In-game event1 Aug 2026DriveWave v1.5.222 - The One Where Nobody Had Suspension and Skydeck Gets RoommaHey everyone, This one took a while, and the reason is embarrassing. I've been going through the driving physics for weeks because the cars felt heavy and dead in a way I couldn't put my finger on. Turns out every drivable car in the game was sitting with its suspension completely bottomed out. Not stiff. Not badly tuned. Zero travel left. The springs had nowhere to go, so the car physically co…
Hey everyone, Bigger hotfix than usual this time, a new option, a couple of annoying bugs squashed, and some polish. Here is everything in v1.5.217. Wheel Drop Notifications are now your call There is a new toggle in Settings for the wheel drop claim popup. It is ON by default, so nothing changes unless you want it to. Turn it OFF and the claim button stops sliding in on its own. Instead, a Cla…
Hey everyone, Mostly a deep save-system sweep this round. A few of you sent long reports and some screenshots over the past week, and digging into them turned up more than I expected. Jukebox playlist Two layers, stacked. Every time the game shut down, an empty SavePlaylist was being written even if you had not touched the Jukebox that session, overwriting your saved playlist on disk with an em…
Hey everyone, I have been playing the latest Forza all week (I may or may not have already 100%'d it). Got frustrated that none of those miles count toward my DriveWave save, so I sat down and made the controller pipeline work even when another game is in focus. At last. But with a quirk at the end Controller Support (full rewrite on SDL2) I tore out the old controller code and replaced it with…
Hey everyone, Bigger hotfix than I planned. Iris Nebula sat down with the game for the first time and walked me through an entire first-session bug report on Discord, and NICO flagged a numpad input miss in the Steam discussions. Eleven things got fixed, all from those two threads. · Restart button actually restarts now. It was just quitting the game before, which killed Steam's playtime tracki…
Hey everyone, Two things in this hotfix. First, the km counter bug that 전투아가씨 reported in the discussions ("km bug?", Apr 23 and May 17): kilometer counter freezing at high mileage, the specific report was stuck at 67,125 km on the Bulgara. Short version of the cause, for the curious: the odometer was stored as a 32-bit float, in meters. Around 16,000 km the per-frame distance you add becomes s…
Hey everyone, If you've seen the reviews about saves disappearing after a power cut or a PC restart, this is the patch that fixes it. Two specific reviews from April 30 and a small pile of similar reports lined up on the same root cause, so I rebuilt the save backup pipeline from the ground up. What was wrong The game wrote one backup file next to the main save. A power loss at exactly the wron…
Hey everyone, Bigger one this time. The last week or so was supposed to be "just clean up the launch feel a little" and somehow turned into a full per-car upgrade system, a garage hub redesign, and a profiler bloodbath. You know how it goes. Here's what's new. Per-car upgrades Every car in your garage now has its own upgrade tree. 16 upgrades. Things like Cruise Control (with a toggle, in case…
Hey everyone, This time a pure hotfix. A few of you posted on the forums this week about the game launching, showing up in the taskbar, and then... not actually being there on the desktop. A couple of others noticed FPS dropping since the last patch. Both should be fixed, both in this build. 🖥 The window comes back · If your monitor was shorter than the window the game was trying to draw (most…
Hey everyone, Quick warning: this one is a big one. Not in "new content" size, but in "stuff that was quietly broken and is now fixed" size. I spent a few weeks rewriting the parts of the code I'd been avoiding, and a few of the bugs I found along the way made me laugh out loud. The big one: for as long as DriveWave has existed, car colors have been applied wrong. You'd pick a red paint, the sa…
🏁 10,000 Drivers! Hey everyone, Before anything else, DriveWave just hit 10,000 players. Ten thousand people running a little car on their desktop while doing other stuff. That's genuinely wild to me. When I first put this game together I was just making something to keep me company while working on my other projects. The fact that this many people enjoy it too means a lot. Seriously, thank yo…
Hey drivers! If you enjoy running DriveWave alongside your daily routine, you might like what I have been working on. Two new Dumbbell Games titles are part of Steam Next Fest February 2026 and both demos are live right now. Wartide Tower defense meets idle game on your desktop. Enemies attack your base from all directions. Deploy infantry, armor, and air support to hold the line while you work…
