- 0.2.9 - Jewel of Life Update - 13 September 2026
Update 0.2.9: The Oasis Update is Here! 🌴🐟Hello Survivors,The wasteland of Scorching Desert is becoming more alive—and just a little bit more bearable. With today's Update 0.2.9, we are breathing fresh life into the barren dunes, revamping the wilderness, and delivering a massive boost to game performance!Here is a breakdown of the most important changes:Discover the New "Paradise Oasis"A new sanctuary awaits you amidst the scorching sands. Oases have received a major visual overhaul, featuring much more environmental variety. You will now find mossy underwater rocks, new types of grass, and dense bushes that can be harvested for crucial resources like branches, fibers, and leaves. To make sure you don't lose track of your hard-earned loot, we have also increased the size of branches so they are easier to spot in high grass.New Food Sources and Vibrant NatureSurvival is getting a lot…
- Update 0.2.8 – "Sound of the Desert" is Now Live! - 7 June 2026
Update 0.2.8 – "Sound of the Desert"Survivors,The desert is shifting, and it is becoming louder, more realistic, and more dangerous than ever before. In this update, we have focused heavily on transforming the auditory experience of Scorching Desert, while also overhauling animal behaviors, refining combat mechanics, and squashing some of the most stubborn bugs you have reported.Listen closely to the dunes—the desert has a voice now.🔊 Major Sound & Atmosphere OverhaulWe want you to feel the isolation, the wind, and the sudden terror of a predator strike. This update brings a massive pass on environmental and creature audio:Weather & Night: Experience the true power of nature with new sandstorm ambience, howling wind audio, and a completely reworked nighttime acoustic environment.The Wildlife: Antelopes, camels, coyotes, scorpions, and snakes all received unique, reworked sound effects…
- The Swift & The Shy - Update 0.2.6 - 9 May 2026
Update: The Swift & The Shy – Antelopes Have Arrived!Hello, Survivors!The desert just got a little more alive (and a lot more agile). In today’s update, we are introducing a brand-new inhabitant to the oases of Scorching Desert: the Antelope. Whether you’re looking for a fresh source of resources or testing your hunting prowess, you’ll need to stay low and move quietly.🦌 New Wildlife: The AntelopeYou can now find Antelopes grazing in specific oases. These majestic creatures are a great source of Hide, Bones, and Meat, but they won't just stand there and wait for you.Stealth Mechanic: We’ve added a crouch mechanic! Use it to sneak through the brush and get within striking distance before they bolt.The "Shy Antelope": Keep an eye out near the starting location. We’ve added a particularly skittish antelope there, to give you a new objective:New Hunting Task: A new objective has been added…
- The Notebook Update - 0.2.5 - 27 April 2026
Update Out Now: The Sand Dunes & Your New Survival Notebook!Hello Survivors,We are excited to bring you a brand-new update for Scorching Desert! This patch focuses on giving you more direction in the harsh sands and fixing some of the community's most reported issues.New Feature: The Notebook & Sand Dune Tasks Exploring the desert just got a lot more rewarding. We’ve added 22 new tasks specifically for the Sand Dunes biome to help guide your journey and uncover the secrets hidden in the dunes.To help you keep track of your goals, we are introducing the Notebook! You can now view all your active and completed tasks in one place, making it easier than than ever to manage your progress.Check out the full details below:ChangelogFeatures / Gameplay:New Tasks: Added 22 new tasks for the Sand Dunes biome to guide exploration.Notebook: Added a new Notebook interface with the ability to view cur…
- 0.2.4 - The Performance Update - 12 April 2026
Hello Survivors,We’ve been hard at work optimizing your journey through the wasteland. Today, we are excited to release Update 0.2.4 – "The Performance Update." As the name suggests, this patch is entirely dedicated to making Scorching Desert run smoother, faster, and more reliably across a wider range of hardware. By refining how the engine handles visuals and CPU tasks, we’ve managed to significantly boost frame rates and reduce those frustrating stutters. 🛠 Visuals & CustomizationWe have overhauled the graphics menu to give you more control over how the game looks and performs: Monitor Selection: You can now officially select which display to play on in the settings. Lumen Scaling: We’ve added quality settings for Lumen (Global Illumination) ranging from Low to Epic. Streamlined Quality: We removed the "Cinematic" Lumen setting, as it was extremely resource-heavy without providing a…
- Hotfix - Quickslots - 20 March 2026
