Quick update for some small fixes and modder requests! Let me know if there's any problems.

Current List of Changes:

• The max limit for both Perks and Traits have been increased to 64, up from 32
• OPP's Familiar Lounge renamed to Character Lounge
• Fix for an edge case where you didn't get extra supplies for some characters in OPP and the Jerks modes
• Back to the Wall no longer enforces a boring personality
• Ex-Wrestler AI can now pick up zombies 4 real 4 real (5 real)
• A fix for Brck pmons
• MULTIPLE fixes for Brck pokeymons
• Johnny logic for recruitment with a full group
• Fix for teammates that died in a trader camp still able to talk in CYOA events in a camp
• Assault Shotgun added ot weapon_list_firearm
• Lowered the brck countdown by 1

Some small changes that we're going to launch as a hotfix update for OMENTUM. Also in here, we're doubling the maximum amount of Perks and Traits that Death Road to Canada can handle. This is mostly for modders for now, though it may eventually have been necessary for updates, anyway. TO ACCESS THE TESTING BRANCH: [olist]

Lots and lots of changes in this Major Update! Read below for a full list of all the new content. I wanted to get in some new events, and also incorporate a lot of event images that we ended up not using for years that we had lying around since launch. There's also a new system for CRITICAL HITS that a new Perk and an old Trait uses, 4 new rare characters, Fire Extinguishers, and more! Much of this new content, such as the new characters and fire extinguisher, the perks and traits, and even many of the bugfixes was provided by Arq, a modder on the Official Rocketcat Discord. Check out the #deathroad-modding and #mod-showcase channels for more mods. I am entirely to blame for most of the new events. Direct complaints below or in the Official Discord, #complaints-against-kepa (our most popular channel!) Coming up: I'd really like to get out another, small content update. I'll make a post for some rough plans for this and other news in about a month!

OMENTUM UPDATE Full List of Changes:

New Rare Characters


Brick the Pukeymon Trainer, Carter the Cartographer, Johnny the Soldier, Arq the Programmer
• Brick is a recruit in trader camps where you can buy Pukeyballs from him and/or recruit him, he has a special Pukeymon that follows him in missions that gradually evolves and gets more powerful
• Carter is a trader camp recruit, you can buy a map from her that will act as a free reroll for any ABL event. Recruiting her yields the Explorer and Pathfinder perks alongside the City Seeker trait
• Johnny is a rare character findable via rare city event. He has exceptional combat stats, 7 max for strength, fitness, and a max of 12(!) for shooting. He is based off a modified Berserk! Trait, with his medical and mechanical further not being trainable above 2
• Arq can be found via rare city event. He starts ith Gourmand, is slightly slow, and has a 2 point fitness penalty

  Major Changes

  
  
• The game now has an icon!
• 11 new events added! 2 Bandit events, 7 common events, 1 rare event, 1 camping event
• New functionality: Being able to get an extra "Always Be Looting" from an event!
• Lots of unused cyoa-images added to old events
• Back to the wall and Unpredictable traits added
• Supporter, Fierce Hitter, and Jack of All Trades perks added
• Support for Critical Hits added
• Fierce Tempered also adds some crit now
• AI Followers with Ex-Wrestler or Grappler can now pick up and throw zombies on their own!
• New Weapon: Fire Extinguisher. Finally added to the game!
• Support added for actually extinguishing permanent fires. Not so permanent now!
• The Four Jerks modes have had their zombie amounts lowered as per a popular suggestion from the server, 15% down from 30% for the normal Jerks and 200% down from 250% for the extreme Jerks.
• AI Followers can now pick up and throw Zombies on their own
• OBAMA is now case insensitive(!)
• Shorter version of zforecast, called zforecast-short, added to the Canada Crossing Event. This makes more room for the text after an image was added, and you didn't really need to know the time for the final event at that point, anyway

  Bug Fixes

  
  
• The tons of Custom Characters in the OPP mode removed, replaced with a teleport to the Familiar Hut. We had to separate these because there were so many characters in one scene that it was causing problems
• Better stack handling/error preventing in Familiar Hut
• Tweaked where the bonus loot Perks give you the bonus loots after Familiar Hut and OPP, to prevent possible exploits
• Fix for OMENT-secretdoc leading to the wrong event with picking 4 people
• Fixes for special character despair events for characters that didn't have one
• Removed some extraneous duplicate image calls for several old events
• Fixed some old events that had their images not show up due to a bug
• Fix for an all-buddies-dead join crash
• Center the window after creation, to avoid some weirdness on older SDL versions
• Better dead loot/weapon text updates in trunk screen when driving or in mission
• Potential fix for character statmod icons/descriptions not displaying if mod ID over 31
• Check word "someperkchecks" for Ultrafit, Healthcare, and Gun Collector perks to not give you supplies unless you actually recruit the recruits
• Bow and Pyro regen events moved a bit to play nice with Back to the Wall, along with adding it to Dailymedic
• Fixed some weirdness with blurbs leaving a bunch of stuff on the stack, but this may still happen
• Fixed a bug that caused the game to forget a character's .skeleton_spriteid when saving and loading a game
• Fixes for some old camp event CYOAS
• Santa event fix
• Fixes for BURN UNIT when you pick from 4 people
• Fix for an incorrect link when picking from 4 people in the Chessmaster Event
• Fix for Apocalyptic Coffee event if you were a Dog or Cat
• Fixes for special character despair events for characters that didn't have one

  Note for Modders

  
  
• EXPERIMENTAL: If you fill up the game's atlas size, it should now double in size automatically on Windows. Let us know if this works! This shouldn't change anything with the normal game, unmodded
• MODDERS/MYSELF: Extra comments added to old files so I don't forget basic things like "how do event card draws work

Here's a big list of all our changes so far. This could be the final beta before the update is out! We will need your help testing. NOTE: This will use your default saves! Previous beta builds used a separate beta save structure, in case we messed something up horribly. [strike]Linux and Mac should be on testing branch tomorrow, if nothing goes wrong.[/strike] Up for Mac and Linux! Many of these changes are from the Death Road Modder, Arq, from the Official Discord modding channel! TO ACCESS THE TESTING BRANCH: [olist]

Some extra requests and tweaks! The game finally has an icon. Looking into improving the icon for different sizes. Next up: Linux, I hope. TO ACCESS THE TESTING BRANCH: [olist]

We're tackling some small fixes we saw people point out. Next up is getting the Linux version up on testbranch, which I want to do over the weekend. Let me know if we missed anything, especially bugs with the new content! I'm also looking at other things people have pointed out in feedback, but I'm running out of stuff to do on my OMENTUM list. TO ACCESS THE TESTING BRANCH: [olist]

Had to take a break for personal life reasons. Now back into it! I'd really like to launch this update this month. For that to happen, we'll need a lot of testing! I'm already planning one more testing branch update this week, to do some small fixes I'm seeing in the Discord deathroad-test-branch channel. As always, the more feedback we get, the sooner I can launch this. TO ACCESS THE TESTING BRANCH: [olist]

After being sick, continuing testing branch by starting to incorporate modder content, starting with some from Arqs' mod! Let me know what you think of the new changes, especially the new Traits and Perks so far. There's still plenty of time to tweak them. TO ACCESS THE TESTING BRANCH: [olist]

I got sick for awhile, and that threw off me making content for the OMENTUM update. Now I'm getting into that again. Here's news on what we're thinking for the rest of the update:

• I'm about done with my new events work. I think they turned out great, but I'll be watching feedback for any suggestions as to what to tweak. With this mostly done, I'm going to be concentrating on at least 1 goal for OMENTUM before launching it.
• We're going to be looking into localization again, after the success of a team making a mod that localizes the game into Chinese
• I would like to talk to modders again to get some of their content into the game. Like before, we'd make some mod content officially into the game, with any tweaks, rebalancing, and bugfixing necessary

A new update for the testing branch for the upcoming OMENTUM update for Death Road to Canada! The focus of this update will be on events, with additional extra content and bugfixes on top of that. Help us test it out! The more testers we get, the faster we can launch the update. Currently only on Windows, but we will add Linux and Mac closer to the end of the update beta testing process like we usually do. TO ACCESS THE TESTING BRANCH: [olist]

The testing branch for the upcoming "O Update" has just gone up. Currently it's mostly checking if the new build works properly on Windows. The plan is that I will add more content to this about once every week or two, until the update is completely done, tested, and ready to go for everyone. TO ACCESS THE TESTING BRANCH: [olist]

I've been working on the next Death Road to Canada update, and also our upcoming First Person Swordfighting game, Dad by the Sword ( Wishlist it here! ) For the next update, I'm planning on focusing entirely on content. The current plan is also to get some Death Road community modders to add some content to the game, much like we did with Professor Sycamore in a previous update. For now, I'm focusing on getting new CYOA Events in the game this time, as I don't think I've added much in quite awhile now. I'm also going to dive through the Suggestions section on the Discord. Quite awhile ago, one of the mods set up a bot in #deathroad-suggestions where people can propose ideas, and then vote on their favorite ideas. Check this out on the Official Rocketcat Discord! As soon as we're ready to test the next update, I'll put it on the beta testing branch and make a post on how to access this! I'm hoping to get testing branch up some time in August, likely later in the month. Thanks for all your support for Death Road, and I hope you enjoy the next update!

Every once in a great while, we do some kind of limited merchandise for Death Road to Canada. This time, we have a Horse Mann plush you can buy! If this does well, we'll likely offer other characters. Get one here before time runs out: https://www.makeship.com/products/horse-mann-plush Let me know what other characters you'd be interested in seeing in the future. Also, stay tuned for news on the next big content update!

For the NERVE Update, I wanted to do two things we haven't been able to do but were on our radar for a long time. One is that we added a lot of character customization options, both default and unlockable! There's new hats, glasses, tops, bottoms, and more. The other thing is a complete overhaul to how Weapon Selection works for your Follower AI Buddies. Before, they tried to go by a formula to determine what they picked up and used, based on their stats. Not only did this not work great, there was also a bug we recently discovered that made them love new weapons way too much compared to what they already had. This contributed to them dropping claymores for tennis rackets sometimes. Now, Followers will pick up and use weapons based on an Official Tier List that compares groups of weapons with each other. I am going to post these below for reference, but mostly I think this should feel a lot better in-game even if you have no idea what the actual list is.
This list is slightly out of date with recent changes, but most should be accurate! Let me know what you think of this giant change after you get a chance to play it. Also, Tnomey was buffed and the Halloween Event lasts much longer now! Read on for full notes for all the changes!

Coming Up Next

Our Thanks

Nerve Update: FULL LIST OF CHANGES

Major System Changes

New Character Customization Details

Other Fixes/Minor Tweaks

Modder Notes/Under the Hood Stuff

The Death Road to Canada Halloween event has been extended this year! Usually it only takes place on Halloween itself, but now it will be available from October 25th to November 1st. Behold these features:

• Start the game with a Rare (Monster) Character, or a Chainsaw Hand. Or discard these choices for something goofy and have severe Halloween Regrets
• The usual jerks and dinguses you find in game may be replaced with costumed Trick or Treaters
• Throwable Jack-o-Lanterns! Rank S- in the Death Road to Canada Official Power Charts in the Throwable Produce Sub-Category

• AI revamp for how followers prioritize weapons. Weapons are arranged by Tiers now, and followers won't drop a higher tier weapon for a lower one. That means no more having your characters drop a claymore for a tennis racket
• New character customization options, and lots of them, both unlockable and standard
• New buyable upgrades using Zombo Points, including a way to buff Tnomey so you can make Tnomey Trades three times per game instead of just once

6 Years of Death Road to Canada!

Help Us Test the NERVE Update!

The MANDIBLE update adds new locations, weapons, and special characters to the game, along with a new major feature that lets you very quickly change what character you're controlling! Now you can assign buttons your keyboard or controller to quickly swap your player controlled character in your team, without pausing. There's also a slew of other new tweaks and additions, including new zombie heads and buffs to old locations. Read on for full notes for all the changes!

Coming Up Next

Our Thanks

MANDIBLE Update: FULL LIST OF CHANGES

Major System Changes

New Locations

New Characters and Weapons

Previous Location Tweaks

Weapon Tweaks

Other Fixes/Minor Tweaks

Modder Notes/Under the Hood Stuff

Here's a quick surprise update! It will add an event that will take place every Halloween from now on, or at least whenever your system clock is set to 10/31. This is a multiple choice event, make sure to CHOOSE WISELY! [flashing text] We're hard at work on the MANDIBLE Update, where we're hoping to add greater mod support to the game. Some other things you can expect so far: - Two new buttons added to the game! These will let you quickly swap between the next or previous character in your party, without pausing the game. This is a big change, and may open up new strategies with the finer control. - New locations and rare trading camps - A new way to access the car trunk in trading camps, if you don't have your car with you - Tweaks and rebalancing to some old locations that weren't really worth going to before, such as Factories You can actually help test some of this update RIGHT NOW! To do so, right click on Death Road to Canada in your Steam Library, go to Properties, then Betas, and opt into "beta - TESTBRANCH"! You'll be able to check out some new location changes, and the Quick Character Change buttons! Once we get to the part of the update where we're experimenting with mod support, we will start officially making posts on Steam about the testing branches. Until then, you can see testing branch updates and news on the Official Discord. There's a handy link to that in the game's title screen. Thanks for all the support so far! Enjoy all the Halloween cameo characters, though really you should just pick the Chainsaw Hand option.

Possible fix for Mac builds for Death Road to Canada's LIVER update is now up! Let me know if there's any problems as a reply to this announcement, or on the Discord

The LIVER Update has a bunch of new special characters, including finally, FINALLY having a reference to your favorite anime. It also features a bunch of new random character and custom character cosmetic parts, two new locations including a new Special Trading Camp, a supersoldier dog trained by the government, the Golden Pistol and Lil' Dawg, a new Perk and Trait, and more! Read below for full details.

Coming Up Next

Official Discord and Thanks

LIVER Update: FULL LIST OF CHANGES

Major Changes

Special Characters

Tweaks and Fixes

This should be the final touches for the beta on the upcoming LIVER update, now with Windows, Mac, and Linux builds! This has a bunch of new special characters, including finally, FINALLY having a JoJo reference. A couple new locations including a new Special Trading Camp, a supersoldier dog trained by the government, the Golden Pistol and Lil' Dawg, a new Perk and Trait, and more! Help us in our last bit of testing. Post your feedback in this Steam post, or directly to our Discord (link now in-game).

INSTRUCTIONS

FULL LIST OF CHANGES

Major Changes

Special Characters

Tweaks and Fixes

I've gone through most of the changes I wanted to add for the upcoming LIVER Update. Help me test this out so I can launch this for everyone! For the rest of the beta, the new PREPPER PARADISE rare trader camp can be teleported to from the game start. Some remaining things I still have to do, likely in an update either tomorrow or the day after: - Final fixes/tweaks - Endings and dialogue for the newer characters - One more new location, that will have multiple variants

INSTRUCTIONS

CHANGES TODAY (Read Previous Testbranch Announcements for more)

Continuing the beta testing branch, about halfway done with adding changes. Read below for changes today to the beta, and also remaining plans for this update. NEXT UP FOR LIVER UPDATE: - One new rare trader camp: Prepper Paradise - Moving BIG DAWG to above location - New rare city encounter - A few new Locations - Maybe some new cosmetic parts - Endings and dialogue for the newer characters - GNOMEY BUFF - Final tweaks and fixes

INSTRUCTIONS

CHANGES

MODDER NOTES/UNDER THE HOOD

Continuing the beta testing branch with more new changes. The "Stamp Users" are all in and can be found in game, with all their different Stamps. We're also starting to add the new customization options.

INSTRUCTIONS

CHANGES

MODDER NOTES/UNDER THE HOOD

We're gearing up for another major update. I will be pushing a bunch of changes we've been working on, a bit at a time. Help us test things out and we can get the update out sooner!

INSTRUCTIONS

CHANGES

This is a big update, focusing on some all-new systems for both multiplayer and singleplayer! There are also numerous tweaks and fixes. Read on for changes in this update, and what we're planning next, including a new game in October and another update in about 2-3 months! NOTE: The Fireproof trait got removed, with fireproofing being merged in with Phoenix. You'll have to change any Custom Character that has the old Fireproof trait!

MAJOR CHANGES

Future Plans

Full List of Changes for KIDNEY Update

• NEW UNLOCKABLE HATS (insert flashing text here), accessed via a Ugnomey location that can be bought for Zombotown for 30 ZP. This will unlock Challenge Statues that will lead you on the path to getting your sweet new hats
• New pop-up Character Select menu for co-op multiplayer! Have a non-leader player press start to bring this up
• In co-op multiplayer, players can control Rat Recruits if there are no normal recruits to pick. These are very weak, but still get to influence the world with their claws. The goal is to have less waiting around if you run out of people in a multiplayer game. More work on this system is coming!
• NOTE: Your old custom characters that used Fireproof (which was removed) will become unable to move. You will have to change their trait manually to fix this.
• Four Jerks Mode added. This lets you start the game with the option to recruit an additional 2 Custom Characters, so that you can start with a full car. Zombie amount is increased +30% to compensate, but you still get easy bandits.
• Four Jerks Mode EXTREME added. +150% zombie amount, with cruel bandits.
• Four Jerks Mode gives 3 zombo points per win, EXTREME gives 10 per win
• Four Jerks EXTREME now gets the harder ending, like O*P*P does
• Vsync support added in Options
• Added support for car headlights/taillights
• Rare Arcade Special Trader Camp back in, after a major bugfix
• New arcade machine added to Rare Arcade, that gives the fireproof stat to one character for 10 food
• Bryu and Saguts stats changed a little, and they can no longer take weapons
• Long hair options for characters now draws over the back properly, instead of getting hidden
• New button in New Game Start to randomly pick custom characters for the leader and buddy
• Added extra smileys for over the usual max or under usual minimum levels, with flashing effects
• New randomization options for randomizing specific character parts, instead of the whole character
• New Trait! Dingus Savant gives 1 extra max point to shooting, mechanical, AND medical, but has a -1 max health and -2 max morale penalty. It's intended for someone that wants a super "win every skill check" support character, but without Civilized's "win every personality check" benefit, less severe downsides to Civilized/Berserk, but also lacking the early game power. Let me know what you think! It's pretty nerfed from the original implementation of it
• Phoenix gets fireproofing now, and loses it on death
• Nurturing and Inventive now give +1 to the maximum of mechanical/medical, respectively!
• Civilized gives 1 point less each to mechanical/medical
• Over-max medical (7 or higher) now lets you heal up to 5 times, previously 3!
• Over-max mechnical now gives a tighter repair variance, 71-100%, up from 50-100%
• Top Seller now gives you more food, generally about 50% more than base. Let me know if this should be even higher, dimly considering making it double the food
• Travel Light now gives a point of fitness, just a little buff to make it more enticing
• Ex-Wrestler loses the -1 penalty to Strength and Fitness maximums, now gets -3 to max shooting
• Bow and Arrow now gets +2 strength as a freebie
• Trademark Weapon Perk change: Loses extra stats, but upgrades replace the Aluminum Bat with a Sturdy Machete
• Removed the weaker Trait-specific Special Trademark Weapons, as the Sturdy Machete is stronger than many of the old ones
• Buffed some additional Special Trademark Weapons: Nurturing gets a Bonesaw now, Inventive gets an Electric Leaf Blower that recharges, and Light Eater gets a Sturdy Cleaver. Specialist now gets a Knight Sword as its (only) weapon
• Bows now get a lot more from Strength stat, and draw much faster at all levels of strength
• Bows now take count over-max values for Strength. A TSTC character with a bow will draw it nearly instantly
• Bows now take stamina for drawing and holding the string, and draw much slower if fatigued
• Bow draw effects are more obvious when you're at max draw, if not fatigued
• Bow and Arrows + Specialist starts with the full 60 arrows now, and loses the extra phantom bow in slot B
• THE JERK STORE is back and better than ever.
• OPP mode expanded to add the following characters: Broom, Hermit, Bryu, Saguts, Clown
• Hardware store loot rebalanced a little, snow shovels put in as possible spawns
• Samedi gets a resurrect saying now, and her death saying is changed slightly
• Samedi gets something that is exactly like Phoenix, except for the new Fireproofing
• .unfireproof word added, used currently so that Phoenix loses fireproofing on the first death
• Phoenix trademark weapon is now the Hot Poker. I'm vaguely interested in buffing Trademark Weapon, so this is a first step there
• Fixed a UGnomey typo: "Toilets will also now have a higher loot chancez!"
• Roaming Capybara moved more Northeast, hopefully not too far
• If the console is enabled, extra error reporting will get turned on for modders in all builds
• If the console is enabled, enable CTRL+R, F5, and CTRL+number script hotkeys for modders
• Fixed a bug where smoke was leaving numbers in the stack
• Car beep pitch is now higher
• The PRONOUN BUG in the endings is finally fixed!!!!!
• Changes to chars_recycle() function. This should hopefully make the game become less buggy in very long playthroughs, such as Endless Mode. Needs more testing to see if this screws anything up
• Some small tweaks to character customization graphics.

This should be the last big testing branch update before we're ready to launch the update for real. Help us test this out, so we can get the update out quickly! Read below for a full list of changes, including from recent previous testing branches. Send any bugs or feedback by replying here or sending me a tweet: : Rocketcat Games Twitter INSTRUCTIONS IMPORTANT NOTE: The testing branch and the retail version use different save files! Testing Branch saves also get cleared out on occasion. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. 9/12 NEW CHANGES

• Hat unlocking changed. Second challenge and challenge statue added, for unlocking the hats in two batches instead of one giant batch. Beating 8 game modes will unlock the first 9 unlockable hats, and beating 12 game modes will unlock the remaining 6 for 15 unlockable hats total
• Wizard Hood unlockable hat position fixed, so it covers hair better
• Big nerfs to the Rat Recruits. They have 0 strength/fitness now and do normal punch damage, so they're unlikely to kill anything unless it's downed by something else. Will likely add more recruits later with better stats, as a rare bonus
• BRYU and SAGUTS can no longer take weapons
• Mac and Linux builds updated
• More permanent fix for the underlying issues of the Special Arcade crash

• Possible fix for the Special Rare Arcade Trading Camp crash bug. Please test! You can easily get to this area using the starting option (as long as you're not playing Four Jerks or OPP mode)
• Four Jerks Mode added. This lets you start the game with the option to recruit an additional 2 Custom Characters, so that you can start with a full car. Zombie amount is increased +30% to compensate, but you still get easy bandits.
• Four Jerks Mode EXTREME added. +150% zombie amount, with cruel bandits.
• Above new modes added to the endings, stat tracking, and various menus.
• Four Jerks Mode gives 3 zombo points per win, EXTREME gives 10 per win
• Four Jerks EXTREME now gets the harder ending, like O*P*P does
• Changed the hat unlock system so that hats can be unlocked by number, rather than being all unlocked at once. Another small change is coming for hat unlocks to use this, where you'll unlock the current hats in two challenges rather than all at once.
• If the console is enabled, extra error reporting will get turned on for modders in all builds
• If the console is enabled, enable CTRL+R, F5, and CTRL+number script hotkeys for modders
• Fixed a bug where smoke was leaving numbers in the stack
• Car beep pitch is now higher

• Further work on Temporary Rat Recruits
• Trademark Weapon Perk change: Loses extra stats, but upgrades replace the Aluminum Bat with a Sturdy Machete
• Removed the weaker Trait-specific Special Trademark Weapons, as the Sturdy Machete is stronger than many of the old ones
• Buffed some additional Special Trademark Weapons: Nurturing gets a Bonesaw now, Inventive gets an Electric Leaf Blower that recharges, and Light Eater gets a Sturdy Cleaver. Specialist now gets a Knight Sword as its (only) weapon
• OPP mode expanded to add the following characters: Broom, Hermit, Bryu, Saguts, Clown
• OPP mode rooms removed from temporary file, set to OPPmode.df itself
• Rare Arcade Special Trader Camp back in
• Rare Arcade temporarily gets a quick start option in the starting choices
• New arcade machine added to Rare Arcade, that gives the fireproof stat to one character for 10 food
• Bryu and Saguts stats changed a little
• Hardware store loot rebalanced a little, snow shovels put in as possible spawns
• Working on the four player start mode, not accessible yet

• In co-op multiplayer, players can control Rat Recruits if there are no normal recruits to pick. These are very weak, but still get to influence the world with their claws and hissing. The goal is to have less waiting around if you run out of people in a multiplayer game. More work on this system is coming!
• Lots of behind the scenes work to help this new system not break everything.
• NEW UNLOCKABLE HATS (insert flashing text here), accessed via a Ugnomey location that can be bought for Zombotown
• Phoenix gets fireproofing now, and loses it on death
• Fireproof in Zombotown changed to Dingus Savant, but still uses the old slot for Fireproof so that saves don't break
• Dingus Savant gives 1 extra max point to shooting, mechanical, AND medical, but has a -1 max health and -2 max morale penalty. It's intended for someone that wants a super "win every skill check" support character, but without Civilized's "win every personality check" benefit, less severe downsides to Civilized/Berserk, but also lacking the early game power. Let me know what you think! It's pretty nerfed from the original implementation of it
• THE JERK STORE is back and better than ever.
• Jerk Store / Challenge Hut added to UGnomey, costs 30 ZP
• Fixed a UGnomey typo: "Toilets will also now have a higher loot chancez!"
• Roaming Capybara moved more Northeast, hopefully not too far
• Challenge Statue Added, with the first Challenge: Beat 10 different game modes
• Hat Unlocks are now functional, with a check in globals.df and gtats saving for the Challenge Statue
• Samedi gets a resurrect saying now, and her death saying is changed slightly
• Samedi gets something that is exactly like Phoenix, except for the new Fireproofing
• .unfireproof word added, used currently so that Phoenix loses fireproofing on the first death
• Phoenix trademark weapon is now the Hot Poker. I'm vaguely interested in buffing Trademark Weapon, so this is a first step there
• Bow and Arrows + Specialist starts with the full 60 arrows now, and loses the extra phantom bow in slot B

• Bows now get a lot more from Strength stat, and draw much faster at all levels of strength
• Bows now take count over-max values for Strength. A TSTC character with a bow will draw it nearly instantly
• Bows now take stamina for drawing and holding the string, and draw much slower if fatigued
• Bow draw effects are more obvious when you're at max draw, if not fatigued

• Vsync support added in Options
• Nurturing and Inventive now give +1 to the maximum of mechanical/medical, respectively!
• Civilized gives 1 point less each to mechanical/medical
• Over-max medical (7 or higher) now lets you heal up to 5 times, previously 3!
• Over-max mechnical now gives a tighter repair variance, 71-100%, up from 50-100%
• Top Seller now gives you more food, generally about 50% more than base. Let me know if this should be even higher, dimly considering making it double the food
• Travel Light now gives a point of fitness, just a little buff to make it more enticing
• Ex-Wrestler loses the -1 penalty to Strength and Fitness maximums, now gets -3 to max shooting
• Bow and Arrow now gets +2 strength as a freebie
• Groundwork for adding in weak temporary characters for multiplayer, so that everyone can play even when your survivor group is wiped out. Not accessible yet!

