Hey everyone!
Today marks the start of the Steam Summer Sale, and we're excited to announce that Rewind 99 is 30% off - our biggest discount yet!
Whether you've had the game on your wishlist for a while or are just discovering it, we wanted to take this opportunity to share an important update on where the game is headed over the next few weeks.
A Quick Update on Optimization & Employee Behavior
First, we want to be completely transparent.
When we launched Rewind 99 over three months ago, we were blown away by the response. Seeing so many people jump into our weird little video store simulator was incredibly exciting.
As more players reached the end game, however, it became clear that we had some significant technical shortcomings.
For as goofy as Rewind 99 is, it's also surprisingly ambitious under the hood. An open world filled with hundreds of NPCs, dynamic shopping behavior, player-created movies, and thousands of custom assets being generated and loaded all put far more pressure on the game's systems than we anticipated.
The result was performance issues for many players, especially in the late game. On top of that, employee AI wasn't meeting our expectations, often making store management more frustrating than fun.
Those issues have been our highest priority ever since.
Two Teams, Two Paths
Since launch, we've been developing Rewind 99 along two parallel paths.
Our artists and designers have continued expanding the game with new content, including:
Video Game Rentals
The Pier 67 expansion
New minigames
Player and weapon cosmetics
And plenty more still to come.
Meanwhile, our engineering team has been focused almost entirely on rebuilding core systems to dramatically improve performance, optimize memory usage, and make employee AI significantly smarter and more reliable.
It's easily been the biggest engineering effort we've undertaken since launching into Early Access.
The Next Update
Our goal was to ship this major technical update today alongside the Steam Summer Sale.
The good news is that it's feeling really promising.
The bad news is that it's not quite ready.
Rather than rushing it out, we'd rather spend a little more time polishing and testing everything to make sure these improvements are as solid as possible.
We're currently targeting next week for the update.
Important Save File Information
Because this update changes some foundational systems within Rewind 99, existing save files will unfortunately not be compatible.
We know that's disappointing, and we explored every option we could to avoid it. Ultimately, rebuilding these systems properly required changes that aren't compatible with existing saves.
We believe it's the right decision for the long-term health of the game, even though it's not an easy one.
Thank You
We wanted to share all of this as the Steam Summer Sale begins so everyone can make an informed decision before purchasing the game.
If you decide to jump into Rewind 99 during the sale, thank you. Your support allows us to keep improving the game, and we're incredibly excited for you to experience what we've been working on over the past several months.
We genuinely believe this upcoming update is a huge step forward—not just for optimization and employee AI, but for the future of Rewind 99 as a whole.
As always, thank you for your patience, your feedback, and your support.
If you have any questions, leave them in the comments below and I'll do my best to answer them.
See you in Reshoot Springs!