Hey everyone!
When we launched Rewind 99 into Early Access, we learned a lot. Many of you loved the core loop, but two pieces of feedback kept rising to the top:
Mid-to-late game performance needed serious work.
Employees weren't nearly as reliable as they should be.
So while our small but mighty art team kept building new content, the rest of us spent the last several months rebuilding the game's foundation.
"Remix" is exactly that - a second pass on Rewind 99's core systems. Smoother, faster, more reliable, with a handful of new things to find along the way.
This is the biggest technical update we've shipped, and it's only the beginning.
READ THIS FIRST
New save files are required. We really wanted to avoid this, but we found that to deliver the best version of Rewind 99 that we could continue to build upon was changing enough foundational technology that would make old save files unstable. I know from experience with other games that losing progress is never a pleasant experience - I have distinct memories of my Gameboy Color batteries dying and losing significant Pokemon progress back in the day. So I'm really sorry about this. But I believe in the long run, this will ensure the community can continue to enjoy Rewind 99 for a long time.
MULTIPLAYER STATUS: Multiplayer is disabled in this build while we resolve performance instability. A Legacy branch is available so you can keep playing co-op on the previous version - instructions here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WJLVoLdwzkX6j-wvsvddeOH-sgciwlfRPzOVu8hXw8s/edit?usp=sharing. Bringing multiplayer back is our top priority and we'll share a timeline as soon as we trust it.
BUGS: For full transparency, and majority of the team and I pulled an all nighter preparing the build for today. Stomping bugs and polishing a game can sometimes feel like a "two steps forward, one step back" kind of process. I highlight this because while we fixed a lot and got the build feeling good in our testing, I'm sure there are things that emerged without our knowing. Because of this I really want to highlight that if you want a completely bug free, it is likely best to hold off on playing Rewind 99 until we get the chance to see early feedback and get a hotfix or two out. I just want to be honest and set the right expectations. We're working really hard and getting this patch out was really important to improve the status quo. But we are very aware our work isn't done yet.
Performance & Employee Overhaul
Major performance improvements across the board, especially in larger stores and longer save files. There's still work ahead, but the mid-to-late game experience should be dramatically better.
We also rebuilt employee behavior from the ground up. Employees now:
Restock shelves far more intelligently
Unload deliveries reliably
Require significantly less babysitting
We'll keep refining them, but this is a big leap.
Temporarily Disabled Side Hustles
Rebuilding the foundation came with a cost, and we want to be upfront about it.
Four Side Hustles are temporarily disabled while we finish rebuilding them to work with the new systems:
Sloshy Bar
Pizza Delivery
Rodeo
Arcade
These aren't gone. Each one comes back over the coming weeks as it's individually polished and tested.
We'd rather pull a few features for a few weeks than ship systems that don't meet the bar we're aiming for.
Controller Support
We were able to get to "partial" controller support. The last hurdle, frankly, is when naming your store we need to be able to pull up a keyboard overlay that you can navigate with controller. We are essentially tackling that in parallel to just making all inputs a bit more streamlined to navigate with controller.
TLDR - You can play Rewind 99 on controller/ Steam Deck, but its far from perfect. We are actively working on this and plan to roll out patches to improve it over the next ~2 weeks.
Late Rentals Reworked
You all made one thing abundantly clear.
When someone refuses to return your movies...
...you expected to beat them up.
The old "Push Your Luck" negotiation minigame broke the flow more than we liked, so it's gone. Late rentals are now collected the old-fashioned way: beat the overdue tapes directly out of delinquent customers.
World Updates
Reshoot Springs has gotten a little more interesting.
Lore Fragments: Scattered throughout the world. Collect them to learn more about Reshoot Springs, RentNet, and the strange things happening around town. This is Phase One of Storm the Tower. More on that soon.
Expanded Exploration: We've expanded portions of the map with several new secret areas to find. Mousegirl Mansion has also received a visual overhaul.
NPC Chatter: Citizens now have unique voices and will chatter when you interact with them. We're happy with the current system, but plan to refine and improve voices overtime!
Animated Trees: Trees now sway with the wind, adding a little more life (and a lot less stiffness) to the environment.
New Store Content
New store cosmetic items added
You can now set your store's operating hours through the open sign, so you're not pressured into running the place 24/7
Hold T to drop stacks of 20 items
Press C to sell items you are currently holding
RentNet Goons will now vandalize your store (they are getting more powerful...)
New achievements
Ambient NPCs now react to damage
Improved experience for the existing 4 side hustle (they were missing gameplay for certain levels)
Lots of ragdolling
... and more.
Bug Fixes
Found something we missed? Post it in [#bug-reporting] in our Discord or the Steam Discussions. We're patching aggressively this week and reading everything.
Localization
In the 11th hour, we managed to get the Beta of our Brazilian Portuguese translation in. You can access this by going to Settings -> Gameplay -> Language.
I really want to highlight this is a Beta for our localization pipeline. We expect issues and testing has been limited. Once we get this stable, we will be working with our localization partners to add additional languages.
We also still need to roll out our localized Store Page copy. Apologies for this not being ready yet!
What's Next?
This isn't the end of development for Rewind 99 - not even close.
Remix lays the groundwork for everything ahead. Now that the technical foundation is stronger, we can get back to shipping new content much faster.
The four disabled Side Hustles return first, along with re-enabling co-op. After that, Storm the Tower moves into its next phase.
A full content roadmap covering the rest of the year is coming in September, and we are working to get that out as early as possible.
As always - thank you for the feedback, the bug reports, the videos, the streams, the memes, and the support. Every update makes this a better game because of this community.
We'll see you in Reshoot Springs.