• Bugfix for the game getting stuck in singleplayer due to not changing characters properly if the main character dies
• Adding support for car headlights/taillights

• The PRONOUN BUG in the endings finally fixed, maybe
• New pop-up character selector for multiplayer mode, to handle players taking over follower AI. Could use feedback so we can refine it
• Extra hat support added. What this means is currently a MYSTERY
• Long hair options for characters now draws over the back properly, instead of getting hidden
• New button in New Game Start to randomly pick custom characters for the leader and buddy
• Added extra smileys for over the usual max or under usual minimum levels, with flashing effects
• New randomization options for randomizing specific character parts, instead of the whole character
• Changes to chars_recycle() function. This should hopefully make the game become less buggy in very long playthroughs, such as Endless Mode. Needs more testing to see if this screws anything up
• Some small tweaks to character customization graphics.
• New weapon added, but not accessible yet, with a new secret effect

New beta testing branch, this time featuring new Temporary Rat Recruits for co-op, Unlockable Hats, a new Trait, and a Phoenix + Fireproof Trait merge! Coming up pretty soon are the Mac and Linux build for testing branch, some final changes for this update, and then getting the update out for all platforms. Still tracking some bugs down, more than normal due to all the new systems in this update. Could use a lot of help testing the Temporary Rat Recruits! Also, I still have some time to mess with any Perk or Trait balancing, as long as it's minor tweaks. If you have any feedback on that, or the new hats, reply here or send me a tweet: : Rocketcat Games Twitter I got really sick for a little over a week, so this coming update will be smaller than I originally planned. Still, I want to get a few more things in. Expect one more big Testing Branch update, then I really want to get this update out for Steam and all the other platforms. After that, I want to get back to doing an update every 2 months for awhile. More thoughts on this once this update is out for real. INSTRUCTIONS IMPORTANT NOTE: The testing branch and the retail version use different save files! Testing Branch saves also get cleared out on occasion. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. 9/5 NEW CHANGES

• In co-op multiplayer, players can control Rat Recruits if there are no normal recruits to pick. These are very weak, but still get to influence the world with their claws and hissing. The goal is to have less waiting around if you run out of people in a multiplayer game. More work on this system is coming!
• Lots of behind the scenes work to help this new system not break everything.
• NEW UNLOCKABLE HATS (insert flashing text here), accessed via a Ugnomey location that can be bought for Zombotown
• Phoenix gets fireproofing now, and loses it on death
• Fireproof in Zombotown changed to Dingus Savant, but still uses the old slot for Fireproof so that saves don't break
• Dingus Savant gives 1 extra max point to shooting, mechanical, AND medical, but has a -1 max health and -2 max morale penalty. It's intended for someone that wants a super "win every skill check" support character, but without Civilized's "win every personality check" benefit, less severe downsides to Civilized/Berserk, but also lacking the early game power. Let me know what you think! It's pretty nerfed from the original implementation of it
• THE JERK STORE is back and better than ever.
• Jerk Store / Challenge Hut added to UGnomey, costs 30 ZP
• Fixed a UGnomey typo: "Toilets will also now have a higher loot chancez!"
• Roaming Capybara moved more Northeast, hopefully not too far
• Challenge Statue Added, with the first Challenge: Beat 10 different game modes
• Hat Unlocks are now functional, with a check in globals.df and gtats saving for the Challenge Statue
• Samedi gets a resurrect saying now, and her death saying is changed slightly
• Samedi gets something that is exactly like Phoenix, except for the new Fireproofing
• .unfireproof word added, used currently so that Phoenix loses fireproofing on the first death
• Phoenix trademark weapon is now the Hot Poker. I'm vaguely interested in buffing Trademark Weapon, so this is a first step there
• Bow and Arrows + Specialist starts with the full 60 arrows now, and loses the extra phantom bow in slot B

New beta testing branch, as we start to mess with perk and trait balancing, and maybe add some more. Let us know what you think the weakest perks and traits are, or the most overpowered. You can either type that here, or on our Twitter account: Rocketcat Games Twitter Longer time passed since last update that I expected, mostly because we're still tracking a weird bug down. Hoping to get back on track with more Testing Branch updates this week! I will post additional builds and changes to this announcement, so check back here if you're interested in the latest changes. Or just wait until the next post next week. INSTRUCTIONS IMPORTANT NOTE: The testing branch and the retail version use different save files! Testing Branch saves also get cleared out on occasion. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. 8/23 NEW CHANGES

• Vsync support added in Options
• Nurturing and Inventive now give +1 to the maximum of mechanical/medical, respectively!
• Civilized gives 1 point less each to mechanical/medical
• Over-max medical (7 or higher) now lets you heal up to 5 times, previously 3!
• Over-max mechnical now gives a tighter repair variance, 71-100%, up from 50-100%
• Top Seller now gives you more food, generally about 50% more than base. Let me know if this should be even higher, dimly considering making it double the food
• Travel Light now gives a point of fitness, just a little buff to make it more enticing
• Ex-Wrestler loses the -1 penalty to Strength and Fitness maximums, now gets -3 to max shooting
• Bow and Arrow now gets +2 strength as a freebie
• Groundwork for adding in weak temporary characters for multiplayer, so that everyone can play even when your survivor group is wiped out. Not accessible yet!

• Bugfix for the game getting stuck in singleplayer due to not changing characters properly if the main character dies
• Adding support for car headlights/taillights
• The PRONOUN BUG in the endings finally fixed, maybe
• New pop-up character selector for multiplayer mode, to handle players taking over follower AI. Could use feedback so we can refine it
• Extra hat support added. What this means is currently a MYSTERY
• Long hair options for characters now draws over the back properly, instead of getting hidden
• New button in New Game Start to randomly pick custom characters for the leader and buddy
• Added extra smileys for over the usual max or under usual minimum levels, with flashing effects
• New randomization options for randomizing specific character parts, instead of the whole character
• Changes to chars_recycle() function. This should hopefully make the game become less buggy in very long playthroughs, such as Endless Mode. Needs more testing to see if this screws anything up
• Some small tweaks to character customization graphics.
• New weapon added, but not accessible yet, with a new secret effect
• Fix where the status smiley changes weren't showing up properly

Death Road to Canada updates will be starting up again. We're going to be rolling out some changes a bit at a time, and would like your help testing and giving feedback. Another testing branch build with more changes will be coming on Tuesday. A testing branch was also put up yesterday, so this will include the notes for that one, also. INSTRUCTIONS IMPORTANT NOTE: The testing branch and the retail version use different save files! Testing Branch saves also get cleared out on occasion. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. CHANGES

• The PRONOUN BUG in the endings finally fixed, maybe
• New pop-up character selector for multiplayer mode, to handle players taking over follower AI. Could use feedback so we can refine it
• Extra hat support added. What this means is currently a MYSTERY
• Long hair options for characters now draws over the back properly, instead of getting hidden
• New button in New Game Start to randomly pick custom characters for the leader and buddy
• Added extra smileys for over the usual max or under usual minimum levels, with flashing effects
• New randomization options for randomizing specific character parts, instead of the whole character
• Changes to chars_recycle() function. This should hopefully make the game become less buggy in very long playthroughs, such as Endless Mode. Needs more testing to see if this screws anything up
• Some small tweaks to character customization graphics.
• New weapon added, but not accessible yet, with a new secret effect
• Fix for yesterday's build where the status smiley changes weren't showing up properly

This is a small update for Death Road, the smallest one I can think of in memory. This is out for Windows as of now (10/30), Linux and Mac editions will be out early next week. After that we will update it on the other storefronts, though I need to get confirmation whether or not this update is big enough to hit console, or it will just be included in the next update 2-3 months from now.

LIST OF CHANGES

After a lot of delay, here's the second part of the ILEUM Update! We had to remove the Last Arcade rare trading camp, as it was causing too many crash issues. This also means you can't get the Bryu and Saguts rare characters. We're hoping to fix this in the update coming up next. Next up is sending this off to mobile and the console porters for the Switch/PS4/Xbox editions, and also the GOG version. The delay for ILEUM Part 2 was so long that it's dug into the next update, JEJUNUM. I think my plan for that will be to get that out as soon as I can, so it will likely be pretty small and focused. Not sure what it will contain now, maybe just go for fixes and character customization?

List of Changes

Update 8/18: Now also available for Mac and Linux! We've been trying to deal with a crash bug involving the new trading camp for a long time now. We're finally giving up and moving it possibly to the next update, instead. At this point the next update will probably be 1 to 1 and a half months from now. This will also unfortunately remove the BRYU and SAGUTS new special characters. Help test so we can launch this and get the update on mobile and consoles! INSTRUCTIONS IMPORTANT NOTE: The testing branch and the retail version use different save files! Testing Branch saves also get cleared out on occasion. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary.

LIST OF CHANGES

This should be the last testing update before we push this to the live version, unless something comes up. Please help test for Windows, Linux, and Mac! Post in the comments if you run into any problems. INSTRUCTIONS IMPORTANT NOTE: The testing branch and the retail version use different save files! Testing Branch saves also get cleared out on occasion. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary.

NEWEST CHANGES

FULL LIST OF CHANGES

The second part of the ILEUM update got delayed a little bit as we hunt down bugs. I will be posting multiple testing branch builds over the next few days, and then hopefully launching the update shortly after that. I will keep editing this announcement as the testing branches come up, and will do a new post when we're very close to launch. 7/7 1:40 PM Update: Fixes to multiplayer, some broken weapons, and some other tweaks. Please test the multiplayer fixes! INSTRUCTIONS IMPORTANT NOTE: The testing branch and the retail version use different save files! Testing Branch saves also get cleared out on occasion. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary.

7/7 LIST OF CHANGES

The ILEUM Update was released last night. The update features Steam Cloud save support, a new system for locking weapons on AI followers so you can force them to use something specific, a buff to dogs, and more. There will also be a part two to this update in a couple weeks that will add more events and rare trader camps, along with access to some additional weapons like the Napalm Launcher and two new special characters. Read on for a list of changes, and our plans for future updates!

List of Changes

Future Plans

The update is out! I'll be making a longer post tomorrow, along with compiled patch notes and news on the future. You can see all the patch notes for it in the last several posts, in the meantime. The biggest two changes are an AI weapon locking system and Steam Cloud support. There will be another part to this update in a couple weeks, which will add new events and finish adding all the rare trader camps. Post here if there's any problems with the new update!

EDIT 6/17 4:51 PM: I just uploaded another testing branch for some final checks. Now with Linux and Mac support along with Windows. Read below for a list of the newest changes. Posting the update some time tomorrow, it will have some new events and other changes we've been testing on the dev branch, the AI Weapon Lock, and the other changes we've previously posted to the testing branch. We will also do a part two to the update in a couple weeks like we've done with some previous updates, which will add more events and the new rare trading camps. This will also let us address any issue that pops up when a lot more people get to see the new weapon lock feature when it's live. INSTRUCTIONS IMPORTANT NOTE: The testing branch and the retail version use different save files! Testing Branch saves also get cleared out on occasion. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary.

List of Changes

We've been doing testing branch updates for the last week or so, but I haven't been posting the notes. The builds have mostly been about tweaking the new Weapon Lock system for followers, and notes on this have been included below. Next up: New event testing, there will be about 7 normal events and 2 bandit events added. Then testing the new special trading camps (one of which will let you get the two new special characters), and placing the new weapons in different places. I want to get out the update as soon as possible, so we will likely hold off on new fighting locations for this update and instead make the next update around two months from now be focused on new locations to splat zombies in.

List of Changes

Cloud Saving is up! This should already be on the retail version, not just on testing branch. Let me know if there's any problems. Smaller testing branch this time as we spent a lot of time testing Cloud Saving. Another one will come over the weekend. INSTRUCTIONS IMPORTANT NOTE: The testing branch and the retail version use different save files! Testing Branch saves also get cleared out on occasion. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary.

List of Changes

Had some setbacks with our developer version testing, getting back into public testing branches now. Check out the new weapon locking by hitting Z or X on a weapon twice in SWAP MEET, this should let you order followers to use and keep whatever weapon you specify. Below are patch notes of what we've added to testing branch so far, more content and other additions are coming. INSTRUCTIONS IMPORTANT NOTE: The testing branch and the retail version use different save files! Testing Branch saves also get cleared out on occasion. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary.

LIST OF CHANGES

Testing branches are coming back, for the upcoming new update! No patch notes yet, this is a test to make sure that nothing breaks. More content and features will be coming on Monday or Tuesday, along with more detailed notes. The big thing to test now: AI weapon locking. You can now go into the swap menu for teammates and hit a button twice to lock their weapon. This will prevent them from switching away from or dropping that weapon. There are some exceptions to them not switching their weapon, like if they quickly want to pick something up and switch back. This is also a work in progress, so there may be some things we need to change with feedback. You can do this to a melee weapon, a gun, or even an empty slot. Locking an AI character's gun is also a quick way to make one person in your team shoot, instead of having the entire team shoot. Let me know what you think of this new feature in the comments, and what you would like to see changed. INSTRUCTIONS IMPORTANT NOTE: The testing branch and the retail version use different save files! Testing Branch saves also get cleared out on occasion. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary.

New update coming soon. Two for the price of one! (price: free) This mini-update will add some extra content, and some extra features to the new local multiplayer changes. I'd like to get this out ASAP so we can get the updates out on consoles and mobile and so on, so help test! I'm posting the local multiplayer features first, and then will add in the bonus content over the weekend. I'll edit this post when the build gets updated. Currently this will be Windows only, but we'll add Mac/Linux over the weekend. INSTRUCTIONS IMPORTANT NOTE: The testing branch and the retail version use different save files! Testing Branch saves also get cleared out on occasion. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. CHANGES - The game now remembers who the leader was on the next mission. So if Player 2 was leader, they will retain leadership in the next mission. - All players now will get to retain who they were controlling at the start of the next mission. - When they're selecting a character to control, non-leader players can now choose to take over the characters of other players. The player swap indicator in the top right will have extra symbols to warn you that you're booting someone off their character. - Non-leader players can now take over the leader's character. This will give them leadership. This gives a way to swap which player is leader, which was missing before. - Fixed a bug where certain weapons would drop on death, when they weren't supposed to. This mostly affected weapons with charges, like the bow and arrow. Also Giga Mann's Blaster.

HUMERUS Update has launched, with several new major features. 4 player local co-op is now supported. Three new gameplay modes have been added, including Endless and OPP Mode, where you can start with whatever team of rare characters you want. There are additional features, tweaks, and fixes. Read below for a full list of changes.
We also plan on doing another small update with some additional features and content, in about 1-2 weeks. When that comes out, I will edit this post with the news.

Update Changes

Next Update Plans

Feedback and Following Us

Resuming the Testing Branch after working on 4 player changes for awhile! The big new thing is changing how choosing the Leader works, and adding new ways to allow other players to be the leader. This is to avoid constantly having Player 1 resume control when they die. There's still more work to do here. Let us know how this works for you, and any other suggestions you have for improving the local multiplayer We'll be adding a little bit of new content to this after we finish the multiplayer changes, but mostly we really want to get this update out. INSTRUCTIONS IMPORTANT NOTE: The testing branch and the retail version use different save files! Testing Branch saves also get cleared out on occasion, usually with new updates. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary.

LIST OF CHANGES

The Testing Branch now supports 4 player mode! We're currently working on more multiplayer improvements. This has taken up most of the update due to the work involved, though we also have some content coming to the testing branch soon. Likely still doing a new location, and at least a couple new special trading camps. EDIT: Let me know if the game doesn't run with this testing branch, and take screenshots. Tracking down a bug with this. Let us know all the feedback you have, for both 4 player and the new gameplay modes. INSTRUCTIONS IMPORTANT NOTE: The testing branch and the retail version use different save files! Testing Branch saves also get cleared out on occasion, usually with new updates. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary.

LIST OF CHANGES

The testing will start with 3 new game modes. We will be adding more over the course of the next two weeks! I will be updating this announcement with changes until we get closer to the update launch, likely somewhere in early or middle August. I will need lots of feedback for pretty much all of these new things! Newer changes at the top. INSTRUCTIONS IMPORTANT NOTE: The testing branch and the retail version use different save files! Testing Branch saves also get cleared out on occasion, usually with new updates. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary.

LIST OF CHANGES

Rocketcat Games just launched Wayward Souls, a randomly generated action-RPG with a focus on multiple playable characters and story. It's currently on launch sale. You can see more info on it here, including the trailer: https://store.steampowered.com/app/559260/Wayward_Souls/ You can also help me out a ton by retweeting my launch post for the game: https://twitter.com/rocketcatgames/status/1018911116246700033
--------- Death Road to Canada testing branches will start again this weekend! We're seeing if we can implement one or two very big features that people have been requesting for awhile. The first testing branch will probably start with smaller content we've been testing out, then we'll roll out more from there. This update will likely land some time in August, and will be dedicated to our 2nd Anniversary of Death Road to Canada's launch! This anniversary is on July 21st, Saturday. More news in the next post over the weekend!

The GIZZARD Update is out! This update tweaked the ending of the final level of the game, added a new song to the soundtrack, and added a new Rare Special Character to trading camps. Read below for a full list of changes, along with news on our big Anniversary Update! EDIT 6/11 12 PM: A new mini-update is up to add some bonus content and fixes! Read below for details.

New Game, Wayward Souls, Coming Soon!

Update Changes

Next Update Plans

Feedback and Following Us

Our Coming Soon page is up for Wayward Souls, our randomly generated action-RPG. It's coming to Steam Early Access on July 16th. See the trailer and wishlist it here! --- This update's smaller than normal overall, as the 2nd Anniversary Update is going to be big. We also had some difficulties, which is pushing some things back we need more testing on. I will add a few things in a small update after the initial update, still planned for Monday. Changes below! I'll update this post as I post builds. INSTRUCTIONS IMPORTANT NOTE: The testing branch and the retail version use different save files! Testing Branch saves also get cleared out on occasion. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. CHANGES 6/10 8:40 PM - Added the Last Mall on Earth, a new special trading camp. Has gas trader, weapons buyer, recruit campfire, 6 random traders, and a guaranteed rare 7th trader! - Added the ability for trading camps to force a rare trader - Fixed a hospital generation bug CHANGES 6/7 4:40 PM - Changed how the on-death attributes work. Now Phoenix, Shield of Hope, and the July 4th and Bort characters will not drop their weapons on resurrection. - Adjusted a bunch of city generation code. - Made that really narrow city no longer generate door-trash. CHANGES 6/3 8 PM - You can no longer sell no-drop weapons to the Weapons Buyer, THANKS MOODY - New Song Added: One More Road. Plays during credits and as a random road song. - Snubnose Pistol will now replace normal pistols 20% of the time - Double-barrel Shotgun will now replace normal shotguns 10% of the time - Ruined Trading Camp/Fire Sale: Removed the flaming car that was right next to you as you spawned. CHANGES 6/1 9 PM - Moody added - New weapon support added for Rocket Launchers and Electric Tools - New weapons for Moody: Off-Brand Plasms Rifle, Moody Launcher, Moody Chainsaw - Temporary ability to start the game with Moody

Death Road to Canada came out on consoles about a week ago: Playstation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch. It's doing well, and is currently one of the top sellers on the Nintendo Switch! We're still waiting for our phone call to ask us if we want an Amiibo made for The Last Bodybuilder or Toilet Genie. In about a week we're going to put the new GIZZARD update up on the Testing Branch. I'd like to test that for a week and then get that out on June 4th.
EDIT: Changed below to the final launch date. Also on July 16th, we're launching Wayward Souls into Early Access. Wayward Souls is a randomly generated action RPG we made awhile ago, featuring 6 different character classes with their own stories, abilities, and playstyles. The PC version adds a lot of content, including a 7th character. More news on this next post!

Testing out a fix for a map generation crash, that should hopefully tone down the Danger Rangers/Bruce Li crashes among other ones from generating a lot of rooms. This also contains some changes to the end fight, now featuring snow plows. 5/5 EDIT: This is now up for the release version of the game. ----------------- INSTRUCTIONS IMPORTANT NOTE: The testing branch and the retail version usually use different save files! Testing Branch saves also get cleared out on occasion. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. CHANGES - Crash fix for a crash that could happen when an empty room was generated. Ending Spoilers ːmountieː [spoiler]ːmountieːːmountieːːmountieː Canada Crossing Changes ːmountieːːmountieːːmountieː - Snow plows added as border gates. - The former back line of Mounties that didn't attack/blocked your way are now above the snow plows. - If the game detects you've never won, a Mountie now gives you a message of hope as you're running to the border gate. This text event stops showing once you beat the game in any mode. - If you're playing on one of the "Easier Bandit" difficulties (Normal, Rare, Familiar, Long Road, Short Road), the ending zombies will stop attacking you right before THE BIG REINFORCEMENT arrives. This is mostly to stop beginning players from dying in a hilarious way.[/spoiler]

A second FEMUR! This adds 5 new common trading camps to the original list, for 15 total camps. Each one has a new quirk that sets it apart from the original 10 trading camps.
The original FEMUR update post will also be edited to have the below notes. https://steamcommunity.com/games/deathroad/announcements/detail/1663390171358293944

Update Changes

Feedback and Coming Up Next

This last but of the FEMUR update will add 5 extra common trading camps, all with some new quirks that weren't in the older camps. Read below for details! As soon as I get some feedback on each camp, I'll release the update. Completing FEMUR will also let us launch the mobile versions and get the content on other/upcoming platforms! 3/24 NOTE: The last trading camp, the Bazaar, isn't in yet. I will add that tomorrow.
INSTRUCTIONS IMPORTANT NOTE: The testing branch and the retail version use different save files! Testing Branch saves also get cleared out on occasion. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. CHANGES Trading Camps - Fence of Values, with 4 traders and also a fence of some sort - Ruined Camp, but not so ruined that it's not having a FIRE SALE!!! - Farmhouse Camp, with a barn and dogs and hay - Big Trading House, with a chance for bathroom reading - Farm dogs that are well behaved but very aggressive against zombies - Tsundere chicken - Random egg chance - Big Trading House has a 20% chance to spawn a magazine - Ruined Trader/FIRE SALE guy is a special trader with a random inventory, some of which isn't for sale anywhere else - Tier 1 item costs 3 food, Tier 2 is 6 food, Tier 3 is 10 - 5 tier 1 items, all supplies for about half the usual price - 6 tier 2 items: 3 Grenades, Sturdy Machete, 5 Pipebombs, Aluminum Bat, Double Barrel Shotgun, Bow + 50 Arrows - 7 tier 3 items: Uzi, Chainsaw, 9 Molotovs, Mega Maul, Scythe, Ultimate Log, Blowtorch XL - Blowtorch XL is a blowtorch with extra charges Misc Changes - Burning Car Wrecks now have enough hitpoints to survive burning for 3 minutes instead of destroying itself instantly - Double Barrel Shotgun can now be sold to weapon buyer for 3 food - The Whammer now sells for 3 food instead of 2 (still a rip off) - Plasma Rifle name change - Various developer notes added and a TEMPROOM scratchpad

The FEMUR Update adds the strongest zombie destroying weapon, a weapon that the government does NOT want you to know about. TOILETS
Very strong characters that are over the usual strength maximums can now rip up previously immobile objects, with bolts flying out everywhere. TSTC and TLB fans now have more reasons to be swole.
In addition to the devastating power of newly throw-able sinks, bathtubs, and toilets, this update also adds bonesaws and a new bow and arrows weapon type. You can unlock a new perk that grants a starting bow with regenerating arrows. A fully drawn bow can sometimes send an arrow through an entire line of zombie heads! The FEMUR Update adds a new special character that gets a bow in one weapon slot, and then a random melee weapon. This melee weapon changes every location, and can include some of the strongest weapons in the game. Or it can be a nice shovel. We've also added fixes, a new holiday event, and the ability to access the options menu through the pause screen. At the end of March, we're doing another part to this update that adds more content, including a bunch of new trading camps. The trading camps will consist of both common ones and rare camps. Even some of the common ones will have new features not seen in other camps!

