that we want to include. But aside from those lower-level improvements, we've been making some pretty drastic improvements to elements of the game. I'll need to go and update our store page and early-access questions to reflect some of these changes when we push the new update. The update will also include more content, some new vehicles and new, changed or swapped areas. But for now, I'll go into a bit of detail on a few of the exciting things we've recently been…
- The seventeenth update: Optimization, Upgrading and Refinement - 22 February 2024
First -- thank you to all the encouraging people out there & in our discord who are enjoying the game where it's at and encouraging us to bring it to its potential. It's been a little bit since we've pushed an update to the game and that's because we made some bold choices to get the game where it needs to be. Taking in people's experiences and looking at what we need to do to bring it to completion, we landed on a few aspects that need extra focus. Some of which are optimization, stability and performance. So, we tore out some insides which makes almost everything not work until we get it back together. Horrifying? Yes, but very worth it. Now we're in the process of upgrading a few key aspects like the terrain, how we handle detail levels of objects and surfaces and technical aspects of the vehicles' structure. These should make a high impact. I'll go into a little detail on some of th…
- The sixteenth update: Updated with new area, two new vehicles and more! - 16 December 2023
{ Status } This is a heavy update which includes many, many fixes and improvements as well as a substantial new level and two new vehicles - a pickup and a big heavy 6 wheel truck for hauling. We're so thrilled with the people playing the game and the feedback we're getting, particularly those of you in our discord. We really appreciate all the support. We were planning on doing updates every 2-4 weeks but as we go, I think we're leaning more towards more frequent updates that are smaller. We work on this game every day and we work hard. We want the people who are enjoying playing the game to be able to feel that as much as possible. Check out our changelog below. { Major Content Additions } - Boghill Island ... a challenging area that requires trail building, pumping water to reduce flood levels, a lot of hauling, rock crawling to get suppliers to the island and a big 100+ supply desal…
- Now Available in Early Access! - 16 November 2023
{ Status } The game is NOW available in Early Access! We hope you have a blast & let us know what you think! We'll be updating regularly during Early Access with new content, features, fixes and improvements. We're really looking forward to people playing the game and to seeing people experience all the work we've put in :] We also want to say that we're very grateful to those of you who have been following along, whether you've been talking with us in discord, commenting on steam or vigilantly lurking - we see you and we appreciate your support. We're a tiny team, we love what we're making and we're putting everything we have into it so we really appreciate you. Despite this being a release, we love changelogs so here are the changes for this most recent update and release. { Changelog } - add the first early access only area, "Neighborhood Water" - add completion feedback popups for 1…
- The fourteenth update: Demo Updated! Many updates to prepare for Early Access! - 4 November 2023
{ Status } We're going to be going into Early Access on November 16th, very soon! We've been very, very hard at work. There's a balance between adding content, expanding features, and refining what exists. While we're pretty aggressively adding to the game, we're trying to lean toward refinement enough that the experience of playing a small amount of content is very positive. So we hope that translates to you well - and we also hope that sparks an excitement for upcoming additional areas, vehicles and experiences. We wanted to update the Demo before Early Access release with many of the new improvements from the last few months. The demo is much more representative of what Early Access will be like, just with only one area. The demo is approximately 20 minutes to complete only the core objectives. And another 1.5 hours or so to do the rest of the available objectives. This reflects how…
- The thirteenth update: Early Access Release Date & Development Updates - 15 August 2023
{ Status } We've decided on November 16th, 2023 for our Early Access release date! While we know everyone knows the game is in development, we wanted to give ourselves enough time before the first Early Access release to provide enough experiences on launch for players to clearly see the potential of where the game is going. Content and features will obviously continue to be added during Early Access but the initial experience after purchasing early access should be enough that when you reach the end of the available areas, you can easily imagine the possibilities of what new terrains, challenges, feature expansions and vehicles could be coming next. When you get early access, you'll be initially getting a small % of the completed game's content but moreso, we understand that it's a vote of confidence in the game. It helps us directly to make the game better but also invests you, as a p…
