Spoiler Disclaimer: If you’re like me – then you don’t want any spoilers about a game until you boot it up for the first time. In that case, I suggest to not read this blog! I promise to make important release information as separate posts.
Update 010: Towers
Towers
Track Types
Running yourself over
Sprint
Hey all. At a high level I can say we are in the thick of things: simultaneously re-working the demo/starting area and working on a large chunk of the game that follows! Is that an insane decision? Probably.
Towers 🗼
We have been modifying our information towers a bunch. Towers in Railborn can be navigationally tricky to arrive at - but they reward you with some good info. What that info is? Well, currently you get revealed local Core locations and track layouts. There is additional information that could be revealed (dungeons, cryopods, etc) but at the moment we feel revealing everything sorta destroys the fun of exploration. Player feedback will help us with this one.
An example of a map reveal below:
Track Types 🪸
We have been experimenting with various track layouts. As you know our tracks are not linear, there are junctions, ups and downs. The challenge is how we communicate the best track information on a map to the player. Not as trivial as it seems. Our latest iteration currently has 2 baseline track types (not including weather affected tracks), mainline and off-road. We added mainline track as white, and orange for off-road tracks. Your speed decreases on these less maintained tracks, and also the visual in game changes.
Running yourself over 💀
After some local multiplayer testing we quickly realized jumping onto your train while it was moving was fun, but low stakes. Let me introduce you to running yourself over! That's right, if you jump onto your train from the side while in motion, you're good. If you end up being t-boned by your train, adios. Does this mean you can run over friends? Of course it does.
Sprint ⏩
We added a sprint, and have been agonizing over it for a week. Ok - this isn't that glamourous of a feature - but it is a good example of how a seemingly simple feature is iterated. How could a sprint exhaust in our game? There are so many possible many ways! I realize the gif here doesn't show the spring bar very well - you can see it in the center of the screen if you look closely. Is your suit running low on power verging on death? Now you have a sprint to get to safety!
And as a reminder, please shoot out our game link to some friends for a Wishlist or two 😊 Or even better, chat about us.
Smashlore & Taky
Disclaimer: Any features we write about might change before and during Early Access.