Future Update Plans

Update Changes

Feedback

Testing out another update. We want to launch this soon. It finishes the early half-update from a month ago, and includes a new perk, two new weapons, and a new special character! This testing branch will be updated daily until we're ready to launch the update. Keep checking this post for news on changes. Coming up: 5 new regular trading camps, 3 new special trading camps, and hopefully a fix for those wall bathtubs and sinktoilets. We will also get the Mac and Linux versions up soon. INSTRUCTIONS IMPORTANT NOTE: The testing branch and the retail version use different save files! Testing Branch saves also get cleared out on occasion. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. CHANGES - Bow and Arrows Perk added! This will give a character a no-drop bow, which will regenerate 4/7/10 arrows when going back to the road screen, depending on level - Special bonuses for Bow and Arrows + Specialist Trait, you get more max arrows and regenerate them twice as fast - Special Character: Barbarian added, rare chance in trading camps - Barbarian has a bow and arrow with 60 arrows maximum, and gets 20 arrows back per mission - Every mission, she gets out a new weapon, with a pool of 17 different weapons for 18 total when you include her bow - She either has +1 max strength or +1 max fitness, when recruited - Bonesaw added, it can rarely be found in hospitals and clinics. Similar to a fireaxe, but with almost no knockdown capabilities and always cleaves an extra zombie - Bow values tweaked. Strength and fitness make more of a difference for fatigue, fatigue is less harsh, and bows take 33% longer to draw to full power - You can now rarely find bow and arrow sets in places with sporting and/or camping goods - Special trading camp failure rate without City Seeker reduced from 60% to 50% - Zombotown Rambeux has a new Haiku - Mad Doctor Rare Trader now lets you "pick someone else" if you have 4 choices - Some perks/traits will no longer give you a free "total heal" stat increment

This update adds a Valentine's Day timed event, tweaks and fixes, options accessible via pause menu, and the ability for very strong characters to pick up bolted down objects such as toilets! Another big update should be coming in late February or March.
Changes: - Cupid event that shows up on Valentine's Day - Cupid's arrows recharge at a rate of 10 every time you go to the road, max of 60 - Cupid Bow added! Silent and has a big piercing value at maximum draw - Options Menu is now available from road and mission pause screens, replacing the old quit menu - Quit menu is now in the in-game options menu - Spraying pipes added! Toilets, sinks, and bathtubs now spray water if picked up or destroyed - Bolted furniture added! This mostly benefits T*S*T*C characters and T*L*B, giving them more stuff to pick up - HP reduction to toilets, sinks, bathtubs - Fix for the chainsaw hand event bug that would happen if you were a solo character - Thanksgiving change to be 4th Thursday of November - America and Canada Day both now let you skip the special character - Grammar tweak for trade-firearms - Phoenix trait no longer sets loyalty to max

Testing some new content we hope to get out before Valentine's Day! Around the end of the month, we're also releasing another big update. Trying out something different where instead of doing a bunch of testing branch posts, I'm going to keep updating this one. Except a change every couple of days or so until everything's tested. INSTRUCTIONS IMPORTANT NOTE: The testing branch and the retail version use different save files! Testing Branch saves also get cleared out on occasion. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. CHANGES - Options Menu is now available from road and mission pause screens, replacing the old quit menu - Quit menu is now in the in-game options menu - Bow added! Silent and has a big piercing value at maximum draw - Cupid character added and available for testing at game start - Cupid's arrows recharge at a rate of 10 every time you go to the road, max of 60 - Spraying pipes added! Toilets, sinks, and bathtubs now spray water. - Bolted furniture added! This mostly benefits T*S*T*C characters and T*L*B, giving them more stuff to pick up - HP reduction to toilets, sinks, bathtubs - Fix for the chainsaw hand event bug that would happen if you were a solo character - Thanksgiving change to be 4th Thursday of November - Grammar tweak for trade-firearms - Phoenix trait no longer sets loyalty to max - Trying out a game intro screen (may remove this for PC)

Here is the second part of the EYEBALL Update! This adds new events, encounters, characters, weapons, and one new system: Golden Skulls. Read below for more details, and if you like what we're doing leave reviews and tell your friends. We completely depend on word of mouth! These changes will also come to mobile, though iOS may take a little longer as we're also looking into sneaking some mobile specific control updates in. If you like dogs and Death Road to Canada check out our official dog shirt: https://www.levelupstudios.com/products/dang-it

Next Update: FEMUR

Changes this Update

Thanks for Reading

This is it for all the big changes in the coming update. Let me know if there's any problems in the comments. I was going to try to get one special trading camp in, but I'm going to wait on that and just do a big batch of them in the next update. I may try to sneak in a bunch of regular trading camps tomorrow, as they're easy to test. If I do this, I'm going to edit this announcement instead of making a new one, just so all the comments are in one place. INSTRUCTIONS IMPORTANT NOTE: The testing branch and the retail version use different save files! Testing Branch saves also get cleared out on occasion. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. CHANGES - New Rare Camp Recruit: Earnestine - New Weapon: Farmer's Shotgun, for the above character. 33% more damage per pellet than a normal double barrel, and fires 33% faster! - New sprite added for Chainsaw Hand - Chainsaw hand now does 0.8 damage per tick instead of 1 damage. This is mostly for flavor, as it's 20% smaller than a normal chainsaw. - Double Barrel Shotgun now has 20% piercing instead of 10% - Big Dawg: Trader cost set to 35, down from 40 - Big Dawg: Piercing increased to 15%, up from 10% - Typo fix: "the less busy side road"

Testing branch now up for all platforms! Doing some trading camps and small changes tomorrow, then otherwise just waiting to see if testing goes well so I can launch this update. INSTRUCTIONS IMPORTANT NOTE: The testing branch and the retail version use different save files! Testing Branch saves also get cleared out on occasion. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. CHANGES - Rare City Encounter: Sewer Rodent - Rare City Encounter: Department of Motor Vehicles - New rooms added for above encounters - New weapon: Sai - New Special Character

More content coming to Testbranch either Friday or Saturday! I'd like to get this update out on Wednesday. INSTRUCTIONS IMPORTANT NOTE: The testing branch and the retail version use different save files! Testing Branch saves also get cleared out on occasion. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. CHANGES - Rare Event: Chainsaw Hand Replacement - New weapon: Chainsaw Hand - New weapon: Double Barrel Shotgun - Text skip for mobile on touch - Mobile adjustments for some narrow screen sizes - Grim Reaper no longer drops his Scythe - ZP skulls will now drop down from the ceiling when you first go in the room

We're starting to put the EYEBALL - Part Two changes to the testing branch. I'll also put another one up tomorrow, and sprinkle in some more content after Thanksgiving. I'd like to get everything tested and out before November is over. Coming up: 2-3 new characters, a rare trading camp in addition to some new regular trading camps, a couple of new weapons, and two new rare city encounters. INSTRUCTIONS IMPORTANT NOTE: The testing branch and the retail version use different save files! Testing Branch saves also get cleared out on occasion. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. CHANGES - New rare event: Cursed Treasure. Permanently screw up a character in exchange for getting a pirate cutlass or other melee weapons. Or just accept a Goblin Gift Basket or the Dingusnomicon. - New rank of Rare Finder, which will let you get up to 4 rare events per game and very slightly increases their chance (currently to 4/55 or so) - ZP skulls added! Floating skulls can show up as loot. Touch them to get them to stop laughing at you for a moment and also get a Zombo Point. - H*td*g Car and H*td*g Heaven now censored. - H*td*g alternatives added. - Removed the break chances when using the shotguns as melee weapons. - Added two new weapons, though they're not accessible yet.

We have added even more new content for Death Road to Canada, and the Android version has also recently launched. This is in addition to the early update we did in September, and a second part of this update coming up in November. Death Road to Canada is now out for Android! Get it here: Death Road to Canada for Android Enjoy trying to survive the new horrors of health food stores, futuristic toilets with unknown functions, and Cnomey's Gnome Challenge Conducts. Read on for more details and our plans for both the next update and the next part of EYEBALL!

Two EYEBALL Two Part Update

Future Plans

Update Changes

Changes for the previous early update in September

Fixing a couple small bugs (HOPEFULLY), then launching this. The EYEBALL update will include all the changes on Testbranch, the mini-update we launched early in September, and an upcoming extra shot of content about 2 weeks after the first part of the update is out. Changes: - Fixed a bug involving going between the starting character select and Unlocks Town a few times. - Fix for the heart graphic glitch??????????????!!?? - Possible quick extra fixes for minor things

Wrapping up so we can test the update and get that out ASAP. We will be splitting this EYEBALL update into two major parts, so after this batch we'll be putting in more events and characters. This includes a new Halloween thing. Linux and Mac versions also coming soon, if nothing game-breaking crops up in this testbranch. Death Road for Android comes out on Thursday! Changes: - Game version changed to EYEBALL - .nodropweapon added and applied to TLB, LNK, Horse, DSYP. This will cause those characters to never automatically drop their current weapon. I can add this to more characters on request, or even stuff like Specialist. - New Swole-o-Flex common event added. A new revolution in personal fitness and strength. - Gnome Conduct Challenge rare event added. - Two new walking events added. - Jack O' Lanterns will replace trash cans on Halloween - Removed infinite health from some throwables that weren't supposed to have that - That one umbrella check event will now check for number of umbrellas, I may have to add a "driving rain" event in the future that partially ignores umbrellas - The SWAP button will now back out of some menus - Joystick buttons only show up in tutorial if one is active - Tutorial Replay now boots you to the title screen, to prevent some problems. Replay text updated to reflect this.

Finally starting to put up the new text events. These are mostly the common events. A few more common events are coming, along with some rares and misc ones such as a couple walking events. I'm going to try to get these and maybe some quick new Halloween things out ASAP for the EYEBALL update. Then I'm likely doing another bit of content a couple weeks after Halloween. This means EYEBALL will be two updates spaced out, adding to the quick mini-update from a month ago. Also, Android version is out on the 26th! Changes: - 8 new events, 7 common and 1 rare. Includes futuristic toilet event. [spoiler]- Secret "I ruined my ending" ending (and secret cheevo) should now be atainable again.[/spoiler] - Trash can lids no longer indestructible - Various fixes, such as custom game modes no longer destroying the pause screen. - Lots of behind the scenes stuff for Android support and other future port work. - More work on new city generator, though this will most likely be moved to the next update. - Work on currently hidden upcoming features like golden skulls you can touch for a Zombo Point

I wanted to get out some fixes and other additions to the live branch, and also test out some font size changes to a wider audience. If there are any big problems with this, or the new font, post your feedback here. I'm able to revert it back if necessary. If there's no major problems, we will also do Mac and Linux versions. Changes: System Changes - Trying out a new, smaller font size. - AI tweak to let the AI not drop certain items. This applies to most of the items the AI will not use. The result is that you can now have the AI carry grenades for you and they shouldn't dump them to the floor for a femur. - Dogs and other animals will no longer dump their items for another item, unless they drop the item by trying to attack something. - Game now may open URLs - Twitter Chicken added to Unlock Town - Twitter Chicken can give you over the maximum of ZP - Warning built into Twitter Chicken to spend excess ZP over maximum - Zombo Points Full indicator can now show up if you go over the maximum ZP New Upgrades - Series of upgrades to make rare locations and events more frequent. - Series of upgrades to make rare traders less rare. In addition, they're now a little more common even without the upgrades. - Unomey gets some more phrases due to new upgrades. Tweaks - The CYOA text heal now acts just like the blurb heal - Events that gave you a choice of 3 characters will now give you a choice of all characters in your party, if your group is full. - Almost all recruit "who do you ditch" when group is full events have been changed to give you a choice of 4 people, rather than 3 or ditch no one. - Rare Trader camp generation tweaked. You now get up to 2 rolls in a game to find one, but the chance of failure has risen from 40% to 60%. - City Seeker buffed. Now gives a 50% chance to find something rare in a city, and also removes the chance of failure of a rare trading camp to generate. - Gourmand now also gives you +1 max health. - Unomey shows up earlier. You only have to get one unlock or two upgrades now, down from 2 unlocks only. - Unomey's ZP gain upgrade series is cheaper, and shows up earlier. - That early dirt road zombie siege got a 10% reduction in difficulty. - Solo dogs can now recruit the Pet Store dogs for free. - Giga Guy is now more expensive, 20 food instead of 10. - Anime Girl explosion no longer hurts teammates. - Hay bale is now very flammable. - Demon event drops weapons to trunk before transformation, so no more losing weapons - Trash cans more rare at rest stops - Trash cans have a 20% chance to show up in many kitchen types - Trash can tweaks - Tweaks to give ESCAPE more functionality in menus - You can now hit ESCAPE twice to cancel exiting the game Fixes - Woof no longer gets that bugged out book item on "death" - Woof dying no longer clears the special character off your controlled player character. - If someone's turned into a dog, they'll drop their weapon inventory to the trunk if in the car, to the floor if they're in a location. - If someone's turned into a dog and they have no drop weapons in the B and C slots, these weapons will be deleted. - Game now supports more than 127 special characters - Traders that don't give a positive Cool it!!! result will no longer show the flashing !!! - Phoenix explosion will no longer damage teammates. - Possible fix for weird gas detour values, where you'd lose all your gas but it would show you gaining gas. - Fixed a bug where it would mention your car if you got a superdog right after you lost your car. - Finally fixed the ending epilogues always using male pronouns. - Tweaks to give ESCAPE more functionality in menus - Some secret stuff that doesn't affect PC version much, but is important for porting work

I have been working on a lot of new text events, but testing them so I can move them all from my build to Testing Branch has been slow due to travel. Hopefully can put those up soon. Until then, I'd really like to get a build up that adds better Twitter links and tests some SECRET WORK for a new platform that I can't announce yet. Changes: - Twitter Chicken added to Unlock Town - Twitter Chicken can give you over the maximum of ZP - Warning built into Twitter Chicken to spend excess ZP over maximum - Zombo Points Full indicator can now show up if you go over the maximum ZP - Demon event drops weapons to trunk before transformation, so no more losing weapons - Trash cans more rare at rest stops - Trash cans have a 20% chance to show up in many kitchen types - Trash can tweaks - Tweaks to give ESCAPE more functionality in menus - You can now hit ESCAPE twice to cancel exiting the game - Removed Free ZP Robot for now - Removed new city generator testing for now - Secret stuff that doesn't affect the PC version much but has to be in, anyway

Starting up testing for the upcoming EYEBALL update, which will hit sometime in October or November. We're loading up the early builds with things that will need a lot of testing. Post to the comments if you run into anything strange. To encourage testing, the Zombo Points giver is in. Also, there will likely be a testing branch save wipe in the next big testing branch, likely in a week or two. INSTRUCTIONS IMPORTANT NOTE: The testing branch and the retail version use different save files! Testing Branch saves also get cleared out on occasion. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. CHANGES Big Changes - Trying out a new, smaller font size. - Trying out a new city generator. An option to test this currently replaces the start of game hint. - AI tweak to let the AI not drop certain items. This applies to most of the items the AI will not use. The result is that you can now have the AI carry grenades for you and they shouldn't dump them to the floor for a femur. - Dogs and other animals will no longer dump their items for another item, unless they drop the item by trying to attack something. New Upgrades - Series of upgrades to make rare locations and events more frequent. - Series of upgrades to make rare traders less rare. In addition, they're now a little more common even without the upgrades. - Unomey gets some more phrases due to new upgrades. Tweaks - The CYOA text heal now acts just like the blurb heal - Events that gave you a choice of 3 characters will now give you a choice of all characters in your party, if your group is full. - Almost all recruit "who do you ditch" when group is full events have been changed to give you a choice of 4 people, rather than 3 or ditch no one. - Rare Trader camp generation tweaked. You now get up to 2 rolls in a game to find one, but the chance of failure has risen from 40% to 60%. - City Seeker buffed. Now gives a 50% chance to find something rare in a city, and also removes the chance of failure of a rare trading camp to generate. - Gourmand now also gives you +1 max health. - Unomey shows up earlier. You only have to get one unlock or two upgrades now, down from 2 unlocks only. - Unomey's ZP gain upgrade series is cheaper, and shows up earlier. - That early dirt road zombie siege got a 10% reduction in difficulty. - Solo dogs can now recruit the Pet Store dogs for free. - Giga Guy is now more expensive, 20 food instead of 10. - Anime Girl explosion no longer hurts teammates. - Hay bale is now very flammable. Fixes - Woof no longer gets that bugged out book item on "death" - Woof dying no longer clears the special character off your controlled player character. - If someone's turned into a dog, they'll drop their weapon inventory to the trunk if in the car, to the floor if they're in a location. - If someone's turned into a dog and they have no drop weapons in the B and C slots, these weapons will be deleted. - Game now supports more than 127 special characters - Traders that don't give a positive Cool it!!! result will no longer show the flashing !!! - Phoenix explosion will no longer damage teammates. - Possible fix for weird gas detour values, where you'd lose all your gas but it would show you gaining gas. - Fixed a bug where it would mention your car if you got a superdog right after you lost your car. - Finally fixed the ending epilogues always using male pronouns.

We've already started up the next update. The next one will be named EYEBALL, and should be launched somewhere in October or November. I am planning on getting testing branches going again at the end of this month.
This update will focus more on content. Characters, weapons, some locations, and new CYOA events. Especially more road CYOA events, which I wasn't able to get to in the DUODENUM Update. I think Death Road could really use a pile of new road events, for more variety there. I will also be including some things that just barely missed the last update, like the pictured turtle man. You will be able to find him in a secret sewer, as part of a rare city location. There are also at least a couple more Rare Trader Camps on the way, which will also let me make those a little more common than they are now. Madgarden is also going to start work on looking at the BIG FEATURES we have on our list. More details below.

The Next Year of Death Road

As part of our Anniversary celebration, we're making our To-Do list for updates visible to the public. Check out our plans on this Trello board: https://trello.com/c/PrW0bxXr The link above leads to a note on some caveats. Quick summary: NO PROMISES! Things can and probably will change at any moment for future plans, especially once you get down to fine details and/or tricky changes with a chance of failure.
Read the above if you skimmed it. I feel like I should try to make that super clear, as there's some risks to having our future plans be this transparent.

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The recent DUODENUM update was so big that I wanted to make a separate post to detail all the changes. Here's a link to the Anniversary Update announcement, earlier today: http://steamcommunity.com/games/deathroad/announcements/detail/1439316518693473996 I can't believe we did all of this in a month. We ended up doing a lot more new systems than intended, we were trying to do none so we could only do content. For the next update, I'll try that plan again. I'd especially like to focus on road CYOA events for awhile, and sneak in more characters and weapons, maybe a location.

DUODENUM Changes

This is the big DUODENUM update, released as part of our One Year Anniversary month. See all our plans for the anniversary here: http://steamcommunity.com/games/deathroad/announcements/detail/1425804364184359221 Keep reading for a list of the changes you can expect in DUODENUM! There are new locations, characters, features, many new weapons, tweaks/fixes, and more! We somehow managed to do this giant update in about a month.

Death Road Shirts

DUODENUM Update

Future Plans

Doing some more builds late tonight. I'll add them to the bottom of this post in edits when they're up Getting in new special blurbs, death sayings, and hopefully character epilogues. Going to try to get in some new cheevos on top of that, but it's not looking good. INSTRUCTIONS IMPORTANT NOTE: This will use the same saves as the retail branch, since we're about to launch this update. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. CHANGES - New rare trading camp: Swole Mountain. - New Traders in Swole Mountain: Strength Expert, Fitness Expert, Boxing Trainer, Shady Trainer - Armor Seller added to Ren Faire rare trading camp - Rare Trader Camp chance increased to 5.5%

Mac now supported. Some new surprise features! There should be one last update tomorrow, to get some remaining things in like new special character sayings, finishing one more special trader camp, and maybe some cheevos. This is, by coincidence, the anniversary of the SPLEEN update! INSTRUCTIONS IMPORTANT NOTE: Since we're so close to launch, testing branch will temporarily use the same save files as retail. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. CHANGES Tweaks - Many temporary recruits now put weapons they're carrying in your trunk, if you get out of the mission with them. This includes things like humans/dogs that you rescue, Samedi skeletons, and more. - Above temporary recruits now also unload any supplies they may have picked up into your trunk. - The new weapons that are firearms or vaguely like firearms now count as firearms for events. - Teleporter now damages multiple zombies New Music - Song added: They Can't Be Stopped - In city maps, this song will play if it gets too late at night Weed Whacker - Can contain 30 gas now - Even more fuel efficient than before, takes about 1/4 to 1/5 the gas a chainsaw does - Weed whacker now gets thrust out when in use for more reach (this is good and bad) - Weed whacker now turns less when in use, so you can back up with it with some adjustment Fixes - Fixed that bug where Car Nut wouldn't work if you were solo

Reaching the end of testing, before the DUODENUM update is launched. Linux now included, Mac is coming. Tomorrow: Blurbs, death sayings, endings for the new special characters. A properly working Weed Whacker. Some extra fixes. Maybe some cheevos? INSTRUCTIONS IMPORTANT NOTE: The testing branch and the retail version use different save files! Testing Branch saves also get cleared out on occasion. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. CHANGES - Ren Faire rare trader camp. - Rare trader camps are now more rare. - Special Recruitable: Bard - Special Traders: The Three Knights - Morning Star added - Dagger attainable in-game - You can no longer drop nodrop weapons that have charges built in. This included GigaGuy's Guster Gun or whatever we're calling it at this moment. - Weed whacker added to hardware stores. - Weed whacker currently has a bug where it only carries 3 gas! Fixing that next build. - Halberd is now 0.1 seconds faster. - Some Swap Meet UI changes. - Half of the test weapon demos removed. - Trader Signs added to the Scientist and her bots. - Lowered Mazer Pistol's melee cooldown so the scientist uses it. - Moved blue robot upwards slightly.

This one has tons of stuff in it. I also did a late night extra build, notes at the bottom for those changes. Tomorrow will likely be the last build until launch, unless bugs crop up. We will also do the Mac and Linux testing branch builds tomorrow. INSTRUCTIONS IMPORTANT NOTE: The testing branch and the retail version use different save files! Testing Branch saves also get cleared out on occasion. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. CHANGES New Special Characters - Pirate Captain - Caveman - Fireproof Pyromaniac - Bee man - Wood Woman - Giga Guy - Puppy - Kitten - Rare Trader: Nerd - Rare Trader: Chicken - Trader: Handy Tools Salesman - Trader: Silent Guns Merchant Weapons - Pirate cannons added - A bunch of turret work to make them way fancy - Slightly less red turret ammo - Green turrets now have the same ammo amount as red turrets. - Gigaguy Ball Booster or whatever we're calling it now doesn't fire when opening doors - Tweaks to Gigaguy Gun - Fix for THE WHAMMER not spawning properly - Spiked bats may replace baseball bats, 10% chance - The Whammer may replace aluminum bats - TactiCop Lite may replace nightsticks - Scattered skeletons may now be replaced by weird new weapons, 5% chance - A broken skeleton has a 10% chance to spawn a spine instead of a femur - Cutlass is now shorter, faster. Slightly weaker, hits one less target. - Toy Hammer finally usable, gets a 60% chance to cleave - Morning Star faster - Egg chicken spawn timer about doubled - Wooden Club can rarely spawn via exoticweapons drop - Dragonslayer is now faster, about 15% faster than GUSTER SWORD Locations - New Frozen Forest location added - New tech added for breaking someone or something out of an object - FROZEN FRIEND event temporarily added to start of game - Other temp events removed from start - If you get to the final map with a car, you'll get a special event now - Final map has double the zombies at the very start - Mansion loot info now saved, so you won't get the same category twice if you visit two mansions. - Tweaked mansion room generator to have more failsafes - Mansion Loot 5 is now just the cavalry sword, instead of a chance of that or a halberd - Brass knucks added to police evidence lockers Tweaks - Fireproof people love hot sauce - Bees vs Bee Man - Ninja recruit now sticks around for an extra day - Mad Scientist updated Fixes - Big fix for endings, preventing an error if you had someone with dead even bland personality stats. - Many failsafes added to ending epilogue picks. EDIT: 8/1 12:25 AM New changes - Rare Trading Camp system added. Currently just the one type. - New trading camp: Shopping Bunker Lab - Red and Blue robots added to Bunker Lab. - Rare Trader/Recruit: Scientist - Mazer Pistol tweaked so Scientist will use it over her teleporter. - Throwing Robots are no longer stackable - Science Doodad set to 5 charges base - Fixed a bug with trader-camp-reset - Tweaked the Whammer's sprite - Tweaked the Throwing Blue Robot sprite

Lots and lots of new weapons! A few more coming up. You can test then by picking Weapon Set 1 or Weapon Set 2 on the starting tips screen. Coming up, either late Sunday or Monday: Some special trader camps. Some road events. New characters. Maybe one more location type, though I may save that for the next update. Also Linux and Mac builds! INSTRUCTIONS IMPORTANT NOTE: The testing branch and the retail version use different save files! Testing Branch saves also get cleared out on occasion. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. CHANGES New Weapons, all in Weapon Set 1: - Silenced Pistol - Sniper Rifle - Quiet Shotgun - Deployable Turrets, Green and Red flavors - Giant Club - Gigamann's Ball Blaster (!!!!!!!) - Branch Trimmer - Old weapons in this set: Flamethrower, Molotov, Blowtorch, Pukeyball, Mazer Gun, Wooden Club New Weapons, all in Weapon Set 2: - Sai - Lute - Dagger - Halberd - Robots, Blue and Red flavors - Spiked Bat - The Whammer - Boots - Brass Knucks - Firelunk Greatsword - Dragonslayer - Cavalry Sabre - Pirate Cutlass Location Tweaks - Burning Building and Inferno loot tweaked, Firelunk sword added - Mansion loot added, has different loot possibilities depending on if you're in the haunted version or not - Ghost work with real ghost sounds More Tweaks - Ouchie Spray renamed to Healing Spray - Better Pukeymon Colors - More Pukeymon types - Sickle cleave chance changed to 50%, a buff - PIckaxe cleave chance changed to 35%, a nerf - New glasses added: Welding Helmet - Flamethrower now pierces into crowds better (!!) - Minimum flamethrower spray time is slightly higher - Blowtorch burns targets much more easily

Lots of new weapons in the Test Weapons option! Check them out while you can. I'm waiting until Friday to do another build, at which point all the weapons will be replaced with new testing weapons. INSTRUCTIONS IMPORTANT NOTE: The testing branch and the retail version use different save files! Testing Branch saves also get cleared out on occasion. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. CHANGES New Weapons - You'll get all these weapons if you pick the GET TEST WEAPONS option at the start of the game: - Golden Spear: Even better than the Devil's Fork - Tacticop Lite (TM): A no-break flashlight that can break zombie heads. Somewhere between a nightstick and aluminum bat in stats - Pickaxe: A deadlier, slightly lighter shovel, making it pretty effective - ULTIMATE LOG: Absurd stats, absurd weight - MegaKnight Blade: In case the claymore wasn't strong enough. A bit slower to make up for the extra power. (Has same stats as the Guster Sword but you can actually drop it) - Golden Knife: A little knife that does more damage than a claymore, but only to one target at a time. - Mazer Beam: Weapons of the future, today. A more accessible UFO laser. - Pukeyballs - Pukeymons - ULTIMATE LOG has a 1% chance to spawn in forest areas where other logs may spawn - Pickaxes can spawn in farms and hardware stores - Pickaxe be used to break into the crypt Tweaks - Flamethrower burn patch duration tripled. - Flamethrowers can carry 100 gas max, instead of 200. - Flamethrower minimum spray time is now 33% longer, to make little taps less tiny. - Molotov patches now last longer, about 8 seconds now. - Molotov burn areas are now about 30% bigger. - AI followers now have the ability to use throwing weapons more appropriately, for certain weapons like boomerangs and glass bottles. - Flashlight angle now changes a bit if you are wearing it rather than holding it. - Egg Chickens now last longer, and follow you more closely

Done with locations for now, though later in the week I may try to sneak one more new location type in. Ghost graphics still need more work, and the mansion room loot rewards aren't final! Mansions end loot rooms will be getting a lot of the new weapons, once those are on the testing branch. INSTRUCTIONS IMPORTANT NOTE: The testing branch and the retail version use different save files! Testing Branch saves also get cleared out on occasion. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. CHANGES - Haunted Mansion added. Harder spawns, zombies digging through the floor, and gggghosts. - Haunted Mansion temporarily available on the start of the game. - Lots of work on the mansion location type. New rooms, statues, broken chandeliers. - Mansion location is now more dark. - New spooky music added to mansion location and the old graveyard location.

Running a little behind on locations, hoping to wrap them up tomorrow then moving on to events, characters, weapons. INSTRUCTIONS IMPORTANT NOTE: The testing branch and the retail version use different save files! Testing Branch saves also get cleared out on occasion. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. CHANGES - Dark Mansion added! Work in progress, the rewards and some rooms are placeholder. - Dark Mansion has a new very dark lighting type. Try both bringing and not bringing a flashlight, to see how bad it is. - Burning Buildings and Farms taken out of the starting events - More farm tweaks - Extra wall type for sewers, using an unused wall on the spritesheet - Extra wall type for museums, using an unused wall - Fix for an error caused by random blowtorrch loot - Exotic Weapon blowtorch drop chance replaced with a chance for a random healing spray.

Today is the one year anniversary of Death Road to Canada launching! To celebrate one year of players looting toilets for toilet loot, we're going to be doing announcements for the next month. They'll all be posted on Friday, and will include the big DUODENUM Update on August 4th. Keep reading for details on what's coming up, and a retrospective on how Death Road has done and where it's going in the future!

Anniversary Month Plans

One Year of Death Road

Barricading! And some farm changes. Some last locations on Friday or Saturday, then switching to other things. Also, Anniversary announcement tomorrow! INSTRUCTIONS IMPORTANT NOTE: The testing branch and the retail version use different save files! Testing Branch saves also get cleared out on occasion. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. CHANGES Barricades - You can now put furniture near a door to barricade it, preventing it from breaking for awhile. The furniture will get jostled around, instead. - Furniture and other objects will slowly get jostled away from the door, unless you shove them back in. - Doors will eventually break even if barricaded. Heavier objects used to barricade the door will make this breaking take longer. - You can push your character against a door to barricade it with your body. - Zombies and projectiles don't count as barricades. Other - A bunch of new random farm layouts added - Tweaks to some of the heads - Trash cans added, currently being tested in the rest stop maps.