Hotfix Update - Quickslot UI Fix Survivors of the desert, We’ve just pushed a small hotfix to address a visual issue that some of you encountered. Thank you for your quick reports! Bug Fixes: Quickslot UI: Fixed a display bug where the Quickslot interface would overlap or render incorrectly on certain resolutions. Note: If you don't see the update immediately, please restart your Steam client. Thank you for your continued support and feedback while braving the heat of Scorching Desert! — Desert Runner Studio
- The Tutorial Update & The Steam Spring Sale - 19 March 2026
🔥 Survive the Heat: Update 0.2.3 & 25% OFF Steam Spring Sale! 🔥Hello, survivors!The desert is unforgiving, but we’ve just tipped the scales in your favor. Just in time for the Steam Spring Sale, we’re dropping a fresh update and a hot deal: grab Scorching Desert now at 25% OFF!Whether you are a veteran nomad or a newcomer to the sands, there has never been a better time to test your limits.🛠️ Bug Fixes We’ve been busy cleaning up the dunes to make your survival experience smoother: Navigation & Sleep: Fixed the NavMesh bug preventing players from reaching bed. You will also no longer get stuck in bed or rotate uncontrollably while getting up.Environmental Fixes: UV and sunburn values now correctly drop during the night. Heat haze no longer appears too early (4:00 AM). Water Mechanics: No more "drinking dirt" from the oasis. We also fixed bugs where water containers refilled while eat…
- Update 0.2.2 is Here! Performance / Features - 10 March 2026
Our 0.2.2 Update is here! Hello guys, we're back with a new update for Scorching Desert! In this update we've mainly focused on increased performance, bug fixes and some changes to gameplay. We're very happy to anounce that we've been able to massively increase the performance of Scorching Desert. Additionally we've added some quality of life improvements and are currently working on some new Content and systems! What have we been doing? Features: - changed night time brightness curve for better visibility - loading screen UI improvements - added new fighting / chase sound when player is hunted by animals - added coyote yelp when attacked - changed sandworm health to 350hp - added sandworm attack & get hit sounds - added sandworm roar sound - increased stamina regeneration by 100% Performance / Optimizations: - optimized the way palms / trees load, no more dynamic materials pre-loading,…
- Scorching Desert Update 0.2.1 - Patchnotes - 30 September 2025
Hello guys,We wanna inform you about our latest update for the game containing various performance optimizations and bug fixes!Improved performance:overhauled graphics settingsreduced streamed level render distance added settings for viewing / object render distanceautomatic presets on first start of "Scorching Desert" according to user hardwarelighting optimizations in various parts of the main mapreduced runtime lighting costsadded features:tooltip desriptions for the graphic settingschanges in gamedifficultyThanks you for your continued support of Scorching Desert!Best regards,Desert Runner Studio
- Scorching Desert: Epic New Open-World Survival Game Coming June 2025 - 25 February 2025
The Wait is finally over!!! The Scorching Desert awaits you, Explorer! It's your time to traverse the desert, fight it's anicient evils and save the world! We're proud to announce that after nearly 3 years of Development Scorching Desert is finally coming to life and want to thank you for your support and feedback! We took a lot of your feedback from our demo release in October to heart and think that it already helped improve the gameplay quality by a lot! With your help, we are hoping to forge the game into it's best version and make scorching desert an awesome experience for you! That being said, feel free to enjoy your journey through the desert! On June 19th 2025 you will find yourself waking up in an egyptian desert, with no memory of how you ended up in the dunes. You will scavenge for resources, craft weapons and tools to survive, tame high quality camels and build your own litt…
- Scorching Desert DEMO LIVE NOW! - 13 October 2024
Hello & welcome back, we hope you had a good time while waiting for Scorching Deserts release! We want to give you something cool to try out - A Demo version of the game! Challenge Yourself! In this Demo you'll be able to play & survive in the games first biome. You'll begin your journey in the most forgiving - unforgiving biome there is: The Sand Dunes! If you're up for a challenge you should definitely hover your cursor toward the download button and try survivng for yourself! Help us forge the "Scorching Desert"! We believe that Scorching Desert can be made an even better game by listening to your community feedback which is why we're really excited to hear about your opinions & suggestions, while we finish our work on Scorching Desert itself! If u haven't done so by now, grab yourself a drink, take your camel and start traversing the sands!
