Snowed In · published
Hi everyone!
Over the past few weeks, I've been working on a major round of improvements for the Snowed In Demo, based on player feedback, videos, bug reports, and a lot of additional testing.
This update focuses on polishing the core experience, improving performance and controls, fixing frustrating bugs, expanding support for different displays and controllers, and adding some new things to discover.
And yes... I've also hidden a few new secrets around the house. 👀
Snow digging has received another round of improvements.
Improved snow excavation in tight and difficult-to-reach areas.
Improved digging behavior around walls, corners, doors, and other geometry.
Reduced several situations that could cause noticeable FPS drops while digging.
Improved overall consistency and feel of snow removal.
Added and improved HUD feedback for digging and the snow bag.
Fixed issues with the house-cleaning progress bar.
House cleaning can now correctly reach 100%.
Digging is one of the most important parts of Snowed In, so I'm continuing to improve how it feels in different parts of the environment.
A lot of work went into performance and collision cleanup throughout the house.
Optimized several problematic areas that could cause major FPS drops.
Improved collision around stairs, walls, narrow passages, and environmental objects.
Fixed several places where the player could stick to walls or behave incorrectly near geometry.
Fixed objects occasionally getting stuck inside or passing through walls.
Improved collision behavior for thrown objects.
Fixed several troublesome floor and wall collision gaps.
Improved movement through narrow areas.
Fixed an issue related to jumping and certain wall/collision interactions.
These changes should make movement and physics feel much more consistent.
The tool progression and reward presentation have received a visual polish pass.
Reward images and presentation have been improved for multiple tools and important items, including:
Shovels
Axe
Crowbar
Icebreaker
Torch / cutting tools
Flamethrower-related items
Keys and other progression items
Additional collectible and story-related discoveries
Several tool pickups, interactions, and unlock behaviors were also reviewed and improved.
Several interaction bugs involving carried objects have been fixed.
Fixed an issue where pressing the interaction button to open a door could also throw/drop the item currently being carried.
Doors now correctly take interaction priority when appropriate.
Improved carried-object behavior around doors and narrow spaces.
Improved throwing behavior and collision reliability.
Fixed several interaction prompts that appeared incorrectly or at the wrong distance.
Door interactions received additional improvements.
Fixed interaction conflicts while carrying objects.
Improved locked and blocked door feedback.
Improved Open / Close prompts.
Fixed several door collider issues.
Improved interactions with locks and progression-related objects.
Improved interaction distances for several environmental objects.
The temperature system has received additional fixes and feedback improvements.
Fixed an issue with extreme-cold detection.
Improved feedback when the player reaches dangerously low temperatures.
Improved temperature-related UI behavior.
Improved the consistency of heating and freezing states.
Additional temperature-related interactions have been added somewhere in the demo... 👀
The UI has been reworked to behave much better on ultrawide displays.
Fixes include:
Main Menu
Settings
Controls
Pause Menu
Journal
Tool reward screens
Collectible reward screens
Tutorials
End-of-demo screen
General HUD positioning and scaling
The demo has also been tested at ultrawide resolutions including 2560×1080 and 5120×1440, alongside standard 16:9 resolutions.
Controller support has received additional testing and polish.
The demo has been tested with:
Steam Deck
DualSense
Xbox Series X|S controller
Keyboard & Mouse
Several controller-specific pickup and interaction issues have been fixed, and prompts now behave more consistently across input methods.
Audio settings and environmental feedback have also been improved.
Fixed Music volume settings not being correctly applied after restarting the game.
Fixed the same issue affecting Sound Effects settings.
Music and SFX preferences now correctly persist between sessions.
Added additional sound feedback to interactions and environmental events.
Improved audio feedback for several progression moments.
A new “I'm Stuck” option has been added to the menu.
If physics or the environment ever leaves the player somewhere they shouldn't be, this option provides a quick way to recover without having to restart the entire demo.
I'm really happy to see how many players enjoy searching for collectibles, so exploration has received some extra attention in this update.
Added new collectible items.
Added new story/progression-related items.
Improved collectible reward images.
Improved several collectible hiding spots.
Fixed interaction issues with collectibles placed in difficult locations.
Added additional rewards for curious players who explore unusual parts of the house.
Some things are deliberately hidden very well. 😉
The flamethrower and its related systems have gone through another full testing pass.
Its behavior, effects, interactions, progression and accessibility within the demo have been reviewed and improved.
There may also be a little more to discover around this part of the house than before...
This update adds new secrets, hidden interactions and surprises throughout the demo.
I don't want to spoil them.
Some may require you to look somewhere you normally wouldn't.
Some may require you to experiment.
And some things that seemed ordinary before may now have another purpose.
If you've already completed the demo, there are now new reasons to explore the house again. 👀
Many smaller improvements have also been made throughout the demo:
UI and HUD polish.
Improved interaction prompts.
Collider cleanup.
Physics fixes.
Improved visual presentation of rewards.
Additional environmental sound feedback.
Small visual fixes throughout the house.
Improvements based directly on player videos and feedback.
Numerous smaller bug fixes and quality-of-life changes.
More than 3,000 players have already played the Snowed In Demo, and watching your videos, reading your comments and seeing what you discover has been incredibly useful while developing the game.
Thank you to everyone who has played, reported bugs, shared feedback, made videos, or added Snowed In to their wishlist.
I'm continuing to improve the game ahead of Steam Next Fest, and there's still much more of Snowed In that you haven't seen yet.
Thank you for playing!
See you in the snow! ❄️