The start of NEW MUSIC!!!!! So this will be a bigger download than normal, 20+ mb (usual update download: about 400 kb). Smashing furniture down temporarily doesn't work, will fix this in morning. Tomorrow: Back to locations for a bit. Then moving to characters, weapons, events, and hopefully the rare trading camp idea. If I have time I'll do achievements and more unlockables, too. INSTRUCTIONS IMPORTANT NOTE: The testing branch and the retail version use different save files! Testing Branch saves also get cleared out on occasion. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. CHANGES Music - 6 new songs! This increases the soundtrack length by about 60% or so. - Reshuffling some old song logic. One example is that road songs borrow from the easy song soundtrack much less. - Spooky song added (but not used yet) - Logic for using a new City of Lost Hope song at higher difficulties (but not used yet) - Song added for when your car is about to die. On the final turn before your car dies, the song gets louder. Farm Tweaks - EGGS ADDED! Lovin' these eggs - New weapon tech for throwables that can summon temporary characters - Chicken event revamped (to have text and eggs) - Egg spawning chances added to the barn - Pig attack graphics changed - Oink added Cosmetic - New faces - New hairstyles Other - When you're in Canada, the game paused info will now say that you're in Canada. - You can now open or close doors in the middle of a weapon swing. - You can now drop or pick up weapons in the middle of a weapon swing. - Some exploit protection added for the above, see if you can take advantage of it.

Some big additions in this testbranch build, and more tomorrow. Friday I should have a big news post for the ANNIVERSARY OF DEATH ROAD. The actual DUODENUM update will likely be 1 or 2 weeks after that. I was going to do a small update Friday and a bigger one a few weeks after, but I'd rather do one big update. INSTRUCTIONS IMPORTANT NOTE: The testing branch and the retail version use different save files! Testing Branch saves also get cleared out on occasion. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. CHANGES New Locations - Farm location type added - Farm locations temporarily added to the starter locations. These and the burning buildings will be removed soon from the start, to make room for new location testing. - 3 new location events added for different farm types - Quiet farm, has a chance for a scythe or sickle - Barn Rescue, may have either a chicken or pig - Rare: Gothic Farm. Has all possible barn loot types, and a reward event if you can save both farmers. - Barns added AI and New Characters - Pig added! It can be recruited - American Gothic NPC's added. - Chicken added - AI Characters now try to avoid fire! - Pig blurbs and death saying added - Chicken events added. - Valkyrie AI values the Mjollin'er more Weapons - Sickle added, it's like a lighter and weaker machete. - The flashlight now provides light even if carried instead of directly wielded. Character Customization - A lot of new faces! - New hair types, including the often requested male mohawk. Misc - Fix for recruits no longer showing up next to trading camp campfires - TLB can pick up tractors. - Canadian Flags at border crossing - Inferno House molotov room now has triple the molotovs

Counting this as 7/10 even though it's past Midnight AND even though I hate Mondays. Starting new location testing! Also a bunch of tweaks and fixes. INSTRUCTIONS IMPORTANT NOTE: The testing branch and the retail version use different save files! Testing Branch saves also get cleared out on occasion. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. CHANGES New Locations - New area type added: Burning Building - Burning House location added - Raging Inferno rare location added - New locations temporarily added to the starter locations picks, for testing. Fixes and Tweaks - A T*S*T*C character, if they ALSO have maximum strength, can now pick up SWOLEWEIGHT objects such as fridges! In practice, this means that those characters can now pick up everything The Last Bodybuilder can, with the notable exception of car wrecks. - Things carried by humans can no longer be shot or hit. This should make furniture throwing and Ex Wrestler/Grappler easier to do in a full group. - Possibly fixed a locdef error people were getting, related to the blowtorch changes and the scatter/.scatter words - Lighting adjustments - Flamethrower particle adjustments - Fix for flamethrower lighting - A hat got tweaked - Dropped weapons, particularly wood ones, can be set on fire

DUODENUM stuff. An all new trait, a temporary FREE ZP character, and then a bunch of tweaks and fixes. Also I'm leaving in the "start with a bunch of weapons" option for awhile longer. INSTRUCTIONS IMPORTANT NOTE: The testing branch and the retail version use different save files! Testing Branch saves also get cleared out on occasion. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. CHANGES Traits and Zombotown - Upgrade Town now has a blue robot outside that will give you 99 ZP instantly. This is for the testing branch only, it may become a permanent feature in testing. - Fireproof trait added, does as advertised - Fireproof can be purchased from the Trait Seller - Fireproof works in the "flee from fiery building" event Fire and Lighting - Flamethrower and blowtorch should no longer fire when opening a door - Animation fixes for blowtorch and flamethrower when carrying something - More adjustable system for fire and flame patches, for future balancing - Propane tanks will now react to fire - Tweaks to lighting darkness Cosmetic - 3 new hair colors added, including the often requested "darker black" - Graphics tweak for female straw hat Fixes - Healing Spray and Airhorns should work again - Typo Fix for Evil Santa - Typo fix for zombotown - Flee from burning building event changed to let you pick from all members of the group, instead of picking from 3.

This starts testing for the upcoming DUODENUM update! Lots of stuff coming. Note that your testing branch saves will be cleared. I may put in some sort of "free ZP cheat" somewhere for the testing branch later. ːmountieːːmountieːːmountieːːmountieːːmountieːːmountieːːmountieːːmountieːːmountieːːmountieːːmountieːːmountieː IMPORTANT NOTE: The testing branch and the retail version use different save files! HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. ːmountieːːmountieːːmountieːːmountieːːmountieːːmountieːːmountieːːmountieːːmountieːːmountieːːmountieːːmountieː CHANGES Debug - You get the temporary option of starting with all the fire-based weapons. Flamethrower, Hot Poker, Blowtorch, Molotovs! New Lighting System - Nights are darker now - You start each game with a couple flashlights in the trunk - Flashlights, fire, and some other sources can provide light Fire Changes - Fire now does a lot more damage - Fire now doesn't spread between zombies, for the most part - Fire now doesn't spread from zombie to human, for the most part - Fire patches set zombies on fire a lot more easily Specific Flamethrower Changes - Flamethrower jet now pushes and knocks down zombies much better - Leaves longer lasting burn patches on the ground - Takes much less ammo, both when idle or when in use - Now has a minimum fire spray/ammo use amount, if you just tap the shoot button - Flamethrower now cheaper, from 60/50/40 cost from various traders to 50/40/35 General Weapon Changes - Molotov burn patches now last a lot longer - Hot Poker added, may set a zombie on fire on hit - Blowtorch now uses its own internal charges instead of gas - Blowtorch gets better fuel efficiency, and a minimum ammo use on tap - Alien's Raygun now uses its own internal charges instead of gas Misc Changes - Propane tanks now vents gas and freaks out when hit, then explode shortly after. They can also still explode instantly if they take a lot of damage at once. - Two new heads added for each gender

This is for a quick content update I want to get out right away! It mostly adds events and characters for Canada Day and America Day, but also includes some fixes. Please help test and post feedback so we can launch it ASAP. TO SEE CANADA DAY: Change your system clock to July 1. TO SEE AMERICA DAY: Change your system clock to July 4. Then start the game as normal. ːmountieːːmountieːːmountieːːmountieːːmountieːːmountieːːmountieːːmountieːːmountieːːmountieːːmountieːːmountieːːmountieːːmountieː IMPORTANT NOTE: The testing branch and the retail version use different save files! HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. ːmountieːːmountieːːmountieːːmountieːːmountieːːmountieːːmountieːːmountieːːmountieːːmountieːːmountieːːmountieːːmountieːːmountieː Changes: HOLIDAY STUFF - Events for Canada Day and July 4th added. - Beavers are now recruitable/playable characters. - Uncle Sam added. - Muscle Eagle added. - Death sayings and blurbs added for beaver, Uncle Sam, Muscle Eagle. FIXES - Typo fix for a pessimist blurb - Angrystrong events now count your effective strength, so bonuses apply. This means that T*S*T*C will give these options properly. - Calmshooter events now use effective shooting. - Wits checks now use effective wits, just for consistency. This will never come up because there are no "wits bonuses" in the game so far. - Total shooting skill for group checks now pass over dogs. This fixes a weird thing in the "help settlement against bandits" event, where you'll do way worse if you have a dog in the party. - The above also applies to the other skills, except fitness. - If you lose Mjolnir, it now returns to your trunk rather than the Valkyrie's inventory. This makes it consistent with Lnk bombs and Ninja supplies, which also used to return to those characters. All were changed because they could overwrite other weapons. EDIT: 6/28 5:06 PM PST - Day and time should be visible again during missions

Starting up the testing branch again. This is just two really quick fixes. I may be able to quietly put this into the retail version, if there's no new problems introduced in testing. By the weekend, some tests for DUODENUM content will begin. This will clear our the testing branch saves. ːskeleːːskeleːːskeleːːskeleːːskeleːːskeleːːskeleːːskeleːːskeleːːskeleːːskeleːːskeleːːskeleː IMPORTANT NOTE: The testing branch and the retail version use different save files! HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. ːskeleːːskeleːːskeleːːskeleːːskeleːːskeleːːskeleːːskeleːːskeleːːskeleːːskeleːːskeleːːskeleː CHANGES - The one character pick for the siege reward events will now properly give Zombo Points. - The rare toilet paper event will now give Zombo Points if you keep the roll, even if you're solo.

This is a large update that adds an all-new progression system to the game. You can now earn points to unlock new perks, traits, and persistent bonuses! We've also added new characters, new events, ending epilogues, and more. See all the new features below, in the UPDATE CHANGES section!
It's my hope that the new unlock system and new perks/traits give something to work towards for newer players. I'd like to ease the initial difficulty curve a bit, at least on the low difficulties for the first win. I want advanced players to get new character builds and options, without hurting the balance of the game too much overall. Let me know what you think about this update by commenting on this post!

FUTURE UPDATES

FURTHER FEATURE PLANS

UPDATE CHANGES

Help us test everything! Post any problems you run into, ideally with screenshots. If we can burn through testing, we can likely launch the update this weekend. The changes below are the most recent changes from earlier today. I'll post a full changelog when we actually launch the update. There's a lot of new content, including perks, traits, and the upgrade system. ːmeltychanːːmeltychanːːmeltychanːːmeltychanːːmeltychanːːmeltychanːːmeltychanːːmeltychanːːmeltychanːːmeltychanːːmeltychanːːmeltychanːːmeltychanːːmeltychanːːmeltychanːːmeltychanːːmeltychanːːmeltychanːːmeltychanːːmeltychanːːmeltychanːːmeltychanː *****Edit 6/14 5:10 PM: IMPORTANT NOTE: The testing branch is now using the retail saves, since launch is so close! This means that if you do testing branch, you won't be able to access retail version for a bit. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. ːmeltychanːːmeltychanːːmeltychanːːmeltychanːːmeltychanːːmeltychanːːmeltychanːːmeltychanːːmeltychanːːmeltychanːːmeltychanːːmeltychanːːmeltychanːːmeltychanːːmeltychanːːmeltychanːːmeltychanːːmeltychanːːmeltychanːːmeltychanːːmeltychanːːmeltychanː CHANGES Platforms - Linux build updated - Mac build updated - iOS build updated Weapon Selling - The Zweihander can be sold, again - Red9 can be sold now - Lynn's Zweihander can no longer be sold if he's holding it. It has been renamed to Coldsteel Greatsword until he sells it to you. Other Fixes - Breaking your old car, then driving off in a new car on the same map should no longer cause the game to bug out and force you to be walking. - Yallmart trader camp should no longer have those weird concrete patches in the Northwest corner - Possible fix for the "character in text event staring at nothing" bug - Fix for the bug that would cause you to lose characters if you got kicked out of a trader camp while your teammates were in a different building than you - Fix for an anime-check causing problems

Putting up the Windows version early. Linux and Mac are coming, likely mid-day tomorrow. This may wrap up the new update, though we might be able to pick off some extra bugs tomorrow. We could get this out on the weekend, if testing goes well! Let us know in the comments if you run into any problems. ːanimegirlːːanimegirlːːanimegirlːːanimegirlːːanimegirlːːanimegirlːːanimegirlːːanimegirlːːanimegirlːːanimegirlːːanimegirlːːmeltychanːːmeltychanːːmeltychanːːmeltychanːːmeltychanːːmeltychanːːmeltychanːːmeltychanːːmeltychanː IMPORTANT NOTE: The testing branch and retail version of the game now use different save files! This is for easy swapping back and forth between the versions without errors, and also for testing purposes. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. ːanimegirlːːanimegirlːːanimegirlːːanimegirlːːanimegirlːːanimegirlːːanimegirlːːanimegirlːːanimegirlːːanimegirlːːanimegirlːːmeltychanːːmeltychanːːmeltychanːːmeltychanːːmeltychanːːmeltychanːːmeltychanːːmeltychanːːmeltychanː CHANGES Rare Characters - New Sleepy Trader added to the rare trader list - Mash enough food in their mouth and you'll get two random skill increases and then Sound Sleeper for free, on one character! - Nimbus Ordeal moved to the BAD SPECIAL CHARACTERS list because he suuuuuucks Unlocks and Upgrades - Toilet Upgrade III now also increases toilet loot chance to 30%, up from 20% - Increased chances of Toilet Upgrade III special loot, from 5% to 10% - Toilet Upgrade III now properly shoots skeletons or weapons out of toilets, about 2.5% of the time for each lootable toilet. - Skeleton and weapon toilets increase the toilet counter properly, but can't spawn a genie. - Unomey text updated for the new toilet upgrade changes. - INFO button on title screen changed to UNLOCKS - Adjusted trait costs for the Trait Unlocker's early traits. Instead of the costs being 5 5 5 10 10 , they are now 3 3 6 6 10 Character Maker - Game now supports up to 10 pages for custom characters - Pressing RANDOM on the character maker or buddy/leader screen will no longer sometimes pick locked traits and perks - New page scrolling effect for the perks and traits pages - Currently selected perk/trait is now highlighted in green - Fixed a bug on the trait page with the scrolling being off by one - Made keyboard cursor navigation smoother for perk/trait pages Other Tweaks - A fix for some buildings, mostly shops, having messed up doors - Made the weapons buyer not buy the Zweihander, as it was exploitable

Various small things! Not too much is left to launch this update. Help test and let me know if you run into errors. Coming up next build: Linux and Mac versions. Changing the INFO button to UNLOCKS. A new rare trader. Maybe making weapons pop out of upgraded toilets. Hit [ INFO ] on title screen to see the new unlock stuff! ːanimegirlːːanimegirlːːanimegirlːːanimegirlːːanimegirlːːanimegirlːːanimegirlːːanimegirlːːanimegirlːːanimegirlːːanimegirlːːanimegirlːːanimegirlːːanimegirlːːanimegirlːːanimegirlːːanimegirlːːanimegirlː IMPORTANT NOTE: The testing branch and retail version of the game now use different save files! This is for easy swapping back and forth between the versions without errors, and also for testing purposes. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. ːanimegirlːːanimegirlːːanimegirlːːanimegirlːːanimegirlːːanimegirlːːanimegirlːːanimegirlːːanimegirlːːanimegirlːːanimegirlːːanimegirlːːanimegirlːːanimegirlːːanimegirlːːanimegirlːːanimegirlːːanimegirlː CHANGES Characters - HNK and Samedi blurbs added - Single blurbs for Bort, JLB, Nimbus Ordeal, Bogan -New ending lines for all the new characters -New ending line for Skeletal Knight -Death lines for Samedi and HNK Other Tweaks - Text changes for Deadlier Road ending - New onesaying-start option for characters that only say one thing in blurbs - Fix for Billy having an unshuffled blurb deck - Art update for special characters, setting their colors back to 256 - Weapon sheet updated to add bow and arrow, for later

New characters! Some fancy ones. The patch notes will be especially spoiler-y this time. Hit [ INFO ] on title screen to see the new unlock stuff! Soon we'll change the text of that button to [ UNLOCKS ] or something like that. Soon, hopefully tomorrow: Wrapping up some things, then Linux and Mac builds. Then just testing until we can launch the update. ːzombfaceːːzombfaceːːzombfaceːːzombfaceːːzombfaceːːzombfaceːːzombfaceːːzombfaceːːzombfaceːːzombfaceːːzombfaceːːzombfaceːːzombfaceːːzombfaceːːzombfaceːːzombfaceːːzombfaceːːzombfaceː IMPORTANT NOTE: The testing branch and retail version of the game now use different save files! This is for easy swapping back and forth between the versions without errors, and also for testing purposes. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. ːzombfaceːːzombfaceːːzombfaceːːzombfaceːːzombfaceːːzombfaceːːzombfaceːːzombfaceːːzombfaceːːzombfaceːːzombfaceːːzombfaceːːzombfaceːːzombfaceːːzombfaceːːzombfaceːːzombfaceːːzombfaceː CHANGES New Special Characters - Bort: Very hard to get, summoned by special antique can ritual. - Just Like Bart: Bort blossoms into this. The ultimate Bart. - HENK/HONK/etc: Camp recruit. Can buy a new pistol from him, or recruit him along with an upgraded version of the pistol. - Samedi: Camp recruit, has a skeletal army. Loves skeletons. Also gets Phoenix. - Kaiju: Can you save the city from a giant monster? - Nimbus Ordeal: Starts with a weapon that's even stronger than a claymore! This has multiple horrible catches. - Bogan: A new rare city recruit. Has Gnomish Healing Factor. 'Nuff said. New Abilities - Bort gets a weird version of Phoenix that doesn't work on text events. - Cooling-it checks can upgrade Bort to Just Like Bart. - Gnome Regen gives a point of free healing, every blurb healing event. - Skeleton Queen summons 2 skeletons whenever the character is hit. New Player Weapon - Ded9: As strong as the Dolt revolver, fires as fast as the pistol. Carries 80 ammo instead of the dolt's 60 or pistol's 90. New Special Character Only Weapons - Modded Ded9: Very accurate, tiny recoil. Dolt strength zombie piercing, and fires slightly faster than the pistol! Carries 120 ammo. - Skateboard: Dont have cow man - Guster Sword: Like a claymore, but hits even harder. Is also 25% slower. Other Tweaks - Some new death sayings added for some of the new characters - New weapon and special character art - Body skeletonization gives claws now - New appearance for Skeleton Knight trader

I didn't pass out yet so I'm counting this as 6/10. Hit [ INFO ] on title screen to see the new unlock stuff! Soon we'll change the text of that button to [ UNLOCKS ] or something like that. Sunday night: New characters, a handful of new weapons. Most of the weapons will be for the new characters. There will be a bigger focus on new weapons in the July update. Monday?: Wrapping up a few remaining things, with Linux and Mac builds. After that, testing. And when it looks stable, launching the update. ːmountieːːhorsemannːːskeleːːzombfaceːːmountieːːhorsemannːːskeleːːzombfaceːːmountieːːhorsemannːːskeleːːzombfaceːːmountieːːhorsemannːːskeleːːzombfaceː IMPORTANT NOTE: The testing branch and retail version of the game now use different save files! This is for easy swapping back and forth between the versions without errors, and also for testing purposes. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. ːmountieːːhorsemannːːskeleːːzombfaceːːmountieːːhorsemannːːskeleːːzombfaceːːmountieːːhorsemannːːskeleːːzombfaceːːmountieːːhorsemannːːskeleːːzombfaceː CHANGES New On-the-Road Text Events - Lost Sneezing Remedy event. Can you survive? - Battle of Garbage Mountain event, trade your well-being for strength or fitness gains. - GameBronus event, trade morale for a point in shooting, mechanical, or medical. - Giant Spider Ambush event. Try eating it. - Strange Vending Machine event, trade morale/your soul for a one choice in a list of randomized items. - Rare Event: VHS tapes. Pick a movie to benefit the entire group. - Sumo Wrestler can learn Super Sumo from Sumo Movies. Ending - New ending text for all the game modes - Ending timing slightly increased, for easier reading - Lines for Kepa and Sheriff Dimes Other Tweaks - Free zombo points removed from Unomey - T*S*T*C perk characters do NOT do cardio - Expanded support for pet number checks/picks for text events.

Hit [ INFO ] on title screen to see all the new recent unlocks that were added. Most of the ending's done! Coming up next: - The ending flavor text for each game mode. - Some new road Text Events. - Some new characters, including a rare trader. - Some new weapons. - Builds for Linux and Mac. - Testing. - Launching this update. Some new locations are almost done, but I don't think they'll make the cutoff for launch. They'll be delayed for the late July update instead, though they'll show up on testing branch after this update's launched. ːhorsemannːːhorsemannːːhorsemannːːhorsemannːːhorsemannːːhorsemannːːhorsemannːːhorsemannːːhorsemannːːhorsemannːːhorsemannːːhorsemannː IMPORTANT NOTE: The testing branch and retail version of the game now use different save files! This is for easy swapping back and forth between the versions without errors, and also for testing purposes. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. ːhorsemannːːhorsemannːːhorsemannːːhorsemannːːhorsemannːːhorsemannːːhorsemannːːhorsemannːːhorsemannːːhorsemannːːhorsemannːːhorsemannː CHANGES - All the character epilogues are in, based on skill (mostly). - All the character epilogue sayings are in, based on personality (mostly). - Lots of epilogues based on the special characters. - That ending bug that was causing an " pops" error is now fixed. - Timing adjustments for the ending text. Let me know if it goes by too fast. - Some fixes and tweaks.

Wrapping up Zombo Town in INFO for this update. Some new additions there. Now preparing to put in all the non-placeholder ending lines. Check [ INFO ] on the title screen for all the new unlocks! Moving to other content after doing the ending bits. After that will also get Mac and Linux testing started. Then it's good for final testing, launching, and immediately starting on the anniversary update! ːskeleːːskeleːːskeleːːskeleːːskeleːːskeleːːskeleːːskeleːːskeleːːskeleːːskeleːːskeleːːskeleːːskeleːːskeleːːskeleːːskeleːːskeleː IMPORTANT NOTE: The testing branch and retail version of the game now use different save files! This is for easy swapping back and forth between the versions without errors, and also for testing purposes. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. ːskeleːːskeleːːskeleːːskeleːːskeleːːskeleːːskeleːːskeleːːskeleːːskeleːːskeleːːskeleːːskeleːːskeleːːskeleːːskeleːːskeleːːskeleː CHANGES Zombo Town - The dialog now changes for the Perk and Trait unlockers, depending on how many things you buy from them. - New character in INFO HUT now lets you replay the tutorial. I finally added this. - New character in INFO HUT lets you delete your stats/progress file, your custom characters, or both at once. - Info Bot text slightly changed. Endings - Getting things ready for the final lines. - BERSERK! Trait now uses both character epilogue lines.

Tnomey finished! Lots of new stuff that he sells. Also I nerfed his food and supply amount. So this way hopefully he's not considered a "cheat", so I don't have to disable achievements/streaks when he's used. Check [ INFO ] on the title screen for all the new unlocks! Wrapping up Zombo Town stuff, mostly just little polish bits, then doing new content/event testing maybe starting tomorrow. Some time this week will also get Mac and Linux testing started. ː6faceːːgnomeyːː6faceːːgnomeyːː6faceːːgnomeyːː6faceːːgnomeyːː6faceːːgnomeyːː6faceːːgnomeyːː6faceːːgnomeyːː6faceːːgnomeyːː6faceːːgnomeyː IMPORTANT NOTE: The testing branch and retail version of the game now use different save files! This is for easy swapping back and forth between the versions without errors, and also for testing purposes. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. ː6faceːːgnomeyːː6faceːːgnomeyːː6faceːːgnomeyːː6faceːːgnomeyːː6faceːːgnomeyːː6faceːːgnomeyːː6faceːːgnomeyːː6faceːːgnomeyːː6faceːːgnomeyː CHANGES Tnomey Additions - Tnomey can now summon a random common recruit event for 10 ZP, like the ones you sometimes get on the road. - Common recruit event does not include the usual chance for a special character. - Tnomey sells a Battle Rodent at 20 ZP. It's kind of like a really weird superdog that can't use weapons but can still get event checks. Maybe some kind of gerbil? - Gets Shield of Hope and Tiny Eater (but with no stat penalties) for free. - Gets 4 starting strength for free, along with the usual 6 fitness that rodents get. - Says GNORT a lot. - Tnomey can summon a random rare recruit for 30 ZP. This is similar to the rare character event you can get on the road, but it excludes some of them that you probably wouldn't want to waste 30 ZP on. - Tnomey's rare recruit summon can't get you the following: Octodad, Friendly Hitchhiker, God-Emperor, G*rf, Anime Girl, Knight. - Tnomey now sells some weapons at 20 ZP and 30 ZP. - 2nd tier may have him sell a magnum, rifle, shotgun, or a grenade. - 3rd tier may have him sell a sledgehammer or fire axe. - Tnomey's stock no longer changes each time you talk to him. - Tnomey's stock changes if you see talk to him, leave the camp, and then enter a new trader camp later. Tnomey Nerfs - Food amount for 10/20/30 ZP reduced to 4/6/8, formerly 5/8/12 - Gnomey supply choices now have about 25% less of a return than the equivalent amount of food you'd get from him - Overall, gives roughly 50% of the supplies he used to and 70% or so of the food. Other Tweaks - Tiny Eater now gets a -2 Max Strength Penalty, -1 Max Fitness Penalty - Changes to the recruit logic and recruit deck locations to allow for more specific draws for Tnomey. - Unlock Gnome description changed for final Tnomey upgrade. ː6faceːːgnomeyːː6faceːːgnomeyːː6faceːːgnomeyːː6faceːːgnomeyːː6faceːːgnomeyːː6faceːːgnomeyːː6faceːːgnomeyːː6faceːːgnomeyːː6faceːːgnomeyː If you have any more suggestions for Tnomey, let me know! Especially if there's any more special characters you think you wouldn't want to get if you spent 30 ZP for a random roll. G*rf was taken off the GOOD RARES list, but the Clown is still on there due to his secret event being really good if you survive it. The Tnomey nerfs are so that he's not so strong that I have to do special things for achievements with him. As he is now, you can spend a bunch of ZP for a slight boost along the lines of finding one extra lucky loot room in a house. So, it's nice but not exactly game breaking to get an extra 8 food per every other game or one more recruit event. At the same time, ZP is also easier to gain than it used to be.

The Gnome Trader, Tnomey, is now partially in. Work on that will probably last another day or two due to some problems. Then moving to events. I've also added a new line of upgrades that let you get Zombo Points faster. All the new upgrades/unlocks are in the [ INFO ] button on the title screen! ːgnomeyːːgnomeyːːgnomeyːːgnomeyːːgnomeyːːgnomeyːːgnomeyːːgnomeyːːgnomeyːːgnomeyːːgnomeyːːgnomeyː IMPORTANT NOTE: The testing branch and retail version of the game now use different save files! This is for easy swapping back and forth between the versions without errors, and also for testing purposes. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. ːgnomeyːːgnomeyːːgnomeyːːgnomeyːːgnomeyːːgnomeyːːgnomeyːːgnomeyːːgnomeyːːgnomeyːːgnomeyːːgnomeyː Changes: New Upgrades: Extra ZP - This upgrade has 4 levels, and all are focused on letting you get Zombo Points in additional ways. - Level 1: Get 1 ZP from rescuing people/dogs. - Level 2: Get 1 ZP each time you sell to a weapons buyer. - Level 3: Get 1 ZP for recruiting people/things. - Level 4: Get 1 ZP whenever an ally dies. Tnomey, the Trading Gnome - Unlock Tnomey and he'll start showing up in trader camps. You can buy one thing from him each game for Zombo Points. - Upgrade him and he'll start selling a wider variety of options. - First set of items take 10 ZP, second is 20 ZP, third is 30 ZP. - Each upgrade will also make him sell one additional thing at a time, so when fully upgraded he sells 3 items of the above different costs. - What items he sells are random. Currently they change whenever you talk to him, but that will change to whenever you go to a new trader camp. - Tnomey dramatically vanishes for rest of game when something is bought from him. Tweaks - Anime Truck cooling-it now offends the Anime Fan considerably. - Unomey saying added. - Recruit decks shuffled around a little in dailydecks.df, for future work. - Some other under the hood tweaks. ːgnomeyːːgnomeyːːgnomeyːːgnomeyːːgnomeyːːgnomeyːːgnomeyːːgnomeyːːgnomeyːːgnomeyːːgnomeyːːgnomeyː Need to add more stuff to Tnomey still. His upgrade text talks about what he's going to get soon. Right now he just sells supplies. The amount of stuff he gives for the higher ZP amounts may be nerfed. Especially since it's going to be easier to get ZP, with the new "ZP for deaths" upgrade. Likely the 10 ZP supplies will stay the same, but the 20 and 30 ZP ones will take a hit. I also might make the meds/gas/ammo reduced by about 10-20% or so compared to the food, like it is in safes. The weapons that Tnomey sells won't be great. Thinking Aluminum Bat at the highest end. He will also sell recruits, which will be in the form of instant recruit events when you drive off. 30 ZP: Always get a special character! I may tweak this so it doesn't give you one of the crap ones, but then I have to figure out which ones are truly the crap ones. Let me know what you think would infuriate you, if you got it after paying 30 ZP for the random special recruit.