- Steam Game-Preview - 16 September 2024
Welcome back, It's been a couple of months now since the last post and we want to thank you for your patience while we've brought the game closer to it's release. During the last couple of months we've been working really hard on bug fixes, smoother animations, boss fights the building system, unique weather events, progression & enemy behaviour. Since we've brought the game a lot closer to a final release, we got two big announcements to share with you! Grab yourself some Water and start exploring the SCORCHING DESERT! For the start we're really excited to anounce to you that Scorching Desert will be coming up on the next Steam Game-Preview starting October 14th. You will be able to try out the Scorching Desert Demo to take a preview of the game and help us out on the future path through your feedback! Start your walk through the ancient desert, make some friends along the way, survive…
- We just finished the Story Dungeons - 28 January 2024
Hello & Welcome to our 6th progress update! As you may have seen, our last progress update is now ~ 1 month old and you might be wondering what we'd been working on over the last month. Here are some nice scenes from the dungeons! We're excited to anounce that we've officially finished most work on the story dungeons in Scorching Desert, and additionally reworked most of the animations - which now look much more beatiful and smoother. We also overhauled our Sounddesign of the game and fixed a lot of bugs concerning the gameplay. Finally we also added some crsip cinematics to our dungeons to increase the immersion in our game and round up the gameplay experience! Some underwater Scenery! Could you hold the balance? Could you survive those dungeons ? As always a massive thanks for your Support! We hope you have a great week!
- Final story Dungeon & Climbing animations - 11 December 2023
Hello & welcome to our 5th progress update, today we want to anounce a big milestone in our journey of developing "Scorching Desert". We have finished the development of the 3 main dungeons (except for 1 boss fight) and in addition we also managed to come up with some cool ladder climbing animations:) You will now be able to complete the story dungeons solve riddles, receive loot &fight epic boss fights that will shake your bones! Whenever the last bossfight is finished we will continue working on the endboss of the game, which we can already promise, is going to be a very challenging and complex fight! Here's some preview from our 3rd story dungeon! And here's a link to watch our new climbing animations: https://x.com/ScorchingDesert/status/1733956724019679622?s=20 And as always we wish you guys an enjoyable week! Best regards, Desert Runner Studio
- The Second Story Dungeon - 26 November 2023
Hello & welcome to our 4th Progress Update, we're excited to announce that we've finished the first of our 3 story dungeons and are now starting work on the second story dungeon. The Story dungeons are composed of a variety of different fights and riddles, all while telling an exciting story about the darkness hidden deep within the desert... It's your task to complete the journey and uncover the ancient secrets - for which you will be rewarded with great loot! Here's quick preview of some parts of the dungeon:) And another preview from the second story dungeon: As always we wish you a very nice start into the week:) Cheers
- Progress Update #003 - 15 November 2023
Excited to show you the Main Dungeons! Hello & welcome to our third progress update. We're very excited to show you some of our newest additions: the story dungeons. In "Scorching Desert" you will be able to find a lot of different dungeons & caves and temple ruins, some of which are more special than others. These are called the main story dungeons, which are larger more complex & contain an additional mini-boss fight. As a reward for completing one of them you might be getting special loot to help you on your journey through the desert! Quick Look at one of the main dungeons Another small preview from one of the main dungeons: We've also updated our other social media accounts you might want to check out! Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFVDyrvWYAjFxkWnfQM-2TA Twitter(X): https://twitter.com/ScorchingDesert Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61552081970620 Kic…
- Designing of Dungeons | Progress Update #002 - 29 October 2023
Welcome to our second Progress Update! Finished the Steam Achievements! We're really excited to tell you, we've finished our work on the Steam Achievements, so you'll now be able to collect 62 Achievements (both easy & harder ones) in "Scorching Desert". These Achievements will help you prove that YOU are the ultimate survivor & the ruler of the deser! Exploring some of the Dungeons! In Scorching Desert you will be able to find many dungeons scattered throughout the map, some in caves, some in long-forgotten temple ruins and some ... harder to find. In these dungeons you will need to solve riddles, fight dangerous creatures and prove your worthiness! Will you be able to complete all of them? Mini Bosses We started improving / redesigning some of these ancient dungeons, so they're harder & deadlier! Additionally we are giving the "special" dungeons mini bosses to fight against. And for y…
- Progress Update #001 - 24 October 2023
Hello Guys and welcome to our first Anouncement First of all we want to thank you alot for your support! From now on we'll be posting some of our current development progress on steam& other social media. So keep an eye out for new features & gameplay in the future! We currently finished our work on the Camel - your best Friend in the lone desert You'll be able to tame a camel with special food found in some of the oasis in the dunes biome. Whenever you've met your friend and tamed him up he'll be able to equip a saddle and let you ride him through the desert at way faster pace! Additionally he can carry some of your baggage for you and provide some shade via mountable sun protection - no more painful sunburns during your journeys! Starting to work on the Steam Achievements We're now focusing on Steam Achievements & some minor bug fixes / optimizations in UE5 The Icons & Ideas for Achie…