- The twelvth update: A Fast Mower Mod, Vehicle Damage UI, Terrain Improvements - 9 July 2023
{ Update Changes } - fixed a crash during loading a level if you have a specific graphics card (hopefully this is fixed!) - added an unlockable mower engine mod to the driving school basics level that gives the mower a 3rd gear that's quite fast (and dangerous) terrain system improvements: - the terrain is now simulated as a single seamless entity and then dispatches its information down into tiles which helps lower memory usage and reduce load times for terrain. Additionally this change sets us up to more easily add features in the future such as cascading terrain (ex: piled up sand rolling down and spreading out to fill ruts) or terrain conservation (ex: pushing up mud around your tires and displacing it) - seams in the terrain have been reduced in severity and frequency, however some minor seams still exist from some of the visual effects on the terrain - terrain on each side of a se…
- The eleventh update: Fix for night issues plus some other minor fixes - 20 June 2023
{ Update Changes } - Fixed an issue for players in certain locales that would experience the game being set to night time incorrectly. Everyone's saves will reset the time of day to morning + your bushes will be reset... I'm guessing nobody but a select few will notice this :] - add a hint tower and some barricades to a trail in the Pre Deployment Test area to help guide players - add more visible ignition and handbrake hints, increase # of shifts required before the "high gears are faster and low gears deliver more power" hint goes away for shifting. For those unfamiliar with how gear ratios work it should help as well as reminding players that shifting is a very important part of the game to regulate your speed and torque - remove the unidentified moon-like object that was in the sky in the Pre Deployment Test area... - dialog skipping with the Use button (default: E) no longer makes…
- The tenth update: Quick fix for New Game issue in certain locales - 20 June 2023
{ Update Changes } - Fixed an issue for players in certain locales that stopped them from starting a new game Thank you to MEDBEDb for helping us find this issue
- The ninth update: Adding a new area with a river! - 19 June 2023
A new area has been added to the demo with quite a bit to do in it. There's a river, some water flow control, bridges to build, generators to power, trash, sand and a lot of rocks to traverse. Most of this update is that area, however there are a few other minor fixes that slid in. { Update Changes } - added "Driving Test: Pre-Deployment Test" area to the demo - texture optimizations to aid in performance (Unster, don't you worry, there'll be further improvement on this front) - fix minor issue that displayed an unlock message for the mower in the Driving School: Basics area - updated some sound effects for title screen and dialog - require a vehicle to drive in proximity to the Communications Towers in the Driving School and Driving Test areas before you can power the towers via the terminal - intro animation tweaks for Pre-Deployment Test - fix some water interaction settings to impro…
- Speed driving the demo cause it's fun! >:D - 18 June 2023
Live stream, speed run edition! Driving through SAND and BUILDING bridges. Probably suffocating... and a lot of crashing and restarting too. Attempting to go as fast as possible because... it's fun >:D Join along and ask questions in chat if you have them! If you are vaguely interested in what you're seeing, join us in the Discord :D
- Driving over rocks and other things! :O - 18 June 2023
Driving over ROCKS and BUILDING bridges. Probably crashing & drowning some too. Join along and ask questions in chat if you have them! If you are vaguely interested in what you're seeing, join us in the Discord :D
- The eighth update: A small hotfix for a main menu issue! - 17 June 2023
{ Update Changes } - Fixed an issue where players who hadn't opened the demo since v3 or before would have a mainmenu bug It *should* be fixed but if anyone experiences the main menu buttons not showing up, reach out in the discord or here and we'll help you get setup. This patch should fix it however. Also, thank you to Steelhawk for helping us find this. :D
- The seventh update: Adding core objectives, Better grass interaction and Fixes! - 9 June 2023
We just added a new desert-like area in the last update, Driving School: The Basics, and a set of new features - this new update has some fixes to some of those and a few other improvements! :] { Update Changes } - fix grass/small plant interaction so it always occurs and has better accuracy - fix problem where you could unknowingly skip an intro cinematic - introduce gameData checks and warnings for improved save system stability (in this update and going forward) - improve damage reporting for tires and for structural damage to tires, so now you can see "integrity %" of your tire's damage as well as the wheel's structural damage. So when your tires pop or your wheels are wobbling or break off, you have a better idea how and why - add core objective icons to the pause overlay map for more clarity in what your goals are, particularly in the "driving school" area - make some preparations…