Setting up more Unlocks. Introducing the Unlock Gnome. Anime Tweaks. More Unlock stuff coming tomorrow, then I'm moving to getting events and other remaining things up on the testing branch. ːanimegirlːːanimegirlːːanimegirlːːanimegirlːːanimegirlːːanimegirlːːanimegirlːːanimegirlːːanimegirlːːanimegirlːːanimegirlːːanimegirlː IMPORTANT NOTE: The testing branch and retail version of the game now use different save files! This is for easy swapping back and forth between the versions without errors, and also for testing purposes. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. ːanimegirlːːanimegirlːːanimegirlːːanimegirlːːanimegirlːːanimegirlːːanimegirlːːanimegirlːːanimegirlːːanimegirlːːanimegirlːːmeltychanː Changes: - Unlock Gnome now sells Zombo Point Cap Upgrades. - Unlock gnome unlocks tracked and saved - Checks in oldstat-transfer to set your unlock gnome tally correctly - Zombo Point Cap increases from beating the game now increase the unlock gnome tally - Proper setup of unlock gnome: Lists unlocks remaining, allows buying/viewing unlocks. - Anime Fan sets your morale to 4 to avoid early animeification - Anime Fan now reacts to Anime Truck. - Anime Fan now reacts to other forms of anime. ːmeltychanː I don't think I'll be having Anime Fan react to Anime Girl specifically, since that could lead to some pretty bad cascades if you have multiple Anime Fans. I may reconsider this later in testing. I'm leaving the FREE POINTS thing for the Unlock Gnome in longer. It only goes to 20, so to get the higher stuff (currently one thing) you'll need to grind a bit. I need to get a sense of how bad the grind is, anyway.

It's late and there's a lot of stuff in this one. Lots of Traits. This marks the end of perks and traits for the upcoming update, unless we sneak in a few more later. Also by request I put in a way to get Zombo Points quickly. Won't be in for long. ːsuperdogːːzombfaceːːsuperdogːːzombfaceːːsuperdogːːzombfaceːːsuperdogːːzombfaceːːsuperdogːːzombfaceːːsuperdogːːzombfaceːːsuperdogːːzombfaceːːsuperdogːːzombfaceːːsuperdogːːzombfaceːːsuperdogːːzombfaceː IMPORTANT NOTE: The testing branch and retail version of the game now use different save files! This is for easy swapping back and forth between the versions without errors, and also for testing purposes. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. ːsuperdogːːzombfaceːːsuperdogːːzombfaceːːsuperdogːːzombfaceːːsuperdogːːzombfaceːːsuperdogːːzombfaceːːsuperdogːːzombfaceːːsuperdogːːzombfaceːːsuperdogːːzombfaceːːsuperdogːːzombfaceːːsuperdogːːzombfaceː Changes: New Traits - Phoenix: Revive once, at full health. With some extra surprises. - Gourmand: Eat 3 food instead of 2 at mealtime, but get morale every time you eat. If you're low on food, lose extra morale. Trademark weapon: Sturdy Cleaver. - Tiny Eater: 1 food instead of 2 at mealtime! 1 point penalty to max strength and fitness. - City Seeker: Chances of finding something rare while looting a city is tripled, to 30%. - Sound Sleeper: Sleep through everything, even if it makes no sense. No more TIRED status for a character using this. - Anime Fan: Starts with an unbreakable katana, can't drop it. Do NOT hit maximum morale! Trademark weapon: An even better katana. Temporary - Gnomey is throwing out Zombo Points like they're nothing. Tweaks - Phoenix is a little more expensive - Sumo starts with Gourmand now. - Various small fixes. ːsuperdogːːzombfaceːːsuperdogːːzombfaceːːsuperdogːːzombfaceːːsuperdogːːzombfaceːːsuperdogːːzombfaceːːsuperdogːːzombfaceːːsuperdogːːzombfaceːːsuperdogːːzombfaceːːsuperdogːːzombfaceːːsuperdogːːzombfaceː Notes: If someone in your team has Hero Type, Hero Type will trigger before Phoenix. I can change this on request. Not sure which way is better. Shield of Hope takes precedence over either, since it's not as limited. I may increase the strength penalty of Tiny Eater to 2, while keeping fitness penalty at 1. I bet people would still use it. Anime Fan counts what your character's maximum morale is, not just ː6faceː so you can't cheat it. City Seeker does a little tone when a city is likely to have something. I'll add more anime interactions to Anime Fan later. Also, before the current version, the CURSE affected someone in your team at random. I'm not sure if I like it better that way, or better the current way (it affects the actual person with the trait).

An early build (for me, compared to my usual time). This mostly attempts a lot of balancing at the costs of perk upgrades vs how quickly you get points. Things are now MUCH cheaper, and you tend to get a lot more points per game. Winning is also more rewarded than it was before. As always, hit the [ INFO ] button to get to Zombo Town for the perk and trait unlockers. I should be posting another build late tonight! Mostly more Traits, likely the last batch of them for this update. We may still add some Perks before the update is out, and if we don't we'll put them in DUODENUM instead. ːmountieːːmountieːːmountieːːmountieːːmountieːːmountieːːmountieːːmountieːːmountieːːmountieːːmountieːːmountieː IMPORTANT NOTE: The testing branch and retail version of the game now use different save files! This is for easy swapping back and forth between the versions without errors, and also for testing purposes. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. ːmountieːːmountieːːmountieːːmountieːːmountieːːmountieːːmountieːːmountieːːmountieːːmountieːːmountieːːmountieː Changes: Zombo Point Gain - ZP gain rate is roughly doubled, with more bonuses for difficulty and getting further in the modes. - ZP bonus for making it past the 10th day, with a higher bonus for higher difficulties. - ZP bonus for winning the last siege before the border sieges, depending on difficulty. - ZP ending rewards greatly increased, about 60-100% higher than before. - ZP cap increase now happens in the final-guy window before the ending. - ZP cap increase now happens before the ending reward points are given. Perk Costs - Big changes to the price of perk upgrades. Now much cheaper. - Old system: 1x base cost to unlock, 1x cost for first upgrade, 2x cost for second upgrade. - New system: 1x cost to unlock, 0.4x cost rounding down for first upgrade, 0.7x cost rounding down for second upgrade. - Some perk base cost adjustments. - Fighter now comes one choice later in the Rambeaux list Tweaks and Fixes - Fixed some perk shop tracking - Resilient Type trademark weapon is now the Sledgehammer - Removed a useless extra integer in Long Road's setup word - Fixed some raid days I forgot to change way back when I made sieges less common. This was causing Marathon and Long Road to have back to back sieges, which wasn't intentional (for the past year). ːmountieːːmountieːːmountieːːmountieːːmountieːːmountieːːmountieːːmountieːːmountieːːmountieːːmountieːːmountieː Notes: Here's the data on Zombo Point rewards with this new test branch. Rewards for beating a mode have been more or less doubled, in general. Raids on 3, 7, 11, 15 + the reward for getting to the ending. Point rewards: Normal Mode: 1, 1, 2, 3 + 3 = 10 total Familiar or Special: 1, 1, 2, 3 + 2 = 9 Deadlier: 1, 2, 2, 3 + 5 = 13 Family EX or Special EX: 1, 2, 3, 4 + 6 = 16 K*E*P*A: 1, 2, 3, 4 + 10 = 20 Other mode point rewards: Short Mode: 1, 1, 2 + 2 = 6 Long Mode: 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 2, + 3 = 13 Marathon Mode: 1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 4 + 10 = 27

This build has the very fancy Hero Type trait and Shield of Hope perk. Both hijack the health loss/death systems in different ways. There's also some fixes and balance tweaks. Finishing Traits tomorrow, then moving on to the next part of the unlock system. ːhorsemannːːhorsemannːːhorsemannːːhorsemannːːhorsemannːːhorsemannː IMPORTANT NOTE: The testing branch and retail version of the game now use different save files! This is for easy swapping back and forth between the versions without errors, and also for testing purposes. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. ːhorsemannːːhorsemannːːhorsemannːːhorsemannːːhorsemannːːhorsemannː Changes: New Perks - T*S*T*C: Gives you max strength. Then lets you train strength 6 times over the normal maximum. In return, nukes your fitness and doesn't let you train it. Leveling the perk to max lets you start with 2 fitness, which you still can't increase. - Shield of Hope: You can't die as long as you have over :( morale. Fatal hits will take morale, instead. This includes both text events and zombie bites in the locations. - Higher levels take less morale per hit, and it goes from 4 to 2. - Doesn't work on text events that instant-kill you! Also, multiple damage requires a lot of morale to deal with safely. - Temporarily made Shield of Hope the first thing the Debutante sells, for easier testing. New Trait - Hero Type: Just one time per game, you will prevent a teammate's death, automatically. Only applies to text events. At the same time, you'll heal them to up to 2 health. - Works on stuff it probably shouldn't work on, like instant kills. - Also provides maximum loyalty. - Trademark Weapon: Sledgehammer Tweaks of Recent Changes - Top Seller now prevents morale loss if you're paying food to bandits. - You now unlock the first +5 to Zombo Points Cap Increase by beating any of the normal modes, not Deadlier. - You now unlock the second +5 ZP Cap Increase by beating Deadlier. - Beating KEPA no longer unlocks anything for now, but it will do something in the future. - The old-stats converter will now check your save to see if you beat the above modes when the game updates, and will raise your ZP cap automatically. - BERSERK! Trademark Weapon changed to Parking Meter. - Warrior Trademark Weapon changed to Fire Axe. - Trait/Perk sellers now get a ? over their heads if they run out of stuff to sell. Balance - One of the random trading camp days removed, so that will be less common - Surprise Trading Camp day is now a floating day, so more random - One less familiar-recruit event in the rotation - Random day type rotation is 10 days instead of 11 now Fixes - Fixed a long standing stack problem with .sting2- - Fixed some dup issues with .sting - Fixed a couple camp events where a dead group could try to eat, causing empty text. - Lots of small under the hood changes to how damage and death work. ːhorsemannːːhorsemannːːhorsemannːːhorsemannːːhorsemannːːhorsemannː NOTES Need a lot of testing of all the old text events, with and without Shield of Hope and Hero Type. Also, could use opinions on T*S*T*C. Too strong? Too weak? Both?

More Perks! Coming this weekend: More traits! After that, hopefully moving on to content and other unlocks for a bit. Lots of stuff to test and discuss for balance! Read under the changelog this time for some notes from me. As always you can find all the new unlock stuff in the [ INFO ] screen for now. ːmeltychanːːmeltychanːːmeltychanːːmeltychanːːmeltychanːːmeltychanː IMPORTANT NOTE: The testing branch and retail version of the game now use different save files! This is for easy swapping back and forth between the versions without errors, and also for testing purposes. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. ːmeltychanːːmeltychanːːmeltychanːːmeltychanːːmeltychanːːmeltychanː Changes: New Perks - Top Seller added: Gives you 1-5 extra food when selling things to the weapons buyer. Further levels reduce the tolls you have to pay to bandits, to about 60%. - Pathfinder added: Removes the first penalty event you get from every walking segment. Further levels have a 60-75% chance of removing the penalty from the second day, should that happen. - Hidden Potential added: Raises strength OR fitness, then lets you increase it over the normal maximum by 1. Doesn't tell you which. 2nd level raises the other stat by one also, and final level throws in one final point at random (but not to the maximum). - Natural Shot added: You don't start with a gun or ammo, but increases the maximum amount of shooting you can get by one. Final level raises this to +2 max shooting, with an additional point in shooting to raise it up. - Trademark Weapon added: Gives you a never-drop weapon, which can change based on your trait! By default it's an aluminum bat. Further levels give you a point in fitness and shooting. Full List of Trademark Weapon Traits - Aluminum Bat: Default, if no trait is chosen below - Fire Axe: Fierce Tempered, Resilient Type - Hunting Rifle: Calm Under Fire - Sturdy Cleaver: Nurturing, Travel Light - Nightstick: Inventive, Frantic Whiner - Electric Guitar: Civilized - Sledgehammer: Warrior - Sturdy Machete (!!!): Specialist - Parking Meter: Grappler - Chainsaw (!!!!!!!!): BERSERK! Other Adjustments - The Grappler + Ex-Wrestler combo now makes it so you can't shoot, since El Satan can't. - Tallies updated for all the Perk sellers. - Perk Sellers now no longer list the maximum ZP in a fraction, in their first screen. Still shows on the second screen. - Hunting Rifle no longer breaks if used to hit things with the stock in melee. - Sturdy Cleaver added. It's a meat cleaver that can't break. Surprisingly strong. - Rambeux Perk prices increased a little at the high end (stuff that isn't in the game yet). ːmeltychanːːmeltychanːːmeltychanːːmeltychanːːmeltychanːːmeltychanː BALANCE NOTES Play all the new traits and perks! I'm hoping they're worth using without destroying the game. Trademark Weapon + BERSERK! giving a chainsaw will likely be changed. Seems too good. I'm looking at Ex-Wrestler + Grappler, seems like it may be a little strong. The combo lets you start with El Satan, more or less. Maybe the player version of Zombie Wrestler should be more tiring, but not prevent shooting? Let me know what you think. Pathfinder is possibly also pretty overpowered/exploitable? I can tweak the numbers but it's hard to ride that line between "lets you destroy your car with impunity" and "is a worthless perk". I'll look at giving an alternate way to unlock things, if you get stuck and can't beat a game mode. Something I'm considering is making it so you can pay points to expand your maximum ZP OR get +5 from beating any mode for the first time. Then get another +5 for beating Deadlier OR pay for it with points. Beating KEPA mode could then give something else besides +5 points, maybe. There's 2-3 more perks coming, and then somewhere between 4-8 more traits.

Very late night update that adds a new perk and a couple traits to play with. Looking for opinions, as I haven't balanced any of them yet. ːzombfaceːːzombfaceːːzombfaceːːzombfaceːːzombfaceːːzombfaceː IMPORTANT NOTE: The testing branch and retail version of the game now use different save files! This is for easy swapping back and forth between the versions without errors, and also for testing purposes. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. ːzombfaceːːzombfaceːːzombfaceːːzombfaceːːzombfaceːːzombfaceː Changes: - New Trait: Travel Light. Get a point of dexterity in exchange for losing a weapon slot for that character. Pretty straightforward. - New Perk: Ex-Wrestler. Get the ability to pick up and throw downed zombies, and up to 2 points in fitness and 1 in strength. Downside: Lose a max point in strength, fitness, shooting. - New Trait: Grappler. Get the ability to pick up and throw downed zombies. Downside: Boring personality and no stat bonuses to speak of. - Try combining Ex-Wrestler and Grappler. I may have to tone this down. - Updated tally numbers for the Trait Dingus and Perk TLB.

This wraps up adding the Perk and Trait NPC systems for now. Check them out in [ INFO ] on the title screen! We still need to change that button. Next up, I'm likely going to do one more build tomorrow and then stop putting them up so quickly for a bit. Give some room to test without changing things daily. Things to add coming up soon: All new Perks and Traits. More terrifying things to unlock. At some point, a break to put in new content for testing. ːsuperdogːːsuperdogːːsuperdogːːsuperdogːːsuperdogːːsuperdogː IMPORTANT NOTE: The testing branch and retail version of the game now use different save files! This is for easy swapping back and forth between the versions without errors, and also for testing purposes. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. ːsuperdogːːsuperdogːːsuperdogːːsuperdogːːsuperdogːːsuperdogː Changes: - Perk and Trait NPC's now have an indicator over their head as to how many things they have left to buy. - They also tell you have many Unlocks and Upgrades they have left in their event window. - Cost adjustments for upcoming Perks and Traits

All the Perk NPC's now in Zombo Town, so you can upgrade everything. The Trait Unlock NPC is also in there, though you can only get Specialist from him currently. To see the new Upgrade characters, hit the [ INFO ] button on the title screen. ALSO HEADS UP: This build contains a save clear for the testing branch, everyone's testing save *should be* wiped with this. If it isn't, let me know. This should be the last time it happens for this test unless I screw something up badly. ːskeleːːskeleːːskeleːːskeleːːskeleːːskeleː IMPORTANT NOTE: The testing branch and retail version of the game now use different save files! This is for easy swapping back and forth between the versions without errors, and also for testing purposes. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. ːskeleːːskeleːːskeleːːskeleːːskeleːːskeleː Changes: - Two new Perk Upgrade NPC's added. They will also handle perk unlocks for their respective fields. - Perk costs in for foreseeable perks. The design intent is that you can unlock perks fairly easily. The only perk you won't be able to unlock before clearing DEADLIER ROAD is the upcoming Ex-Wrestler. - Trait Unlock NPC added, though he only sells Specialist right now. - Price for Specialist increased, it's one of the later Traits you can get. - Trait prices will be 5, 10, 15 depending. Any ZP cost at 20 or over will be reserved for weird extra stuff not related to traits or perks. - Debug text removed form road screen. - Build name changed to COCCYX. - Saves wiped because I screwed something up, big time.

Further implementation of the perk system! You can now test upgrading all the non-combat/more THINKIN' MAN'S perks. Then there's a lot of boring but very important under the hood stuff that I'm mostly not even covering in the notes. To see the Upgrades/Unlocks, tap the INFO button on title screen. I posted news on this update earlier today. Check announcements! ːgnomeyːːgnomeyːːgnomeyːːgnomeyːːgnomeyː IMPORTANT NOTE: The testing branch and retail version of the game now use different save files! This is for easy swapping back and forth between the versions without errors, and also for testing purposes. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. ːgnomeyːːgnomeyːːgnomeyːːgnomeyːːgnomeyː Changes: Perk/Traits Unlock System - New Perk Seller added. The Debutante covers all the perks that deal with support and non-combat uses. Except one she'll get later. - Debutante is fully functional and lets you upgrade all the current perks. - Placeholder work for 3 more perks she will get: Haggler, Pathfinder, Anime Fan. - Costs added for all the perks. You can't see them all yet. - Costs for each perk are the same for unlocking them (if applicable) and the first upgrade. - Final upgrade for each perk costs double the usual price. - All the old perks will still start unlocked for new players, even things like Martial Artist. New perks will have to be bought. - Lots of work to make the unlock system smoother under the hood. - Perk system now supports multiple seller characters for the purposes of going back one menu. Zombo Town - There's a temporary copy of the Debutante outside, for easier testing.

Here's what were up to for the upcoming update. For reference, our last plan post was here: http://steamcommunity.com/games/deathroad/announcements/detail/469905196792865956 First, it was renamed to COCCYX instead of the ear themed COCHLEA because the new music is going to be delayed. Life intervened for the composer! He'll catch up on that for the next update. I have heard some of the new music, and it's really good. Second is that we're delaying some parts in the plans, though nothing we didn't account for maybe missing. Splitscreen multiplayer is either going to be in DUODENUM or a little later. In exchange, we're moving some things that were going to be in the next update to this one. Mostly in the form of new content. You can expect some events and at least one new location type. Third is that we're going to likely miss May by a week or two. I want extra time to add more things to this one, especially in regards to more stuff for the unlock system. More perks and traits than planned, and also you'll be able to unlock some extra things that were going to come as a surprise in a later update. I want to get those things in for this update, so it's a big meaty new system. DUODENUM update should still be on the planned schedule, but we're going to have a very busy month and a half after this update comes out. That's it for now! You can test out new things for this update as we add them to the public Testing Branch. Check the announcements for instructions on how to test that. As I write this, we're testing out the new perk and trait unlock system. Note that the Testing Branch and the main launch version of the game now use different save files. Don't worry if your characters temporarily vanish. That's it for now! More news later as we get closer to the launch of the update.

At least it's not Monday anymore. More Perks and Traits systems added, and some more misc things to test. Still mostly things concerning the new Zombo Town in [ Info ] After this build, I'll take the debug numbers off the road screen. Keep posting those! Posting update news tomorrow. Cutting some stuff, adding some other things, and likely launching it a couple weeks after May so we can add more uncks. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. Changes: Perk/Traits Unlock System - A handful of perks can now be upgraded. Test them out! - Perks and Traits can now be properly locked, with icons and everything. - Locked perks and traits will show up in the Custom Characters screen, and their descriptions can be viewed. - System overhaul to the unlock/upgrade words. - Perks and Traits now properly show a preview description of themselves before being unlocked. - Can now back out of the preview to the previous screen. - LOCKED text added to descriptions if locked. Zombo Town - Tweaks to Zombo Town building placement - Added two friendly robits - Added helpful town directions - Added a dire warning - The Perk Dingus temporarily spawns a copy of himself outside, for easier testing. - Perk Dingus has a number indicator over his head for now that will later become how many perks/upgrades/traits he has remaining. Fixes - Altered a placeholder WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE line - cyoa-blank word added for easily making a CYOA event with no icon. Debug - console-open word for debugging

Ugh, I hate Mondays. Technically still a Monday until I go to sleep. This is the start of testing the Perk unlock system. Lots of new systems! Confusingly, you can now unlock a new Trait (this is not a perk). On the title screen, go to INFO to begin this new journey. Also, there's debug text on the driving screen. Please post what it says in the comments, along with what perks and traits you have unlocked. I'm running behind on that news post about this update. I'll either do that Tuesday or Wednesday. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. Changes: New Unlock System - New ZOMBO TOWN, currently in the Info button. This is where you'll be able to unlock perks, traits, and more. Currently testing the unlock of one trait. - You can now earn Zombo Points ( ZP ). You get ZP during siege reward events, by beating the game, or through a rare event involving toilet paper. - ZP is capped to 10 at first, but you can increase the cap by beating Deadlier Road and K*E*P*A, for a current max cap of 20. This will increase further later. - Harder game modes give more ZP. Example is that K*E*P*A gives 10 for a successful run. - NPC in Zombo Town does the old INFO screen text for now. - Perk Dingus in Zombo Town lets you buy a new trait, Specialist. - Logic for Zombo Town in regards to leaving the area, for hitting escape or walking out of the area. New Perk System - New system to track what perk levels you have. This new method is a lot more friendly towards the upcoming unlocks for perks, traits, and perk level upgrades. - Starting the game will run a quick conversion from the old to new system. - If you had enough stats before the update hits, you will keep your old perk levels based on your old stats. - Temporary debug text on driving screen to see what your old stats were. - NEXT LEVEL: indicator now says what the next level will do, rather than how many stats you need for it. - Friend of Dog and Explorer level checks adjusted for the new system. New Trait - Specialist Trait added! You have to buy this in Zombo Town before it will show up. Costs 5 ZP currently, which is probably a discount. - Specialist gives you 2 points in Shooting, Strength, and Fitness, while also giving you +1 to the possible maximum for all three of those skills. - As a penalty, it gets rid of all your carry slots except one. You can use one weapon at a time. You're a specialist, not a generalist. Important - I finally get to use the line "Special Ops? More like Special Plops!" I've been waiting for over a year to do this. Unless I did this already and forgot. Misc Fixes - Fix some old instances of "make the NPC face the camera" only making them face to the right, when it was supposed to be a chance of right or left. - Fixed a very old bug with Friend of Dog that made it roll twice for dog. - Fixed a bit in the ending where a character had an extra line return.

Ramping up for a big update! For now this is the framework for upcoming stuff. On Monday, we're doing another testing update that will see if the old perk progression system will transfer over to the new unlock system. In order to test this, we can use a bunch of people playing this testing branch over the next few days. That way, we can see if the stats transfer over correctly in the next build. I'll also do a news post over the weekend about how this update is doing. We had to move some stuff around to the next update, including splitscreen. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. Changes: - The testing branch of the game now uses a different save file than the normal branch. This prevents a problem with the last big update, where people that tried out the testbranch couldn't run the live version of the game due to major differences. - Testing branch save files can be reset by the developer. - Testing branch save files will reset every major update (AORTA, BRAINSTEM, etc) automatically. - Placeholder support for the new unlock system remembering your previous stats (kills, training, heals). The idea is that, if you have perks unlocked already in the old system, they'll still be unlocked in the new system. - More support for checks for team stat averages, for future events. - Support for multiple ending lines! Full of placeholder text for the time being. - Support for game mode changing ending lines. - Epilogue lines for each character that's alive in your party. - One line of a character epilogue is generally determined by personality stats, and the other by skills. - Support for exceptions for the above, like traits or rare things giving its own special line. - Discovered we had a mysterious secret stat in the game, CHARM, that was never used. Fixed this because it was causing problems with the new endings.

