Hello everyone,
RoadCraft’s demo has been rolling for the past week, and seeing so many of you give a try to our game filled us with joy! Thousands of you downloaded and tried out the demo and you covered altogether more than 2 billion km on the demo, which is absolutely awesome! We've custom-made this demo to give you a sample of the gameplay and vehicles, but be assured that you're far from having seen everything!
Now, we are focused on carefully reading your feedback and we want to address some of them before we release the full game on May 20th.
First, the elephant in the room, the absence of fuel consumption
We know that fuel consumption is a core element in SnowRunner or Expeditions. But RoadCraft is a totally new experience for us, in the simulation field. It has been developed on a new iteration of our engine, and its technical specifications differ from those of our other games. For those reasons, it doesn't offer the same gameplay features. Map exploration and traversal is not as central, rebuilding and reshaping terrain are. When we started the development, we initially had a fuel consumption system, however this mechanic was tedious and didn’t bring anything interesting to the core gameplay of the game.
However, it doesn’t mean we want to throw away the idea without any reflection, and especially after seeing all your feedback on it. We might think about integrating fuel consumption, but later on, in a new game mode for example.
Another big topic is related to crane controls
We saw many of you being frustrated with the crane controls. We originally designed those controls to allow players to control both cranes and vehicles simultaneously, to improve the smooth running of certain multi-purpose tasks. Still, we are working on an additional control scheme to give you an alternative.
About the performance issues
We're aware that many configurations equipped with AMD graphics cards were unable to play the game in good conditions, and we're sorry about that. We are actively working to resolve this problem.
We are currently polishing and optimizing the game for its release. The demo was in a less optimized state than what the final game will be. We'll be especially vigilant to ensure that the game shines at its best.
The absence of vehicle damage and manual gearbox was also a talking point you mentioned
Our vehicles are not designed in the same way as in SnowRunner. Damage was out of the picture from the very beginning due to the migration to a new tech, and we were faced with a pretty straightforward choice: either make the game without it or don’t make it at all. Therefore, we will not be implementing vehicle damage and manual gearbox systems in RoadCraft.
The lack of immersive features, such as engine switch on/off switch, headlights, 3D model for the driver
Some of these features don't yet exist in the game, because we've concentrated on the core features of rebuilding gameplay and their immersive dimension. But we're working patiently to ensure that some of them can be integrated in the near future.
Last but not least
Since it's important to us that you get to know the game before it's released, and your feedback is invaluable in making the experience even better, we've decided to extend the demo beyond Steam Next Fest. The demo will still be available this coming week. Don't hesitate to try it out here, if you haven't already, and let us know what you think. And best of all: this demo is fully co-op, for up to 4 players, so round up your friends for an even richer experience.
