First, thank you to everyone who jumped in, raided the Titans, reported bugs, shared feedback, posted clips, and helped us put Enginefall through its largest test so far. This playtest gave us a much clearer picture of where the game is working, where it is confusing, and where it needs improvement.
Coming out of the playtest, there are three main areas we want to address directly: performance and optimization, cheating, and the new player experience
Performance and Optimization
The top issue from this playtest was performance.
Some players ran into frame drops, stuttering, server instability, rubber banding, loading problems, and other technical issues that made the game feel worse than it should.
The team is actively working on performance and optimization. We are reviewing data from the playtest, player reports, hardware differences, server behavior, and the moments where issues became most visible. Large-scale tests are useful because they reveal problems smaller internal tests cannot always expose.
Performance and optimization are a major focus for the team, and we expect the game to be in a much better state for the next playtest.
Cheating and Fair Play
The second issue was cheating.
We saw the reports, clips, and discussions from players who ran into suspicious behavior during the playtest. Cheating is frustrating in any game, but it is especially damaging in a survival PvP game where gear, risk, progression, and player trust are such a large part of the experience.
We are dedicated to fair play, and we are reviewing how we detect, investigate, and enforce against cheating. We are also looking at the reports and evidence submitted during the playtest to better understand what happened and where our current tools need to improve.
New Player Experience and Onboarding
The third issue was the new player experience.
A lot of players entered the playtest without a clear enough understanding of what they should be doing, how to progress, why they should move through the train, how extraction works, what resources matter, how the Dagger connects to Titan Trains and the connected Railworld of Enginefall.
Enginefall has a lot of systems, but the first experience needs to do a much better job of helping players understand the basics. Players should not feel lost before they even get to the interesting decisions. They need clearer goals, better direction, stronger explanations, and a smoother path into the core loop (before they decide to jump off the side of their dagger with all their resources to “see what happens”)
We are reviewing feedback around early missions, UI clarity, progression, train flow, extraction, resource discovery, combat expectations, Dagger systems, and the overall first-session experience.
What Comes Next
Beyond those three key areas, we are also reviewing feedback on gun combat, weapon feel, balance, progression, crafting, solo vs group balance, Dagger vs Dagger encounters, bugs, exploits, server issues, and quality-of-life improvements.
This playtest gave us a massive amount of feedback, and the team is already digging through it. Some problems became much more visible at this scale. Some systems landed well. Others clearly need more work. That is the value of testing this early and this openly.
Servers will be offline while we review the results, prioritize fixes, and prepare for the next phase of Enginefall testing.
Playtest Sign-Ups Are Open Again
While servers are offline, we have reopened playtest sign-ups.
If you want to take part in future Enginefall tests, make sure to wishlist and follow us! We will share more details about the next playtest once the team has reviewed feedback, prioritized fixes, and locked in the next testing window. Thank you again for being part of the Steam Next Fest playtest. Your feedback, reports, clips, discussions, and honesty all help shape what Enginefall becomes next.