These are requests and fixes from the 4/13 testing branch, now available to everyone. Let me know if there's any problems! Requests - Passed out Bar rescue no longer picks weapons up when unconscious - Alternate foodless method to wake up POBR, takes a bunch of time instead. - Civilized now always starts with 1 morale, preventing cases where it started with 0 or -1. No more INSTANTLY LOSING a Civilized recruit. - Less frequent NOT ENOUGH MED SUPPLIES blurbs - OUT OF MEDS blurb lasts longer onscreen, same time as other med messages - OOM blurb can happen again if you heal, if a day passes, or you load a save. - Revamped CAR NUT now let you choose whether or not you want the new car if you recruit a CAR NUT after the game starts. - CAR NUT start of game check moved to game-start.df rather than the perk definition itself. - Added familiar-recruit-check for the CAR NUT choice and future things like it. We can move other things here if requested, so that a recruit properly only gives you things if recruited. Let us know in the comments. - Group healing doctor and trainers now have LEAVE as the first, default choice. Temporary measure until we can add extra options. - Strength trainer strength check event now moved to last option. - Cars no longer run out of gas if they have 0 car-mpg. No more losing the alien car for it being out of gas, hopefully. - Wizzle Stick now properly gets a weapon score bonus. Maybe this will make the wizard stop using baseball bats instead of his staff. Let me know! Misc Fixes - Fixed a needless extra dup with zombie summoning that lead to putting garbage on the memory stack. - Put in a missing day-passed tracking for a CYOA camp option - Cancelled LNK day - Pronoun correction for bully-sprayit - Corrected recruit-familiarreplace, before it was unused and familiar characters were using the normal recruit-replace - Changed familiar camp recruits to also use the above - Modern Spear is now named Tactical Spear, which is a much more tactical name. - Blunt Master has a special sale on 4/20

We're testing a bunch of fixes and requests while we also figure out the Common Redist problem. Once we're done with this, we're going to start testing and balancing the new unlocks, perks, and traits for the COCHLEA update. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. Changes: Requests - Passed out Bar rescue no longer picks weapons up when unconscious - Alternate foodless method to wake up POBR, takes a bunch of time instead. - Civilized now always starts with 1 morale, preventing cases where it started with 0 or -1. No more INSTANTLY LOSING a Civilized recruit. - Less frequent NOT ENOUGH MED SUPPLIES blurbs - OUT OF MEDS blurb lasts longer onscreen, same time as other med messages - OOM blurb can happen again if you heal, if a day passes, or you load a save. - Revamped CAR NUT now let you choose whether or not you want the new car if you recruit a CAR NUT after the game starts. - CAR NUT start of game check moved to game-start.df rather than the perk definition itself. - Added familiar-recruit-check for the CAR NUT choice and future things like it. We can move other things here if requested, so that a recruit properly only gives you things if recruited. Let us know in the comments. - Group healing doctor and trainers now have LEAVE as the first, default choice. Temporary measure until we can add extra options. - Strength trainer strength check event now moved to last option. - Cars no longer run out of gas if they have 0 car-mpg. No more losing the alien car for it being out of gas, hopefully. - Wizzle Stick now properly gets a weapon score bonus. Maybe this will make the wizard stop using baseball bats instead of his staff. Let me know! Misc Fixes - Fixed a needless extra dup with zombie summoning that lead to putting garbage on the memory stack. - Put in a missing day-passed tracking for a CYOA camp option - Cancelled LNK day ː0faceː - Pronoun correction for bully-sprayit - Corrected recruit-familiarreplace, before it was unused and familiar characters were using the normal recruit-replace - Changed familiar camp recruits to also use the above - Blunt Master has a special sale on 4/20

I wanted to post all of our plans, as of right now, for what we're going to try to do in the future for Death Road updates. This will include our thoughts for possible ːmeltychanː mod support and online multiplayer ːmeltychanː at the bottom of the post, as I thought it would be good to talk these in one spot. That way people can be linked to this post, in the future.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Recent News
• COCHLEA Update
• DUODENUM Update
• Future Updates
• New Platforms
• Mod Support
• Online Multiplayer

Recent News

COCHLEA UPDATE

DUODENUM UPDATE

• New locations!
• New road events!
• New weapons!
• New characters!
• New system: Special Trading Camps!

FUTURE UPDATES

NEW PLATFORMS

MOD SUPPORT

ONLINE MULTIPLAYER

I wanted to post the Steam Emoticons before I sent them off for approval. EDITED 6:55 PM PST 3/25 for new images. The below are ones that we are likely going to go with. This covers 7 out of the 10 we can have.
Here they are in their base size, which is about what you'd see when you actually use them. You'd be able to zoom in on mouseover like normal. The larger versions of the face emotes would show the whole character. Top row is common ones, and the second row are the three uncommon and then two rares.
The below are alternate ones. Let me know what your 3 favorite are, or if you have other ideas. There's room for 3 more emoticons, for a full set of 10.
Base size. I'm also experimenting with making the stat faces smaller, so the resolution is consistent (not sure if that matters at all).
Let me know what you think in the comments. If someone comes up with more alternate ideas, I may add those to the post really quick for discussion. I'd like to send these off Monday, so try send in your opinions quick! Here are the older pictures from earlier today, for posterity:

We have a lot of Death Road news to cover. There's a major update, the iOS launch, and even more things like TRADING CARDS coming in about a week. The iOS version is finally out! Now you can loot toilets while on the toilet. Get it here for its low launch price: Death Road to Canada on the App Store [url=https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/death-road-to-canada/id1128464707?ls=1&mt=8]
To coincide with the iOS launch, here's the BRAINSTEM update! We decided to move the perk/trait revamp to the next update, and instead brought some more content to this one. We also implemented a long requested feature: Being able to sell spare weapons to a trader. See all the update notes on this at the end of this post.

COMING UP IN ABOUT A WEEK

BRAINSTEM UPDATE CHANGES

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*Offer ends Monday at 10AM Pacific Time

We're still working on fixing the Visual Studio driver problem affecting some people, which was a giant and unexpected timesink for us. We're in the middle of just taking out the requirement, but it will require more testing. That testing will start soon, but until then I'd like to get out some new content for BRAINSTEM. Note that we had to move some stuff around due to the VS redistributable error taking up a bunch of time, until it spilled over into our iOS work. The new perk/trait system would have taken up too much time to test, so instead I moved in content that was originally going to be in later updates. I'll do a new post on the update plans late next week! The big feature for the Brainstem update: Selling weapons to a new trader. This was requested a bunch. She only wants nice weapons, to discourage the hoarding I was worried about. So no picking up every bone/stick you see, she won't even buy pistols. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. Changes: New Weapon Buyer feature added to the Trading Camps! - Weapon Buyer buys weapons she considers valuable. She's picky! - Minimum melee weapons: Roughly nightstick/sledgehammer/fire axe. - Minimum firearms: Roughly Dolt 45/cowboy rifle/shotgun. No pistols. - Gives about 20-25% market food value for your weapons, as a rule. - Buyer looks at the inventory of whoever you're using to talk to her. - Weapon Buyer shows up as often as the Gas Buyer does, but in different camps for the most part. - Weapon Buyer shows up in the Final Trading Camp, always. - Buying from the weapon buyer will update your food count so it counts as being in the trunk, letting you use the new food on other merchants. - If you have no weapons she's interested in, she'll give a hint as to whether another character has something she wants, or if there's something in the trunk. New Characters - Common Trader: Polearm Pal. Sells Bardiche (25 food), Modern Spear (9 food), Stick Boot (6), Pitchfork (3) - Rare Trader: Skeleton Knight. Sells Skull Hammer (25 food), Gladius (15), 5 Bomb Skulls (5 food). - Rare Recruit: Ultimate Sports Fan. - Skeleton Knight can also be recruited, technically. New Weapons - Modern Spear: Designed as a great single-target weapon for lower fitness/strength characters. Lighter than a baseball bat, while doing 50% more damage. Has the special half-fatigue trait, so it takes half the energy it should to stab things with it. - Bardiche: A mix of Medieval Axe and Claymore. It's a cheaper endgame weapon, with the downside of it being really heavy. - Stick Boot: The ultimate weapon????! No refunds. - Poolcue Spear: A rare spear sometimes found near pool cues. Like a Modern Spear, but with a much higher chance to stab an extra target. Can break, but is as sturdy as a Cleaver. - Sports Horn. More airhorn blasting than ever before, even the AI can use it. If wielding by the Ultimate Sports Fan, this will recharge at the start of each location. - #1 Foam Hand: We're #1! The USF's secondary weapon. - Skull Hammer: Like the Mega Maul, but better. - Gladius: Similar to the Sturdy Machete, with higher cleave and damage and a little less weight. - Bomb Skull: Beware the bomb skulls. Misc Changes - Shovel no longer breaks. - Shotgun Peddler's shotgun price reduced from 10 -> 7 - Pubert and Puberto added to the name lists for male characters. - Some new trader camp NPC sayings. - Goat attack is now half-fatigue, instead of 0.1 fatigue (!) - CHOOSE YOUR PALS WISELY tutorial guy is no longer seen by zombies until you talk to the person, like all other rescue recruits now. - No more zombie spawning from the starting door in the tutorial (unless you wait for hours). - Tweaks for iOS/touchscreen controls. - Grammar/typo fixes. - Various other bugfixes.

Doing some small things. Still trying to track down the Visual Studio problem some people are having. We're about to give up and instead revamp some underlying systems to fix the problem. Pretty annoying, it's been holding some things back. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. Changes: - Fixed a NOT NOT typo in AI logic that was messing up their former ability to switch to guns when fatigued - Cheevo popup for skills should now show the skill icon - Special case for taking a car detour with a car that takes no gas - "chosen character" stat changes will also check for new stat cheevos - farmer event mechanic check now should no longer get messed up by the charm check - Special case for taking a car detour with a car that takes no gas - Rambeaux now likes his knife more - Fix for the mechanic cool-it event actually giving mechanic skill, rather than medical.

The big content update! Lots of changes in this. Massive list below! The biggest features: - Achievements! AKA "cheevos" - New Final Trading Camp before Canada! - New system that lets you recruit people from trader camps! - Rare recruits system added for trader camps. - New unique characters! - New traders! - New Rare Traders system! Some of them can also be recruited. - Accessing your car trunk when in a trading camp or city. Remove or put in excess weapons! - A few new events! - Looking up stats in info, with expanded stat tracking. - Weird Kickstarter rewards. - New weapon tag that lets us prevent the AI from using certain weapons. Among other things this means they'll no longer throw grenades at you. - Lots of tweaks and fixes. - Lots of new weapons! Including AIR HORNS and Healing Spray!
All changes: NEW EVENTS - New road event: The Weegee Board. Yes, the real thing is still trademarked. - New road event: Dog Poop. There's a box of food rations but a dog has taken a poop on it. May God have mercy on our souls. NEW CHARACTERS - Rare Traders added: Lab Technician/Reptiloid Alien Kip, Head Transplant Doctor, Rare Book Seller, Soothsayer/Wizard, Lynn, and the Witch from Halloween update. - Wizard casts powerful magic spells with his Wizard Stick if recruited. - Wizard casts magic using his Wizard Stick (sometimes it says Wizzle Stick instead, this is a bug) - A goat can be found in the trader camp, rarely. - Goats can be milked, if you're brave enough. - Goats can be recruited for no food cost! They enjoy your company that much. - Goat death sayings. - Goat car blurbs. - Differentiated cats and goats more, they're a separate species I guess? Who cares, seriously. - Special text for multiple goat milking
- Added puppies, kittens, superpuppies, and young pets growing up into bigger animals. This is for Kickstarter people only (initially). - Baby pets are now 30% slower than their adult counterparts. - A pet that grows up gets its speed set back to the adult speed. - Messed with pet24 spritesheet so cats are in their own section. - Updated pet-grow to adjust to the new cat spritesheet for kittens. - New Trader: The Blunt Master. Sells hammers of all sorts. Also sells the new MEGA MAUL. It's cheaper than a Knight Sword or Medieval Axe, and comparable.
- Lynn C. Thompson, Cold Steel CEO, is now in the game as a rare trader. He can temporarily join your team to give you a LIVE DEMO of his ultra powerful sword he's selling. - Lynn pitches his products at random intervals. - Special death saying for Lynn. - Lynn can be used for one mission, like the Knight. - Cold Steel Greatsword AKA Zweihander is now attainable. - CARL! CARL! - The "Woof" character now has an all new special ability type! Hint: Try having it die. - New rare camp recruit: Maria. She's very strong. - CAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARL!
- CARRRLG! - DUANE! - Cat Lady! - Cat Lady summons a cat when you bring her in a mission. - Cat Lady summons a cat whenever she takes damage. - Cat Lady has a chance to steal enormous amounts of food for her cats whenever you camp for the night. - Cat Lady gets her own despair event. - Feral cats have a 2% chance to be replaced by a special cat, Oscar. - Dog rescues have a 1% chance to be replaced by a special dog, Sam Byool. - Oscar starts with charming, maxed composure, and is much less murderous than other cats. He can not go under 1 morale, so no berserk team-killing rampages for the most part. - Sam Byool starts with a shotgun and max shooting + max composure, so he gets the special sniper events. He also starts with the Superdog status. - Special thanks to the Kickstarter backers for the goat, Sam, and Oscar! NEW SYSTEMS - Achievements! A lot of them! - This is the last time I will call them "achievements", from now on they were "cheevos". - Steam integration for cheevos. - If you have cheevos in-game but not on Steam, you should get them shortly after starting a new game. - New game mascot: Skull that makes goblin laughter noises during cheevos. - You can now access the car trunk by opening the back of your car! Take out or put in weapons while in a trader camp, outdoor location with car, or city. - Stat screen in INFO, with a bunch of tracked stats. - Tracking added for ally deaths. - Cheevo added for not allowing a single ally to die in a run. - Ally death total added to the stats info screen. - Win Streak tracking added. - Ending now displays streak information, if you're in a win streak of 2 or more. - Changes to CYOA icons. - Some CYOA's now show two characters that are interacting. - Trading camp recruits in! Currently 6 recruit types and then a chance for a rare camp recruit. One will spawn when a campfire is spawned. - Camp Recruits have $ over their heads to set themselves apart. - Normal camp recruits take 5 food, rare ones take 10. - Familiar Face camp recruits can now show up in trading camps - Familiar camp recruits do not cost food. - Familiar or rare camp recruits will default back to normal recruits if you run out. - Familiar camp recruits have a 3/10 chance to spawn, Rare has a 1/10 chance. - Special or Familiar modes will now force the camp recruits to be rare or familiar, respectively. - The final camp before Canada is now a guaranteed special camp, the Last Stop. - Last Stop has 4 traders total, guaranteed gas buyer, and a guaranteed camp recruit for now. More will be added as we add new trade camp features. - Last Stop additionally has an extra recruitable character, special for that camp. That recruit is guaranteed one good stat, though is more expensive than normal. This should make it more possible to turn games around where you have a lot of food, but everyone's dead. - New trader menu type that lets you go back and forth in the same windows so you can easily cancel choices. - New trader system that lets the head-swap doctor get a list of 3 random head choices per game. BALANCE - Junkyard dogs now have different stats than other dogs. - Adjustments to AI weapon swapping. - Dogs will pick up stuff but not TOO much. - If bandits steal no-drop weapons, the slot then gets opened up so you can at least use something for that character. This may lead to some weird cases. - Some traders that carry really nice weapons will no longer drop them on death. Rest in Peace, molotov trader strategy. - Buff to dogs and other animals! Animals now eat less food than humans! They always eat one food instead of two. - Nerf to dogs and other animals! You can no longer set an animal as the solo leader of a mission. Unless they're really, really smart. Rest in Peace dog speedrun strat. - Random recruits can now start with a fire axe, making this likely the best weapon possible for a random character. - Cleaner Kepa check - Changes to Kepa's in-game description - The passed out bar character can no longer be eaten by zombies while unconscious. Sadly, no one understood my game design genius. - Rambeux and Ninja moved from the road recruit pool to the rare camp recruit pool. Most recruits that would have taken food will show up in the camps instead of the road now, but not all. - AI followers now only pick up a melee weapon if it's better than their current best weapon. We're thinking this may fix the infinite pickup bug, or at the very least make them less crazy for wood chunks. - Followers now get a little "catching up" speed boost if they're far away. - Witch's cat mews on recruitment. - BBQ tank now has a shorter height hitbox WEAPONS - Flag added for the game telling the follower AI to not use certain weapons. These include: Pipebombs, grenades, molotovs, chainsaw, flamethrower, blowtorch, and the new healing spray and airhorn. - New weapons added: Claw Hammer, Ballpeen Hammer, Rubber Mallet, Screwdriver, Scissors, Scalpel, Tire Iron, Airhorn, Tennis Racket, Oar, Ice Pick, Knitting Needle, Purse, Shiv, Fire Poker, Pool Cue, MEGAMAUL. - Airhorn, tennis racket, and oar can now spawn in sporting goods stores and athletic supply stores. - The above stores now generate 2-3 weapons instead of 1-3, 4-6 for the big stores' main room. - Big sporting goods stores will always carry an airhorn, with a 30% chance for two. - Small sporting goods or athletic supply stores in cities have a 60% chance of an airhorn. - Airhorns have 30 charges, with 30% chance to have 50 instead. - Screwdriver, claw hammer, ballpeen hammer, and mallet added to hardware stores and as industrial area loot. - Chances of industrial area loot lowered to make up for more things that may spawn. - Hardware stores now have double the weapon spawning for the "main loot" category. - Shovel and metal pipe taken out of the hardware store's "main loot", but added to the "side loot" chances. - Mega Maul added, the King of Sledgehammers. - Any time a sledgehammer spawns, it has a 10% chance to instead be the Mega Maul. - Mega Maul is comparable to a Knight Sword. About 10% less damage, massive knockback, can hit up to 3 zombies with 80% chance of each extra hit. Weight slightly heavier than Knight Sword. - Tire irons have a chance to spawn on car wreck maps. - If there's a functional car at the end of one of those maps, there will also be a guaranteed tire iron. - Any map with a locked car will have a 50% chance of a tire iron. - Pool tables added to bars. - Pool cues added to pool tables. - New "Weapon": Ouchie Spray. Sprays a cloud that lingers a bit until it heals one point of health. Can use on a teammate or self by running into it. - Healing Spray damages zombies some. - One HS found in the storage room of a hospital or clinic. - Scalpels added to hospital/clinic. - HS can also be very rarely found in bathrooms with a cabinet, 2% chance. HS found in here will have 1 or 2 charges instead of 3. - Half-fatigue trait added to some of the new weapons. - Half-fatigue will make weapons take half the stamina per swing as normal. Not to be confused with lightcooldown, which makes weapons have less of a penalty when you're exhausted. - Forest areas can now have tree branches on the ground. - Larger forests (over 25 trees) can have logs on the ground. - Logs have a 10% chance to spawn as the Big Frickin' Log, BFL for short. - Logs and BFL's have the heavycooldown trait, which makes exhaustion penalties even worse. - Debutante AKA Mary Poppins now spawns with a purse. - Most of the new weapons added to the chances to spawn on a rescue character. - Most of the above weapons added to the list of those you may find in a house. - Golf clubs and hockey sticks can now finally be found in a house. - Rusty Machetes have a 10% chance to spawn as a Sturdy Machete, instead. - Ice Pick added to kitchen loot weapon list. 5% chance to spawn. They're rare but that doesn't mean they're good. - Moved cricket bat and crowbar out of the nice-meleeweapons house spawn list, because they suck. - Added scalpel, shiv, sledge, megamaul, and firepoker to nicer-meleeweapons. - Fire Axe can now spawn in houses, 10% chance to replace a hatchet. GENERAL CONTENT - New glasses (hats for your face) - Alternate Bar that replaces the pool tables with a Love Tester machine. - Love Tester can be interacted for an event, until someone loses their temper and smashes it. - Special death sayings for cats, dogs, other pets instead of them gaining human speech. - 30% chance for dying characters to say BARF!, down from 40% FIXES - Tweak to weapon swapping. - Fixed a bug with weapon slot selection for AI. - Some typo fixes - Fix for a trader camp error - Fixed some errors with singing characters going offscreen. - Null tile check for tile .state! ... this fixes a bug where sometimes the mall cops wouldn't spawn, and maybe some other things. - Axe trader has a new body. - Menacing Figure AKA Axe Trader now is described as wearing a robe. - Food/supplies should update in trader camps as you get/lose them. - You can now run over skeletons. - Fix for a smoke bomb bug. - Cleaned up food eating logic. - Fixed an issue with CYOA events that were making it pick an empty character. - Updated SDL2.dll - Fixed a trader stack error - R#ck had a small chance to say "DUANE!" instead of "CARL!", this has been fixed. - Possible fix for gas-for-snacks trader jumbling things up. - Typo fix for firearms coach. - Sound tweaks - Blast/bullet behavior fix so that propane tanks can explode again - You can now talk to camp chatters multiple times, to make them repeat themselves like in a proper videogame. - Fix for incorrect loot stat reporting, such as when using up gas by driving down the road. - AI will no longer swap a weapon for the same weapon. - Locked no-drop weapon slots now become normal if the weapon breaks. Though, outside of debug characters you probably won't see a character with a breakable no-drop weapon. - Fix for a wandering AI bug that made things in the ending level follow you immediately, when they shouldn't. - Tweaks to make the wander AI behavior less exaggerated. - Fixed "Familiar Face" characters sometimes not applying perks and traits correctly. - Junkyard map made one tile taller, to fix an error where your car could crash into a parked van. - Fix for Health Siege Reward making you go over max health, which was nice except it could screw up healing events. - Fixed dying from traders not clearing your save properly. - Fix for some AI freakout cases. - Window resize behavior changes. - Fixed some interaction priority with objects/pickups/characters - Fixed empty CYOA after unlocking car and returning - Fix detection of near zombies for finale, so they don't disappear mysteriously for reasons unknown - Fix a case of broken name entry - Reticle now longer shows up if something can't shoot. Tested for dogs. - Fix for getting the Toilet Genie to accidentally make the player start floating. - Footstep sound reduced. - Halloween fixes and tweaks. You know, for next year. Or for people that mess with their system clock. - Fix for Dracula talking and changing to/from bat form while dead and on fire. We shouldn't have fixed this one. - Alvis now properly plays an exclusive special in-game song if he dies on the toilet after aging rapidly. - Turning into a dog by lab accident now lets you keep your human intelligence or lack of intelligence. - Changing red crosses to green crosses because I guess they're trademarked. - BRANCHNAME finally changed to AORTA ----------------- Well, that was a lot of changes. If you read this far and like what we're doing, tell your friends to buy the game! Also tell your favorite news sites/streamer/celebrity. More updates coming!

Release candidate! If you find any remaining issues, reply to this post with your Operating System and any other details you think are relevant. If there's nothing show-stopping, we'll get this update out ASAP. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. EDIT 5:32 PM PST - Updated some Mac files Changes: - .exe files updating to their release versions - Some typo fixes - Fix for a trader camp error

Looking into some more fixes next. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. - Fixed some errors with singing characters going offscreen. - Switching to release AORTA exe for now

Doing tweaks and bugfixes until this update is ready to launch. Help us test! If you run into any error, please post in the comments below. Next up: Looking at that Alvis singing error and a possible final-trading-camp problem. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. - Null tile check for tile .state! ... this fixes a bug where sometimes the mall cops wouldn't spawn, and maybe some other things. - AI will no longer use Airhorns, again.

Help us test! Let me know if you see any errors, even old ones. This is approaching the final build for AORTA's launch. Another build later today with the last bits of content for this update. I'll just edit the notes below when it is up. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. Changes: - Reverted the hats, saving them for later.

More adjustments! A couple new cheevos. Doing another one of these late tonight. Should be the last bits of new content in this update. Looks like we won't get to do the prelim mod stuff! It turned out to break too many things, so we'll shoot for this in COCCYX. I'll see if I can slip something helpful in, though. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. Changes: - Goat death sayings. - Goat car blurbs. - Differentiated cats and goats more, they're a separate species I guess? Who cares, seriously. - Messed with pet24 spritesheet so cats are in their own section. - Updated pet-grow to adjust to the new cat spritesheet for kittens. - Dogs will pick up stuff but not TOO much. - Fixed a bug with weapon slot selection for AI. - New cheevo: Cooling It - New cheevo: Goatal Victory - Special text for multiple goat milking

Playable goats and other, less important changes. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. Changes: - A goat can be found in the trader camp, as a rare recruit. - Goats can be milked, if you're brave enough. - Goats can be recruited for no food cost! They enjoy your company that much. - Adjustments to AI weapon swapping. - AI uses airhorn again, will eventually swap it out when it's empty. - Baby pets are now 30% slower than their adult counterparts. - A pet that grows up gets its speed set back to the adult speed.

It's been about 6 months since Death Road to Canada was released! Thank you to everyone for making the game a success for us. Players, Kickstarter backers, and the people that post feedback to testing branch comments and the discussions forum!
Coming up very soon is our big AORTA update, which adds more content, achievements AKA cheevos, new weapons, feature requests, and more. AORTA is getting out later than we thought it would, as we ended up diverging from our plans to get an update out every 2-4 months. In the last 6 months, we've done over 10 major updates! This does not include the many updates we've done on the Testing Branch. A summary of all the things we've added to the game since launch is at the end of this post. This rapid update schedule has also shuffled around work on the mobile versions and Kickstarter content. We're going to switch to iOS for a bit immediately after AORTA is done, which should be this week. AORTA update will also add in a lot of the missing Kickstarter stuff, like the above pictured Kitten and Puppy Modes.
As promised, we're going to continue doing major updates for another 6 months. We will be switching to a less grueling pace with updates, to go more with our original plans of an update every 2-4 months depending on its size. Here's what to expect, though things may change as needed:

• BRAINSTEM Update: Around the time of the iOS launch. Late February or so. New multiple-game progression system, where you find Trait Points and unlock new Perks and Traits with them. Trading cards and emotes! Some extra tweaks and requests from feedback.
• COCCYX Update: Around 4 months after BRAINSTEM, so likely in late June or into July. Splitscreen and co-op improvements! Big focus on new content! This will be us concentrating on adding more content to the game, rather than brand new systems. Road events, special characters, weird new weapons, new rare traders, all sorts of things.
• DEUODENUM Update: This goes beyond the next 6 month period! Likely our last big update, though we'll still do smaller updates after this. We will get player feedback on what should be in this one later. It will probably be a choice between new content, or attempting (attempting!) to put in online co-op. We may put this to a vote.

Quick tweaks and changes. Still working on some other fixes. Coming up next: The last bits of content. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. Changes: - Tweak to weapon swapping, so allies should use wood chunks again if they have nothing else. - Fix for Loneliest Road achievement screwing up if you loaded a save. - Junkyard dogs now have different stats than other dogs. - AI will no longer use Air Horn or Heal Spray, because they're bad at it. - More goat work.

Really close to being done! Help us test. If you still see any errors you reported in previous builds, please let us know about them. Coming up: Moving some Kickstarter content over to the testing branch. Any fixes. Then we're getting this out ASAP after testing. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. Changes: - If you have achievements in-game but not on Steam, you should now get them shortly after starting a new game. - If bandits steal no-drop weapons, the slot then gets opened up so you can at least use something for that character. This may lead to some weird cases, so let us know. - Added puppies, kittens, superpuppies, and young pets growing up into bigger animals. This is for Kickstarter people only (initially). - Art added for Goat.

Small bugfixes mostly, as we track down a big bugfix. Coming up next: Looking into that problem with the game not opening. It seems to be due to some people's Visual C++ Redistributables not being up to date. We'll either have to do an installer, or make it so you don't need this. Sorry for this. Also, for the next testing branch, we'll make sure they use different saves. Currently, if you opt in for testbranch, you can't play release due to incompatibility. The workaround for this right now is to move your save somewhere else temporarily. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. Changes: - Possible fix for the same-camper-chat bug, let me know if you get this again. - Steam achievements you just got should show up immediately, instead of you having to relaunch the game. - Changing red crosses to green crosses because I guess they're trademarked. - Axe trader back to wearing a robe instead of garbage bag.

Achievements in for the Steam API! Let me know what problems you encounter in the comments, some parts are still being worked on. Also, a new road event and some other tweaks. NOTE: Old achievements you already got won't show up in Steam yet, we still need to finish that and add it to a build soon. Still not 1/17 until I go to sleep. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. Changes: - New road event: The Weegee Board. Yes, the real thing is still trademarked. - New achievements you get should show up in Steam. - Icons added for all the cheevos. - Descriptions for each Steam cheevo. - New cheevo added for CAAARL - Cleaner Kepa check - Changes to Kepa's in-game description - I-or-we grammar word added - Menacing Figure AKA Axe Trader now is described as wearing a robe.