Hey everyone, Quick rundown of what’s new: · Added Handbrake . It becomes available under 10 km/h (mph) and brings the car to a full stop. While it’s active, the car won’t react to typing. Perfect for just sitting back and admiring the curves. (This may or may not be a hint at a future upgrade.) · Extended Bop Mode . When used together with the handbrake, the car now bops instead of gaining spe…
Hey everyone! You could've seen this coming from miles away Why's this dev taking the piss? I've been standing here for thirty mins waiting for this update to drop. v1.4.9 is here. Spent fifteen minutes scrolling through settings and found Bop Mode. Turn it on. Trust me. The dealer finally pulled up, overtaking cars like Max did Lewis. I said mate, slow down. He said "Nah man, I'm not complaini…
Hey everyone! It's been a while since I've touched DriveWave, so here's a quick update. Cars should now feel much more responsive and easier to handle overall. I also made a handful of smaller tweaks under the hood, but I didn't keep proper notes so I'll spare you the guesswork. In other news, I've been busy! I've released two new games in a similar spirit to DriveWave. Wartide Demo is availabl…
Hey everyone! A bit of a different announcement today, one of my closest friends just released his first game! Some of you might've already spotted it in the in-game banners. I've been playing it for a couple of days now (being friends with devs has its perks) and some of the interactions genuinely had me dying laughing. Go check it out, and if you like what you see, there's a nice 10% launch d…
Hey everyone, It’s been a while since the last update. Most of my time is going into getting Metal Thunder ready, but that doesn’t mean DriveWave has been ignored. With this update, I can finally say DriveWave is in a genuinely solid spot in terms of UX and general feel. You can actually drive the cars now. Literally. There are three tracks/maps in the game where you can take any unlocked car o…
Hey everyone, Let’s get straight to it. Hope you enjoy this update as much as I enjoyed putting it together. Symphony of Valves Cars finally know how to sing. All non-electric models now have proper engine sounds, each with its own audio profile tuned for tone, pitch, and overall feel. Electric cars are still quiet. I could add “realistic” electric audio, but nobody wants to drive around listen…
Hey everyone, This update is a bigger one. It adds full background music support, introduces the Skydeck environment, and includes a long list of improvements across UI, UX, and overall feel. New Features Meet Skydeck! The new Skydeck is a rooftop parking area with an underground party vibe. It is a place where you can display up to 38 of your favorite cars and walk around between them. Lots ca…
Hey everyone, This update addresses several issues you've reported and adds some handy improvements to make your DriveWave experience smoother. Quality of Life · Added a price filter to help you find cars within your budget (Thanks to Himitsu 🎆 ) · The game now remembers which environment you were last in and loads it on startup (Thanks to Himitsu 🎆 ) · Improved window dragging – you can now…
Hey everyone, This update brings a wave of new content and improvements to keep your rides fresh and your screens smoother than ever. New Content · 136 new cars added to the collection, including Racing, Rally, and Police cars. · Racing cars now feature vinyl options for extra style. · Expanded color variety across many existing cars. Quality of Life · New Car List UI that lets you browse every…
DriveWave — Full Launch is Here Hey everyone, Thank you all for trying the DriveWave demo during Steam Next Fest. Your feedback and support have meant a lot. It’s finally time to launch the game I made over the summer with my son as a small side project and to get myself back into the flow of making games again alongside Metal Thunder. What’s New · Full release with 25+ supported languages · De…
Hey everyone! I’m beyond excited to share that the DriveWave Demo is now live on Steam! Turn your everyday typing into a neon road trip, every keystroke powers your car across glowing deserts, midnight forests, and endless highways. Whether you’re writing, working, or just browsing, your car will keep cruising. What’s Inside the Demo: · 🌌 Neon Environments – Desert, Forest, City & more · 🚗 Co…
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Announcements are the developer’s own posts to the game’s Steam news feed: updates and their patch notes, in-game events, releases and sales. The important ones are marked on the players chart.