Hello all,
First off, thank you so much for playing Long Drive North, and sorry for the radio silence so far - following all of the feedback we needed to take stock and revise our planned updates.
It's clear that the game has not met your expectations at Early Access launch, and for that we are sorry.
We have a small bug fix patch which is now live. This patch will not address a lot of your issues and concerns, but we wanted to show you that we are still here, and that we will be launching some bigger updates over the coming months.
We have always wanted Long Drive North to be a true Early Access game, where we listen to what you want. As a small team, there will be issues and bugs that can only be found with lots of people playing the game, so we really appreciate all of your feedback! We are listening.
We have seen a lot of comments about the price of the game. There's a tough balance in Early Access: launch too soon and there's not enough content, launch too late and players can’t help shape the game. We believed we had enough content, and have been very open about what is and is not in the game at launch - we didn’t want players buying the game without understanding this.
That said, it’s clear that many of you aren’t yet feeling that the price you paid was worth the money, and we are sorry for that. We hope that over the life of the game we can deliver on what you expected and rectify your feelings towards this. With this in mind, we wanted to outline what we see as the journey forward:
Our first major update will now launch in late January and will focus on improving the world.
We have had lots of reports of the map ending, and people falling through the world. Fixing this is our first priority. Your bug reports have been really valuable in helping us understand why this is happening.
In addition, we are finding that lots of people are driving past some of the more hidden points of interest, adding to the feeling of the world being empty. We'll make the location of more of these important POIs more obvious. Plus, we'll be improving the way the map is created to add more variety and more places to explore and loot.
Finally, we will be re-balancing the loot system to address your feedback about food and other items.
These are the foundations of the game, so it is important we address these first.
Alongside the update in January, we'll be launching a new demo - so if you have not purchased it yet, you can check our progress, and buy when it feels right for you. We want to ensure you all get a chance to play before you buy, and check you're getting the experience you expect.
Once the game foundations are improved, and it is clear that players are happy with the work we are doing, we will add shared RV support.
🐛 Bug Fixes
Fixed issue where jerrycan would stick to the player after siphoning fuel
Fixed issue with player falling through the ground upon loading a save game
Fixed Authentication issue preventing players from joining a multiplayer session
Fixed arrows not saving when placed on the ground inside or outside RV
Fixed issue where renaming a save file prevented players from loading it
Fixed issue where tire condition wouldn’t increase if repaired by other players
Fixed issue where no audio would play when the RV crashed into an object
Fixed issue where the dog would float outside the RV when barking at the incoming storm
Fixed issue where abandoned vehicles would show differing fuel amounts per player
Fixed issue where weather wouldn’t progress after the player slept
Fixed issue where dog icon would show incorrectly on the compass UI
Fixed various words that were not localised
Thank you for your support so far.
The journey has just begun!