Just a few things in this one. The final bits of Steam Achivement integration are taking awhile, which us slow down on getting out the testing branch updates. We hope to have something for you soon! If nothing else, I'll roll out a new event tomorrow. Calling this 1/14 because it's not 1/15 until I pass out and wake back up. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. Changes: - Dog Poop event added to rotation. May God have mercy on our souls. - Fix for a smoke bomb bug. - More Steam Cheevo back-end work that isn't quite visible in-game yet. - No more free Lynn.

Testing a possible fix for a major issue, and updating build for all platforms. Coming up: A few new rares, a couple new road events, Steam integration of the Achievements, a couple other things. MAYBE will look into trading cards, but I'd rather get this update out ASAP. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. Changes: - Possible fix for the "no character" bugs in many events, such as when getting a book. - Food/supplies should update in trader camps as you get/lose them. - Some traders that carry really nice weapons will no longer drop them on death. Rest in Peace, molotov trader strategy. - You can now run over skeletons. - Axe trader has a new body. - Looking into a sound error. - Some work on error reporting.

Getting closer! Trying to fix a bug that popped up, and also moving more content from the dev build to public testing. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. - Possible fix for the extra [ OK ] option bug in events. Let us know if these still show up. - New "Weapon": Ouchie Spray. Sprays a cloud that lingers a bit until it heals one point of health. Can use on a teammate or self by running into it. - Healing Spray damages zombies some. - One HS found in the storage room of a hospital or clinic. - Scalpels added to hospital/clinic. - HS can also be very rarely found in bathrooms with a cabinet, 2% chance. HS found in here will have 1 or 2 charges instead of 3. - Buff to dogs and other animals! Animals now eat less food than humans! They always eat one food instead of two. - Nerf to dogs and other animals! You can no longer set an animal as the solo leader of a mission. Unless they're really, really smart. Rest in Peace dog speedrun strat. - Cleaned up food eating logic. - Alternate Bar that replaces the pool tables with a Love Tester machine. - Love Tester can be interacted until someone loses their temper and smashes it. - New Trader: The Blunt Master. Sells hammers of all sorts. Also sells the new MEGA MAUL. It's cheaper than a Knight Sword or Medieval Axe, and comparable. - Failsafe added for Lynn, Cold Steel CEO, so he won't sometimes leave before you can use him. - Logic improved for telling if Lynn should be giving a sales pitch or not. - Random recruits can now start with a fire axe, making this likely the best weapon possible for a random character. - Tracking added for ally deaths. - Cheevo added for not allowing a single ally to die in a run. - Ally death total added to the stats info screen.

Mostly responding to bugs and feedback today. There will likely be another update with new stuff either late tonight or tomorrow. Check the previous announcements for more recent changes! We put in a big batch of new weapons in the last build. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. Edit 4:47 PM PST: - New no_use_ai flag for weapons. If set to a weapon, AI followers will not use, swap to, or pick up that weapon. - no_use_ai flag currently applied to Grenades, Molotovs, Pipebombs, Flamethrower, Chainsaw, and Blowtorch. - AI followers will skip over a no_use_ai weapon if they are carrying one and need to swap to another weapon. Changes: - Fixed an issue with CYOA events that were making it pick an empty character. - Updated SDL2.dll - Scissors now can show up in houses. - The Anime Store was removed by accident, some time ago. This was sometimes destroying half of a generated city. Now it's back and better than ever, after who knows how long.

Big batch of new weapons in this build, including the Airhorn! Not a lot more stuff to test before we can consider getting this update out. The biggest coming up will likely be Steam Achievement integration, and some small content additions. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. Edit for 7:35 PM PST: - Fixed a typo that was maybe destroying city generation. New changes: - New weapons added: Claw Hammer, Ballpeen Hammer, Rubber Mallet, Screwdriver, Scissors, Scalpel, Tire Iron, Airhorn, Tennis Racket, Oar, Ice Pick, Knitting Needle, Purse, Shiv, Fire Poker, Pool Cue, MEGAMAUL. - Airhorn, tennis racket, and oar can now spawn in sporting goods stores and athletic supply stores. - The above stores now generate 2-3 weapons instead of 1-3, 4-6 for the big stores' main room. - Big sporting goods stores will always carry an airhorn, with a 30% chance for two. - Small sporting goods or athletic supply stores in cities have a 60% chance of an airhorn. - Airhorns have 30 charges, with 30% chance to have 50 instead. - Screwdriver, claw hammer, ballpeen hammer, and mallet added to hardware stores and as industrial area loot. - Chances of industrial area loot lowered to make up for more things that may spawn. - Hardware stores now have double the weapon spawning for the "main loot" category. - Shovel and metal pipe taken out of the hardware store's "main loot", but added to the "side loot" chances. - Mega Maul added, the King of Sledgehammers. - Any time a sledgehammer spawns, it has a 10% chance to instead be the Mega Maul. - Mega Maul is comparable to a Knight Sword. About 10% less damage, massive knockback, can hit up to 3 zombies with 80% chance of each extra hit. Weight slightly heavier than Knight Sword. - Tire irons have a chance to spawn on car wreck maps. - If there's a functional car at the end of one of those maps, there will also be a guaranteed tire iron. - Any map with a locked car will have a 50% chance of a tire iron. - Pool tables added to bars. - Pool cues added to pool tables. - The passed out bar character can no longer be eaten by zombies while unconscious. Sadly, no one understood my game design genius. - Half-fatigue trait added to some of the new weapons. - Half-fatigue will make weapons take half the stamina per swing as normal. Not to be confused with lightcooldown, which makes weapons have less of a penalty when you're exhausted. - Forest areas can now have tree branches on the ground. - Larger forests (over 25 trees) can have logs on the ground. - Logs have a 10% chance to spawn as the Big Frickin' Log, BFL for short. - Logs and BFL's have the heavycooldown trait, which makes exhaustion penalties even worse. - Debutante AKA Mary Poppins now spawns with a purse. - Most of the new weapons added to the chances to spawn on a rescue character. - Most of the above weapons added to the list of those you may find in a house. - Golf clubs and hockey sticks can now finally be found in a house. - Rusty Machetes have a 10% chance to spawn as a Sturdy Machete, instead. - Ice Pick added to kitchen loot weapon list. 5% chance to spawn. They're rare but that doesn't mean they're good. - Moved cricket bat and crowbar out of the nice-meleeweapons house spawn list, because they suck. - Added scalpel, shiv, sledge, megamaul, and firepoker to nicer-meleeweapons. - Fire Axe can now spawn in houses, 10% chance to replace a hatchet. - Changes to CYOA icons. - Some CYOA's now show two characters that are interacting. - Fixed a trader stack error - BRANCHNAME finally changed to AORTA

Death Road to Canada has been on sale for 25% off in the Winter Sale! Tell your friendz. This is near the maximum discount for this game. We won't do super-deep discounts for Death Road, since we plan on updating it for a long time and we don't want to go much lower than the price it was on Kickstarter.
Pictured: Adding the most overpowered weapon yet, the Pink Purse. ---------------------------------------- It's the last day of December, so the Aorta update won't make it for this month. Things have been slow partly because of bugfixes and testing for all the new systems we've been putting in. The other part is that I always forget just how much the holidays slows things down for a tiny team. However, we're still way ahead on our plans to do an update every 2-4 months. There's not much we still need to do/test for this update: - Final Steam implementation of all the achievements we put in the game. - Various new weapons going in! Mostly lower to mid tier stuff, this time. We are adding one more big end-game rare weapon, sold by a rare trader. - Some new content and recruitables. One or two new road events, one more rare camp recruit, another rare city find character. And then one more cat encounter, not quite sure where it's going to show up but it will be the last remaining non-evil cat on earth. That's it! Then we can get this update out after testing the above. I may also try to sneak in the very beginnings of better mod support, and/or trading cards. Though, both of those may be delayed to the quick update after this one. After AORTA is out, we're planning on doing a smaller (but still major) update that will come out at the same time as the iOS version. This will be in the first quarter of 2017, the sooner the better. It will be much more focused than previous updates. Planned things: - New progression system! You'll earn Trait Points when playing the game that you use to unlock or level up your traits and perks. This will replace the old system where you just kind of get stuff for training your skills. - Lots of new traits and perks to get. - Things we may have missed above from the AORTA update - Some extra surprises We're going to try to have a more sane update schedule, focusing on less things at once. Since Death Road was out we've done a massive amount of updates for it. Also, we need to start naming each major update because we're still on SPLEEN even though we've added major new systems a dozen times over. After the above update, we're going to work on another big update. This should take 3 or 4 months, though we'll have things on Testing Branch along the way. Quick summary of our plans: - Big focus on new content. Road events, recruit-able characters, and some new locations. - Splitscreen support. Possibly 4-player support, but need to test this. - We're going to see if we can change how the spritesheets work, since this would fix the white boxes bug some people are having. This would also pave the way for mods that add sprites without changing the base spritesheets. - More mod support! Possibly Steam Workshop, but if not then we'll shoot for the update after. Those are the big things, but we'll also aim for adding a lot of little things. Mostly adding to existing systems, rather than all-new systems. One example is that I'd really like to add more things that people say on the road. That's it for this announcement! Reply below with your thoughts and suggestions. As always, follow me on Twitter if you'd like more frequent news: http://www.twitter.com/rocketcatgames/

New system where you can now find your custom characters as trader camp recruits! A little more content is coming, but this is nearing the end of big new systems. Up next is finishing getting all the content in, getting the Steam achievements in fully, and maybe also doing trading cards. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. New stuff: - Easy Sheriff R#ck Gr#mes testing at the start of the game. - R#ck had a small chance to say "DUANE!" instead of "CARL!", this has been fixed. - Familiar Face camp recruits can now show up in trading camps - Familiar camp recruits do not cost food. - Familiar or rare camp recruits will default back to normal recruits if you run out. - Failsafe for running out of familiar camp characters. - Familiar camp recruits have a 3/10 chance to spawn, Rare has a 1/10 chance. - Special or Familiar modes will now force the camp recruits to be rare or familiar, respectively. - Lynn C. Thompson, Cold Steel CEO, is now in the game as a rare trader. He can temporarily join your team to give you a LIVE DEMO of his ultra powerful sword he's selling. - Lynn pitches his products at random intervals. - Special death saying for Lynn. - Lynn can be used for one mission, like the Knight. - Cold Steel Greatsword AKA Zweihander is now attainable. - Special death sayings for cats, dogs, other pets instead of them gaining human speech. - 30% chance for dying characters to say BARF!, down from 40% - Fix for the Last Stop road lines looking funny. - More tweaks to the Last Stop trading camp. - Trading camp spawning for traders and recruits are now back to normal. - Cat Lady now summons cats near her instead of the middle of the room. - Maria is now female instead of randomly set to either gender. - Possible fix for gas-for-snacks trader jumbling things up.

The next chunk of the new content for testing. Sorry for the slowness, I got exhausted and the holidays always slow me down more than I think they will. Help us test, would love to get the update out before the month is over. Also, let me know what you think of balance with the new final camp before Canada. I'm thinking that updates will make the game slightly easier just as a result of adding more features. However, I don't want it to get too trivial. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. Changes: - CARL! CARL! - The "Woof" character now has an all new special ability type! Hint: Try having it die. - New rare camp recruit: Maria. She's very strong. - CAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARL! - The final camp before Canada is now a guaranteed special camp, the Last Stop. - Last Stop has 4 traders total, guaranteed gas buyer, and a guaranteed camp recruit for now. More will be added as we add new trade camp features. - Last Stop additionally has an extra recruitable character, special for that camp. That recruit is guaranteed one good stat, though is more expensive than normal. This should make it more possible to turn games around where you have a lot of food, but everyone's dead. - CARRRLG! - DUANE! - The cats around the cat lady when you meet her in camp now follow her. - Fix for a wizard error. - Typo fix for firearms coach.

Small update before posting more content to test tomorrow! Presenting: THE MOST OVERPOWERED CHARACTER EVER. Please help test out the Cat Lady, she's got a lot of little weird moving parts. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. Changes: - Cat Lady fully implemented. - Cat Lady testing option on starting a game. - Cat Lady is the only recruit character that will spawn in the trader camps currently, for more testing. - Cat Lady summons a cat when you bring her in a mission. - Cat Lady summons a cat whenever she takes damage. - Cat Lady has a chance to steal enormous amounts of food for her cats whenever you camp for the night. - Cat Lady gets her own despair event.

More features coming in for the upcoming AORTA update! Please help test! Now updated for all platforms. Next up: More content and a new special last trader camp before Canada. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. Changes: - Temporary option to start with the Wizard, for easier testing. - Wizard now casts magic using his Wizard Stick (sometimes it says Wizzle Stick instead, this is a bug) - Wizard is now a little more fit/strong but not by much - Trading camp recruits in! Currently 6 recruit types and then a chance for a rare camp recruit. One will spawn when a campfire is spawned. - Camp Recruits have $ over their heads to set themselves apart. - Normal camp recruits take 5 food, rare ones take 10. - Rambeux and Ninja moved from the road recruit pool to the rare camp recruit pool. Most recruits that would have taken food will show up in the camps instead of the road now, but not all. - Sound tweaks - Blast/bullet behavior fix so that propane tanks can explode again - You can now talk to camp chatters multiple times, to make them repeat themselves like in a proper videogame.

Some fixes for the last build that were brought up in the comments and discussion threads! Thanks for all the help! HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. Changes: - Advanced error logging turned on for now. - Attempting trader camp error fixes. Let us know if you still get a broken and semi-empty trading camp. - Recruit bug fixed where they were counted as dead no matter what. - Changes to the AI weapon pickup behavior. - AI will no longer swap a weapon for the same weapon. - Locked no-drop weapon slots now become normal if the weapon breaks. Though, outside of debug characters you probably won't see a character with a breakable no-drop weapon. - Rare book trader now makes you actually pay for the books. - Start of giving the wizard his own weapon, soon he'll also get MAGIC.

We've started to test the big AORTA update up on the testing branch! Here's the 12/1 notes for testbranch, though we just put up a 12/3 update to it in the announcements section. http://steamcommunity.com/games/deathroad/announcements/detail/511552718362398855 Help us test so we can launch this! We're going to be adding more features from our developer build as we get tester feedback on what's in already. There's lots of new systems, so we need a lot of testing. We were originally planning on the big update being out in Early September, but instead we ended up doing multiple smaller updates. Some of which would have been in AORTA, but we launched early instead. One example of this are the Feral Cats from the Halloween update. The AI update we did also ended up being pretty big, but I think that was worth it if you remember the older AI.
Here's the old update preview, for reference: http://steamcommunity.com/games/deathroad/announcements/detail/789641743936507434 Looks like we'll have almost everything we planned in AORTA, with some added surprises. The exception is that we're going to delay the new progression system so that it can coincide with the iOS launch. We'll make that an update revolving around perks, traits, and the new Trait Points you can get. I'd like to start making updates focus on more specific parts of the game, as that is a more sane strategy than what we've been doing. The iOS version has been in testing for awhile, and soon that will be getting the latest update and achievements. Looks like the launch date for that will be in January or February. The last big thing we need to do is get in streaming support, straight from the device. We'd also like to sneak in PC and iOS cross-platform save sharing. After that, we'll start working on the second big update. The plans for that are still the following: - Splitscreen local co-op - Any major remaining problems that people are reporting - Expanding mod support. Steam Workshop and stackable mods are the ideal, but we'll see! - Big focus on content! We would really like to get 3-4 months to just work on adding more things to the game. New locations, events, characters. My big design goal with this game was to have so much rare stuff that you could be entertained for hundreds of hours and still find new things. The only way to do this is to keep adding content. This is also why I'm really interested in more mod support. That's it for now! The next one of these we do will likely be at about the same time that we launch the update.

More tweaks and additions to the last build, as we test parts of the big update. Also doing a news post today (last post I announced it a little early, I somehow thought it was the day before Saturday). Here's 12/1's build notes for reference: http://steamcommunity.com/games/deathroad/announcements/detail/511552718362398855 HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. Changes: - Fix for a wandering AI bug that made things in the ending level follow you immediately, when they shouldn't. - Tweaks to make the wander AI behavior less exaggerated. - More stat screen stats. Post below if you'd like to see anything else in here! - Adjustments to character handling

We got busy with a mixture of eating too much for Thankgiving, eating too much for Canadian Thanksgiving, and working on time consuming new systems. I'm going to start doing more rapid testing branch builds again, while we start testing AORTA content a bit at the time. Help us test everything so we can finally launch it! Also, expect a news post tomorrow. Right Click on Death Road, Properties, Beta. In this build: - Rare traders. Currently at a big increased spawn rate, they'll be much more rare in the actual game. - Five Rare Traders: Lab Technician/Reptiloid Alien Kip, Head Transplant Doctor, Rare Book Seller, Soothsayer, and the Witch from Halloween update. - You can now access the car trunk by opening the back of your car! - Achievement functionality testing! Not hooked up the Steam in this build, but that's coming up. - In-game achievement notification. - New game mascot: Skull that makes goblin laughter noises during cheevos. - Lots of cheevos added. - One cheevo for each stat type and gameplay mode. - Cheevos for many different special characters. - Cheevo notifier shows the special characters' head if applicable. - Save Kepa cheevo, finally in the game. - Cheevo for going to the circus and some other rare events. - Acheevoment for winning the entire game solo. - Win Streak tracking added. - Ending now displays streak information, if you're in a win streak of 2 or more. - Cheevos for win streaks. - Alvis now properly plays an exclusive special in-game song if he dies on the toilet after aging rapidly. - Beginning of a stats screen, added to INFO section. - Turning into a dog by lab accident now lets you keep your human intelligence or lack of intelligence. - New head types for the head transplant doctor. - New trader menu type that lets you go back and forth in the same windows so you can easily cancel choices. - New trader system that lets the head-swap doctor get a list of 3 random head choices per game. - Junkyard map made one tile taller, to fix an error where your car could crash into a parked van. - Fix for Health Siege Reward making you go over max health, which was nice except it could screw up healing events. - Fixed dying from traders not clearing your save properly. - Window resize behavior changes.

Here's some fixes and other small requests from feedback, before we dive entirely into public testing for the content update! If this ends up being good in testing, we'll put up the other platforms and get it out as an update. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. Changes: - AI followers now only pick up a melee weapon if it's better than their current best weapon. We're thinking this may fix the infinite pickup bug, or at the very least make them less crazy for wood chunks. - Fix for some AI freakout cases. - Followers now get a little "catching up" speed boost if they're far away. - AI followers wander around a little less. - Fixed "Familiar Face" characters sometimes not applying perks and traits correctly. - Fix for getting the Toilet Genie to accidentally make the player start floating. - Footstep sound reduced. - Halloween fixes and tweaks. You know, for next year. Or for people that mess with their system clock. - Fix for Dracula talking and changing to/from bat form while dead and on fire. We shouldn't have fixed this one. - Witch's cat mews on recruitment. - BBQ tank now has a shorter height hitbox.

This is the Halloween update we did that last news post about. We ended up doing a lot more stuff than we expected! It's a pretty beefy update, and includes both some Halloween specific stuff and long awaited features. This should be the last big SPLEEN update before we do AORTA in November. Let me know in the comments below if there's any problems! Or send feedback by Twitter: @rocketcatgames Changes: - Cats are in. Evolutionary pressure in the apocalypse has caused them to revert back to something like a mountain lion. They're big and angry. - Couple different ways to get cats recuirted to your team. They'll always be very rare, but we may add more ways to get them later. - Special events for cats. Despair, car driving, and more. - Cats don't give two poops about Canada or driving cars (pardon my French). - Cats can't become Superdogs in the usual sense. - Future support for more pet types. Currently in as failsafes, like if someone decides to try to make a pet mod. - Losing a character in a CYOA event will now cause that character's weapons to drop into the trunk automatically! - There are some events that will still eat cause you to lose your weapons, so beware. This mostly includes events where you're betrayed, or events where someone is completely obliterated off the face of the earth. - Wielded weapon will drop to the trunk first. It will overwrite your trash slot if the trunk is completely full. If trunk is full, extra weapons will be lost. - "No drop" weapons won't end up in the trunk. No getting L*NK's sword, for example. - Halloween weirdness if you play the game tomorrow. - Vampires like in the Twilight novels. - Mummies? I don't know. - Dancing skeletons. - Death itself. - Fancy new megaweapon. - New graveyard location! - New TERRIFYING trader in trader camps. - New rare city building with the Would You Kindly stream team, based on the results of the Death Road to Canada pre-launch race that they utterly failed at. - Some characters can float or even fly now. - Improved broom type. - New Scythe weapon, somewhere in between a machete and knight sword in the weapon tiers. - Currently the scythe can be obtained a couple of ways in the existing farmer help event. We will add a couple more ways to get it in the next content update. - Some NPC wandering behavior fixes. - Starting food changed so that the Ultrafit food bonus finally works. - Functionality added for checking if your current weapons could bash a door in, for events. - Fixed a particle effect glitch. - Greatly expanded the event handler for characters, allowing for fancier special abilities.

Halloween update! Help us test! We'd like to get this out tomorrow. Lots of new content, much more than we let on in the teaser for it. Also, until we change it tomorrow, you can start the game with a cat! SPOILERS BELOW HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. Changes: - Cats are in. Evolutionary pressure in the apocalypse has caused them to revert back to something like a mountain lion. They're big and angry. - Temporary FREE CAT feature on the first event screen. - Couple different ways to get cats added. They'll always be very rare, but we may add more ways to get them. - Special events for cats. Despair, car driving, and more. - Cats don't give two poops about Canada or driving cars (pardon my French). - Cats can't become Superdogs in the usual sense. - Future support for more pet types. Currently in as failsafes. - Losing a character in a CYOA event will now cause that character's weapons to drop into the trunk automatically! - There are some events that will still eat cause you to lose your weapons, so beware. This mostly includes events where you're betrayed, or events where someone is completely obliterated off the face of the earth. - Wielded weapon will drop to the trunk first. It will overwrite your trash slot if the trunk is completely full. If trunk is full, extra weapons will be lost. - "No drop" weapons won't end up in the trunk. No getting L*NK's sword, for example. - Halloween weirdness. - Vampires like in the Twilight novels. - Mummies? I don't know. - Dancing skeletons. - Death itself. - Fancy new megaweapon. - New graveyard location! - New TERRIFYING trader in trader camps. - New rare city building with the Would You Kindly stream team, based on the results of the Death Road to Canada pre-launch race that they utterly failed at. - Some characters can float now. - Improved broom type. - New Scythe weapon, somewhere in between a machete and knight sword in the weapon tiers. - Currently the scythe can be obtained a couple of ways in the existing farmer help event. We will add a couple more ways to get it in the next content update. - Some NPC wandering behavior fixes. - Starting food changed so that the Ultrafit food bonus finally works. - Functionality added for checking if your current weapons could bash a door in, for events.

The AI Revamp update we just did took longer than we thought, so we're very likely going to miss the AORTA update for October. Due to this, we're doing a surprise Halloween update to tide everyone over.
Things to expect: - A few new spooky Special Character recruits. - A new melee mega-weapon. We'll be adding more of these, over time. - Jack o' Lanterns. - From AORTA: Characters killed in most events will have their weapons go to the trunk. - Some other surprise things from the AORTA update, a little early. Overall we're happy with how the AI Revamp turned out. It's now much, much more viable to run around as a full group. There are still some lingering issues that we couldn't get to. If you see anything you still want improved, let us know in the comments!

This is the update we've been working on recently on the testing branch. It mostly involves a lot of adjustments to the follower AI. This should lead to a pretty big change for making rolling with a big group more viable. Coming up Satuday is news on what we're doing with the content updates. The AI revamp took some time, so I think what we'll do is release the next update in two parts. Changes in this update: - Lots and lots of adjustments to the AI, for followers and zombies. - New pathfinding system them lets followers handle panic situations and small gaps better. - Fix for a "going through door" crash. - Fix for one cause of AI running around the car uselessly instead of going inside. - Less fine pathfinding in huge maps, to fix a slowdown issue in the very endgame. - Removed that tiny cage gap in the rare bunker map because AI couldn't handle it. - AI tries to muscle through objects when it can see you past them. - AI tries to pathfind around bunches of zombies, considering thick crowds as a wall and thinner crowds as something to push past. - AI tries to move around objects while pathfinding based on mass/solidity - Fixed some glitches with door passage/detection for AI - AI should be less dumb about getting in the car when in melee FIGHT! mode. - Your buddies should now much more quickly follow your orders on guns vs melee, though usually not instantly. - AI should no longer FREAK OUT with weapon swapping if they have 3 weapons and are standing on a fourth weapon. - AI values the melee power of firearms more, so they should prefer pistol whipping if they think their other melee weapons are crappy. - AI values crappy weapons about half of what they used to, for using or picking them up. This includes spatulas, wood, and femurs. They'll still pick them up if desperate or if they want to annoy you. - AI values keeping firearms more. - Fixed a bug involving AI turning right. This should solve another problem with them not getting in a car right away, let us know if they do this again. - Dogs should no longer drop and pick up the same item repeatedly.

Fixing a bug on the last build! Mac and Linux coming. Help test so we can get this out as the main update! HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. Changes: - Your buddies now properly switch to firearms again, according to orders and threat level.

Doing some more tweaks based on feedback. Hopefully doing final changes tomorrow, getting it up on Mac, and then getting it up as a true update after final tests. We're hitting some pretty big diminishing returns on what we can improve with this, but we can revisit things later if we need to. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. Changes: - More work on preventing AI FREAKING OUT as they stand on weapons. Seems good now for tested situations, but need more testing. - Fixed a bug involving AI turning right. This should solve another problem with them not getting in a car right away, let us know if they do this again. - AI values keeping firearms more. Let's see if they value them enough. - Dogs should no longer drop and pick up the same item repeatedly. - Possible fix for the trader camps sometimes missing half the camp due to an " end " namespace bug. - More small adjustments to pathfinding.

This may be the AI update we launch this weekend, if nothing goes wrong. Please help test! Linux build soon. Working on getting Mac builds up again. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. Changes: - AI should no longer FREAK OUT with weapon swapping if they have 3 weapons and are standing on a fourth weapon. - AI should be less dumb about getting in the car when in melee FIGHT! mode. - AI values the melee power of firearms more, so they should prefer pistol whipping if they think their other melee weapons are crappy. - AI values crappy weapons about half of what they used to, for using or picking them up. This includes spatulas, wood, and femurs. They'll still pick them up if desperate. - Further AI follower small tweaks.

More work on AI based on your feedback. Getting closer. Please test! Mac and Linux testing branches will come after everyone's happy enough with the Windows build. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. - Revamps on the follower and zombie AI. - AI tries to muscle through objects when it can see you past them. - AI tries to pathfind around bunches of zombies, considering thick crowds as a wall and thinner crowds as something to push past. - AI tries to move around objects while pathfinding based on mass/solidity - Fixed some glitches with door passage/detection for AI

Further tweaks to AI followers! Getting closer now, hopefully releasing this before the week is over. Please give feedback! Mac and Linux testing branches will come soon. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. Changes: - Fix for a door crash. - Fix for a cause of AI running around the car uselessly instead of going inside. - Fine adjustments to AI. - Less fine pathfinding in huge maps, to fix a slowdown issue in the very endgame. - Removed that tiny cage gap in the rare bunker map because AI couldn't handle it.

More tweaks to AI followers! Please give feedback on how followers act now. Mac and Linux testing branches will come later, after we hammer everything down the way we like it. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. Changes: - Fixed an error where followers wouldn't consider a zombie as an obstacle, causing them to run right into thick crowds. - Reverted the zombie grab strength and character size back to their old values. - Fine adjustments to AI.

I got sick earlier in this month, and have been recently scrambling to catch up on work I missed. I've been posting news to the forum and twitter, but I wanted to do a big summary post here. AORTA update missed September, but will be out in October. In the meantime, Paul has been working on an AI revamp for the game while waiting for me to get back. We posted some testing branches for this, along with some other fixes like the mystery ghost car bug and the anime girl wand not working. I'm putting a new testing branch up later tonight. We should be launching the full AI update this week. iOS version is in the works, with Android following. Due to the AORTA update being delayed, the iOS version likely won't launch with this big update. Instead, it'll receive that update post-launch, though it will still get the AI revamp and some other things. We have early plans for our second big update after AORTA. They are currently: - Primary focus on new content. New events, locations, characters, and more. By that time we won't be as busy with all new systems and huge revamps, so we can focus on adding new things to find. - Work on multiplayer. The biggest thing here is split-screen. After that, we're also going to see if we can increase the amount of players to 4. - Initial mod support. I'd really like to get Steam Workshop running. We'd get simple mods working, and then in future updates see what we can do for adding more advanced support. An example is being able to run lots of small mods at the same time, instead of one big mod. I'll make another big news post in a couple of weeks. In the meantime, I'll be checking for feedback on the testing branches and working on the update.

Continuing the AI tweaks from yesterday, now with some fixes that testers caught. Mac and Linux testing branches will come later. Test to see if the difficulty changed much with these changes. Especially check if it's easier to run through big groups of zombies as a human or as a dog. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. Changes: - Fixed a bug where followers would not go through doors properly. - Fixed a bug where followers would attack phantom furniture only they could see. - Most public restrooms made slightly bigger, since the tiny restrooms could glitch out pathfinding.

I got really sick earlier this month and am trying to catch up on work for the big update. More news on this tomorrow. In the meantime, we're putting up testing branches again for new AI testing. Warning: Your followers may get stuck in bathrooms pretty easy until I fix those tomorrow. Try testing to see if the difficulty changed much with these changes. Especially check if it's easier to run through big groups of zombies as a human or as a dog. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. Changes: - New AI for follower navigation, they try to anticipate obstacles a bit better. - If a follower gets stuck on furniture, will try to destroy obstacle with their weapon. - Player can no longer squeeze through as many tiny cracks as you could before, especially with car wrecks. - Player and followers now have a smaller frame, to attempt to squeeze through obstacles better. - Zombie grip is now 25% better, to compensate for the smaller player frames. - Combat and tactics order fixes. Followers should change orders/tactics more swiftly and reliably. - Anime Girl's wand works properly again. - That one GHOST CAR bug where you became a floating spirit when entering a car maybe fixed.

(Sound effects: *Airhorn* ) We've been more quiet lately because we're focusing on the big content patch, the AORTA update. Originally we were shooting for Late August/Early September for this, but we ended up releasing a lot of smaller updates on the way. Here's the biggest changes we've done so far to the Death Road in our small updates:

• New Always Be Looting event picking system that gives you easier location choices.
• Big overhaul to the Final Siege Day.
• Group Orders menu to change your group's tactics.
• Lots of smaller features, like the new Martial Artist and Big Bruiser perks.
• Lots and lots of tweaks and fixes based on feedback

• Some new recruitable rare characters!
• Cold Steel cameo where you can get a Zweihander
• Feral Cats rare recruits!
• Revamps to Trading Camps, including a guaranteed "Right Before Canada" special trading camp every game.
• Kickstarter reward additions
• New system for Rare Traders you can find.
• Recruits you can buy from trader camps. I'll probably also put the rare characters that take food to recruit in this system.
• Achievements!
• New progression system that will let you unlock some new perks and traits.
• Accessing your car trunk to put in/take out weapons during trading camps and any other location where you can see your car.
• Lots of new weapons! Many of which will have previously unseen qualities, such as the Air Horn, pictured above. Varying levels of power for the weapons we add, some junk, some good, some great.
• Some new character customization options!

This introduces a big change to how you pick the non-city scavenging locations! These are now known as "Always Be Looting" events, for simplicity. Mac lagging behind a little because we're fixing an issue with saves. Still working on the AORTA content update. Will post news on that later in the week! - Old "Drive to another location" system removed. - New system: You instead get a choice of 2 scavenging locations, or to reroll them once for a gas cost. - 10% chance added of getting 3 choices, instead. - Explorer now sets the extra choice chance to 100%. - Higher explorer ranks give a discount to the gas cost for rerolling. Rerolls give 6 total locations for as little as 15 gas in the default car, a huge buff. - Explorer perk description updated with these changes. - Tweaks to hit detection vs walls. Goal is making it easier to hit zombies near walls. - Better fullscreen resolution calls. - More tweaks to the fullscreen modes. - Camera now adjusts to take Player 2 into account. - Adding some fixes for Linux. - Character validation for save loading - New cursor experiment - Save the character's slot count - Rain is now slightly transparent - DSYP can no longer sometimes fart infinitely. We shouldn't have fixed this bug. - Toilet Genie should really not pick up loot again for real this time. - Sewer now warns you if you're about to abandon someone - Meat Cleaver +33% power buff just because - Pipebombs now have only 80% the explosive radius as grenades - Some starting hint text updates

Mostly tweaks to the Always Be Looting location picker. Also a fix for accidentally abandoning people in the sewers! HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. Changes: Non-explorers can now reroll Always Be Looting locations. Non-explorers now get a choice of 2 ABL locations instead of 3. Non-explorers have a 10% chance of getting a 3rd ABL location. Explorer gas amount adjusted upwards. Still way more generous than it was. Explorer perk description updated with these changes. Skipping locations back in for ABL, with updated and purple text. Sewer now warns you if you're about to abandon someone Meat Cleaver +33% power buff just because Pipebombs now have only 80% the explosive radius as grenades Some starting hint text updates

Big revamp to how picking scavenging locations work! Also some display fixes. More testing branches are coming up over this weekend. The scavenging location reroll changes will likely have big effects on the overall game balance. This will need a lot of testing! Please give feedback in the comments or on the discussion forum. HOW TO INSTALL: Right click Death Road to Canada on Steam. Go to Properties. Go to Betas. Select Testbranch, no password necessary. Changes: - "Drive to another location" system removed. - New system: You instead get a choice of 3 scavenging locations. - Explorer changed so that it now lets you reroll these 3 locations for a gas cost. You can only do this if you have an Explorer in the party. - Explorer ranks decrease the gas cost. Gas cost overall is far cheaper. - You can't reroll the beginning scavenging location, but Explorer lets you choose from 4 of them instead of 3. - Tweaks to hit detection vs walls. Goal is making it easier to hit zombies near walls. - Possible fixes for some display issues. - Better fullscreen resolution calls. - More tweaks to the fullscreen modes. - Camera now adjusts to take Player 2 into account. - Adding some fixes for Linux. - Character validation for save loading - Cursor improvements - Save the character's slot count - Rain is now slightly transparent. - DSYP can no longer sometimes fart infinitely. We shouldn't have fixed this bug. - Toilet Genie should really not pick up loot again for real this time.

Minor fixes. If there's problems, let us know! If there's no problems we'll get up Mac and Linux by tomorrow. Mac will come after Linux, since we're also doing a specific fix for a Mac issue later. Weekend update coming: AI tweaks, some fixes, and a surprise new system. - Trying out a different cursor for keyboard/controller - Fix for grenades/pipebombs/molotovs hitting zombies by mistake. - Tweaked throwing ranges for the above three weapons. - You can now carry 6 grenades or 6 pipebombs in a stack. - AI followers will now ignore pipebombs and grenades. - Trading camp trainers now no longer charge you extra for having dogs they can't train in your party. - The Curse of Anime can REALLY be removed now.

A second update today, to sneak in some extra fixes for controllers and other things, included fixes for some rare events not spawning properly. Let us know if there's any problems with this update, we can always revert it to the earlier one from the morning. - Start button should now be set to START by default. - Controller defaults for player 2 are re-enabled. - Fixes for Player 2 controls getting messed up and also controlling Player 1. - Joystick mapping should be more clear in the options menus. - Fixed a weird bug that prevented the Danger Rangers, Hazmat Sewer, and Kung Fu Master events from being playable for some. - Fixes for the Sacrificial Altar only spawning gas, instead of the 7 different things it could spawn. - Improved Evil Goblin Smoke effects. - New effect and spawning code for the Locked Safes. - Magical Wishing Fish now uses the new spawning code too. - Dropped weapons will no longer hit things. - Further bottle lobbing. - Fixed some collision with carried items and thrown weapons. - Extra checks to make sure recently spawned weapons from safes and such to be invincible. - Fixed boomerangs bouncing off stuff while on the floor. - Fixed weapons damaging other weapons if colliding with each other. - Alien raygun sound effects are back. - Added some trees to the alien map.

This update adds more controller support and fixes, and solves the Canada Crash that was affecting some people. The focus of the next small SPLEEN update will be more AI work and fixes for the remaining white box issues some people are having. Also maybe some new weapons to find. I plan on posting a news update about the big content update later this week. It may be delayed a little bit due to all the smaller updates we've been doing, but will see. Changes: - Fix for the Canada crash that mostly happened to Mac users. - Controllers in the controls menu now properly shows the name of each button - New system for controller initialization - Controllers now have more failsafes for some errors - Fixes for Player 2 controllers not saving bindings properly. Let us know in comments if this still happens for you! - Collision and AI work. - Initial work on some new weapons. - Slightly tweaked ending where man returns to the stars. - New colors for menu buttons. - Dogs can NOT eat chocolate. - Events can now check for umbrellas. - Easier bandits now take a quarter food in some cases where they previously took half. - Karate (Alvis' kicking attack) buffed a little bit. - Bruce can now train someone that already has Kung Fu, giving them Kill Fu. - More tweaks to the Bruce and Danger Rangers cities. - You can now quit the tutorial early by going through the first door. - Toilet Genie can no longer get eaten by zombies. I don't agree with this change but everyone kept whining about it. - Pet shops now have 2 recruitable dogs in them, sometimes 3. - The previous no-interaction dogs in pet shops were removed because they were confusing. Now every dog you see in there can be recruited (if you have the right perk). - Pet Shop dogs now get directly recruited to your party, with no need to rescue them first. - A little more food in Pet Shops. - Cardboard tube cleaving buff for no good reason. - DSYP now gets his fart counter reset and given a maximum fart increase if he reads Giant Farts Monthly. - Typo fixes.

Mac on the way. Some half-done collision things slipped through in the earlier testing branch. This should fix that. Otherwise testing today is about the fix for the Canada crash (mostly on Mac), and controller issues. HOW TO: Right click Death Road to Canada in Steam. Go to Properties. Go to the new BETAS tab. Select TESTBRANCH - Fixes for some new collision things. - New colors for some menu buttons. - Dogs can NOT eat chocolate. - Events can now check for umbrellas.

This has a fix for the Canada crash (mostly happened on Mac), along with the previous testing branch's controller updates Note that this will introduce extended error logging, compared to the main branch. HOW TO: Right click Death Road to Canada in Steam. Go to Properties. Go to the new BETAS tab. Select TESTBRANCH - Fix for the crash that happened to some people (mostly Mac players) as soon as you won. - Collision and AI work. - Initial work on some new weapons. - Slightly tweaked ending where man returns to the stars.

This one's mostly for controller support tweaks and fixes. There's also some work in progress fixes and balance changes. Note that this will introduce extended error logging, compared to the main branch. HOW TO: Right click Death Road to Canada in Steam. Go to Properties. Go to the new BETAS tab. Select TESTBRANCH - Controllers in the controls menu now properly shows the name of each button - New system for controller initialization - Controllers now have more failsafes for some errors - Easier bandits now take a quarter food in some cases where they previously took half. - Karate (Alvis' attack) buffed a little bit. - Bruce can now train someone that already has Kung Fu, giving them Kill Fu. - More tweaks to the Bruce and Danger Rangers cities. - You can now quit the tutorial early by going through the first door. - Toilet Genie can no longer get eaten by zombies. I don't agree with this change but everyone keeps whining about it. - Pet shops now have 2 recruitable dogs in them, sometimes 3. - The previous no-interaction dogs in pet shops were removed because they were confusing. Now every dog you see in there can be recruited (if you have the right perk). - Pet Shop dogs now get directly recruited to your party, with no need to rescue them first. - A little more food in Pet Shops. - Cardboard tube cleaving buff for no good reason. - DSYP now gets his fart counter reset and given a maximum fart increase if he reads Giant Farts Monthly. - Typo fixes.

Lots of changes to the follower AI and last sieges to the game. Bugfixes and some new features like perks. This update ended up being way bigger than we thought. Let us know here if there's any problems! We're getting this out early in the day so we can react to any issues. Changes: - AI and collision changes. - Removed the Rough Morning siege, the Final Siege, and the city before the final siege. It has been replaced with one single event. - New event: The City of Crushed Hopes, now a 4 hour siege that takes place in a 3 row city. The spawn difficulty is somewhere between the old Rough Morning and Final Siege events. - Martial Artist perk added. Fitness bonuses and a powerful unarmed attack that hits two zombies at once. Disadvantage: Won't shoot guns. - Big Bruiser perk added. Strength bonuses, and a stronger unarmed attack. Takes an extra hit that stacks with Berserk, Frantic Whiner, and Resilient Type! Disadvantage: Slower movement speed. - Gun Collector perk added. Like all the old gun perks, combined. - Old gun perks removed when making new characters. - You can press pickup/use while carrying something to smash it onto a zombie's head. - Berserk! now gives an extra point in Fitness/Strength/Shooting. - Berserk! now lets you go one over the maximum in the above skills! - Civilized now does a permanent -3 morale penalty, formerly -2 - Healthcare medical supply amount reduced a little. - Gun perks provide slightly less ammo. - Perks shuffled around a bit. - Over-the-maximum bonuses now stack. This currently applies mostly to the Martial Arts + BERSERKER! combo. - AI stops attacking and runs to you if you go to a different room. - Different weapons now have different effective ranges for your followers. They'll try to get close with shotguns, and snipe with rifles. - Less cars in the car finding road events, so as to get people stuck less. - More gas in the above events on average, to compensate for less cars. - Small chance for a car wreck to be on fire. - Looting safes now is much more obvious that a weapon is dropping. - Checks for making sure a safe weapon doesn't end up under the safe. - If you're indoors, most sieges will now silently kill the zombies stuck outside. - Changed how siphoning/pumping gas works so you won't be interrupted so much. - Some personality stats now influence AI. Example: A hot tempered character will sometimes go nuts with attacking. - Healing break added back after the walking without car camping events. - The mall cops no longer stare at you slack jawed for 5 seconds after talking. - Several old events rewritten to have Loyalty reveals! - Tell Stories Around Campfire event now reveals Loyalty. - Grocery Camp Betrayal now requires 1 lower morale. - Dentist Office Magazine event now also reveals personality stats. - More zombie clowns - Two new horrifying ways to turn all zombies into clowns - Rebar no longer breaks. - Raygun shot piercing buffed. High shooting = up to 100% if it keeps splatting zombs. - Boomerang/thrown weapon behavior tweaks. - Ninja items can now be shared. - Ninja smoke bomb and shuriken replenish now acts like LNK's, where they have to be gone to be refilled. - Smoke bombs only get refilled to 3 now instead of 5. - ??? now has a special chainsaw that is twice as gas efficient. - Many special characters now have less than 3 weapons slots. In some cases for balance, in other cases to fix a bug. - ??? now has 2 weapon slots, preventing him from using inferior weapons. - The Last Bodybuilder only has one weapon slot, since he already has two massive guns. - LNK now has two weapon slots because the NES controller only had two buttons. - Contender now has two weapons slots because the third was extraneous anyway. - Horse Man now has 1 weapon slot. He loses his frying pans, sadly. - DSYP now has 1 weapon slot. In exchange, he gets to use his cardboard tube. - Knight now has 1 weapon slot, to prevent her from using non-chivalrous weapons. - Fairy Queen recruit prompt now reveals a bunch of her stats. - Gordo is now a full recruitable character. - Gordo stats buffed. - Panda is now a full recruitable character. - Panda stats buffed, and given FIERCE CLAWS. - Fierce Claws added for Panda and upcoming cats. Like the dog attack, but way stronger. - Gordo and Panda now have sayings and descriptions. - Buffed Contender's uppercut a bit. - DSYP's ability no longer hurts himself/allies (most of the time). - Improvements to fart sound and graphics. - Made the Yallmart and bookstore have a layout that's friendlier to the AI. - Safe reward weapons will no longer break sometimes when flying out of a safe. - Can now grab things from the top shelves in a grocery store, if standing below the shelf. - Car camera adjusts better in cities where it can spawn in different areas. - No more fences at top of cities, so zombies don't get stuck up there. - Valkyrie fix. - No longer rains in tunnels (probably). - Throwing bodies now has a proper bounce and dust cloud. - Special message for people that kill the ending guy. - Fixed bug with not being able to see zombies break down doors from other side. - Toilet genie no longer steals your loot. - More reliable checks for having things that give events disappear or stop being interactive when they should. - Characters now use their own voice when grappled by zombies. - Game now gives you ceiling ambush if indoors, dig ambush if outdoors. - Zombies track you better in sieges. - Fix for extra hotdog car keys. - iOS stuff. - G**f nightmare now has a weird dream echo. - Yallmart worker zombies added. - Clowns added. May god have mercy on our souls. - Less spammy floor weapon message. - Can now grab stuff off corner shelves against wall easier. - Can no longer get stuck in closet due to floor weapons. We should have left this one in because it was funny. - Toned down the "supplyloss" word. This means about half the food/meds will spill from your bag during those walk events. - Got rid of the tone that plays when a city is generated with a rare special location. - Fixed bug that prevented bleeding allies from dying from explosives. - Slight Clown tweaks. - Fixed bug where trash heaped building doors could sparkle. - Slight tweaks to the hotdog map. - More consistent safe in house generation. - Magazine/book house generation improved. - Big Arcade generation improved. - Big Arcades can now have two working arcade cabinets. - Dogs now properly are set to their max health on recruitment. - Fix for Junkyard Pals building having too many rooms. - Staying up on shifts no longer TIREDs the group if you have a full party. - Tutorial ending text changes. - CLOWN now lets you refuse if you only have one person. - Typo fix for having a team wipe after falling asleep during zombie watch. - Fixed some city layouts that would make the AI freak out. - Picking up live grenades/pipebombs no longer defuses them. - You shouldn't get the +NUMBER gas notice when running out of gas anymore. - Car wrecks can now be slowly pushed. - TLB can now pick up car wrecks and burning car wrecks. - Special HELLHOUND character for having a dog get possessed by Satan in the right way. - Anime Girl now gets a special option from Anime Merchant - Anime Girl now gets a special event from Anime Club Kids - Anime Store masks can now give you the mutated head - Very special event for being a dog that reads a magazine full of cat pictures - The minor safe weapon rewards now give about 50% more ammo. - Martial Artist now gets -10 to Shooting Skill. - The Strength Trainer in trading camps now disappears properly if you figure out his weird special event. - Fixed a mountain of stack problems that could have been causing other issues, like the Danger Rangers not spawning. - Made all the special character blurbs shuffle properly, so they should say new things now. - Santa Claus now only nukes his own morale, generally. - TLB's GET PUMPED saying now always works, gives both strength and two morale. - Fixed Altars not giving half of their rewards correctly. - Added smoke poofs to many Altar rewards. - Tweaked Bruce and Danger Ranger location generation. - More tweaks and fixes.

Lots of fixes and small tweaks in this one. Main branch update should be tomorrow or maybe even late tonight. HOW TO: Right click Death Road to Canada in Steam. Go to Properties. Go to the new BETAS tab. Select TESTBRANCH. - Fix for getting stuck on "no drivers left". - Car wrecks can now be slowly pushed. - TLB can now pick up car wrecks and burning car wrecks. - Special HELLHOUND character for having a dog get possessed by Satan in the right way. - Anime Girl now gets a special option from Anime Merchant - Anime Girl now gets a special event from Anime Club Kids - Anime Store masks can now give you the mutated head - Very special event for being a dog that reads a magazine full of cat pictures - The minor safe weapon rewards now give about 50% more ammo. - Molotovs in Death City are very rare, now it's mostly pipebombs. - Death City has a way higher chance for northern buildings to have loot. - Reduced initial spawns in Death City so you have a little time to run around. - Slight decrease to Death City difficulty, less than 10%. - Martial Artist now gets -10 to Shooting Skill. - The Strength Trainer in trading camps now disappears properly if you figure out his weird special event. - Cars can now be hit again. - Fixed a mountain of stack problems that could have been causing other issues, like the Danger Rangers not spawning. - Made all the special character blurbs shuffle properly, so they should say new things now. - Santa Claus now only nukes his own morale, generally. - TLB's GET PUMPED saying now always works, gives both strength and two morale. - Fixed a lot of .specialify words for stack problems. - Fixed Altars not giving half of their rewards correctly. - Added smoke poofs to many Altar rewards. - Fixed a stack error with Altar. - Fixed an error with bar pistols. - Fixed stack errors with some super rare characters. - Tweaked Bruce and Danger Ranger location generation. - Fixed stack errors with some recruit events. - Fixed some errors with getting to negative health.

Smaller tweaks in this one. Later today, we'll be putting up more testing branch updates for different platforms. Either late tonight or tomorrow, we'd like to get the new update out. HOW TO: Right click Death Road to Canada in Steam. Go to Properties. Go to the new BETAS tab. Select TESTBRANCH. - Buffed Martial Arts. Now gives a point of strength too, and the final rank lets you go one over the maximum for Fitness. - Over-the-maximum bonuses now stack. This currently applies mostly to the Martial Arts + BERSERKER! combo. - Looking into that white box display bug again. - Car camera adjusts better in cities where it can spawn in different areas. - Throwing/smashing adjustments. - No more fences at top of cities, so zombies don't get stuck up there. - Fixes and checks to some deathforth errors. - Less error logging for now, due to preparing to launch update.

More tweaks to AI. Hoping to polish this up so we can release an update tomorrow. HOW TO: Right click Death Road to Canada in Steam. Go to Properties. Go to the new BETAS tab. Select TESTBRANCH. - More AI tweaks. - Fixed some city layouts that would make the AI freak out. - Tweaks to throws and slams. - Picking up live grenades/pipebombs no longer defuses them. - You shouldn't get the +NUMBER gas notice when running out of gas anymore. - Fixed a save corruption issue due to the new weapons being added. - Error popups shouldn't pop up over and over now, preventing game from proceeding on testing branch - Fixed ai.rush_chance!! - Fixed El Satan not yelling properly - AI no longer pops up loot report

More tweaks to AI and balance! Also includes the new perks and other things from earlier today. This one is Windows only. HOW TO: Right click Death Road to Canada in Steam. Go to Properties. Go to the new BETAS tab. Select TESTBRANCH. - More AI tweaks. - Made the Walmart and bookstore have a layout that's friendlier to the AI. - You can press pickup/use while carrying something to smash it onto a zombie's head. - Safe reward weapons will no longer break sometimes when flying out of a safe. - Can now grab things from the top shelves in a grocery store, if standing below the shelf. - DSYP's ability no longer hurts himself/allies (most of the time). - Improvements to fart sound and graphics. - Valkyrie fix. - No longer rains in tunnels (probably). - Reduced Gun Collector's starting ammo. - Various fixes. - Throwing bodies now has a proper bounce and dust cloud.

More tweaks to AI and balance. Also, the addition of three new perks! We're also planning another testing branch later tonight. HOW TO: Right click Death Road to Canada in Steam. Go to Properties. Go to the new BETAS tab. Select TESTBRANCH. - More AI tweaks. Mostly for shooting, rushing, fleeing. - More ability to shoot over some barriers. - Attempt at some display issues. - More detailed error logging. - Martial Artist perk added. Fitness bonuses and a powerful unarmed attack that hits two zombies at once. Disadvantage: Won't shoot guns. - Big Bruiser perk added. Strength bonuses, and a stronger unarmed attack. Takes an extra hit that stacks with Berserk, Frantic Whiner, and Resilient Type! Disadvantage: Slower movement speed. - Gun Collector perk added. Like all the old gun perks, combined. - Old gun perks removed when making new characters. - Healthcare medical supply amount reduced a little. - Gun perks provide slightly less ammo. - Perks shuffled around a bit. - Less cars in the car finding road events, so as to get people stuck less. - More gas in the above events on average, to compensate for less cars. - Small chance for a car wreck to be on fire. - Fairy Queen recruit prompt now reveals a bunch of her stats. - Gordo is now a full recruitable character. - Gordo stats buffed. - Panda is now a full recruitable character. - Panda stats buffed, and given FIERCE CLAWS. - Fierce Claws added for Panda and upcoming cats. Like the dog attack, but way stronger. - Gordo and Panda now have sayings and descriptions. - Buffed Contender's uppercut a bit. - Toned down the "supplyloss" word. This means about half the food/meds will spill from your bag during those walk events. - Got rid of the tone that plays when a city is generated with a rare special location. - Fixed bug that prevented bleeding allies from dying from explosives. - Slight Clown tweaks. - Fixed bug where trash heaped building doors could sparkle. - Slight tweaks to the hotdog map. - More consistent safe in house generation. - Magazine/book house generation improved. - Big Arcade generation improved. - Big Arcades can now have two working arcade cabinets. - Dogs now properly are set to their max health on recruitment. - Fix for Junkyard Pals building having too many rooms. - Staying up on shifts no longer TIREDs the group if you have a full party. - Tutorial ending text changes. - CLOWN now lets you refuse if you only have one person. - Typo fix for having a team wipe after falling asleep during zombie watch.

More experiments with the endgame and follower AI. And tons of other tweaks! HOW TO: Right click Death Road to Canada in Steam. Go to Properties. Go to the new BETAS tab. Select TESTBRANCH. - Lots of tweaks to Follower AI. Check them out, please give feedback. - AI stops attacking and runs to you if you go to a different room. - Different weapons now have different effective ranges for your followers. They'll try to get close with shotguns, and snipe with rifles. - More tweaks to the Final Siege. It's now a smaller area to get trapped in. - Investigating some display errors - Looking for that Canada crash. - Berserk! now gives an extra point in Fitness/Strength/Shooting. - Berserk! now lets you go one over the maximum in the above skills! - Civilized now does a permanent -3 morale penalty, formerly -2 - Several old events rewritten to have Loyalty reveals! - Tell Stories Around Campfire event now reveals Loyalty. - Grocery Camp Betrayal now requires 1 lower morale. - Dentist Office Magazine event now also reveals personality stats. - More zombie clowns - Two new horrifying ways to turn all zombies into clowns - Rebar no longer breaks. - Raygun shot piercing buffed. High shooting = up to 100% if it keeps splatting zombs. - Boomerang/thrown weapon behavior tweaks. - Ninja items can now be shared. - Ninja smoke bomb and shuriken replenish now acts like LNK's, where they have to be gone to be refilled. - Smoke bombs only get refilled to 3 now instead of 5. - ??? now has a special chainsaw that is twice as gas efficient. - Many special characters now have less than 3 weapons slots. In some cases for balance, in other cases to fix a bug. - ??? now has 2 weapon slots, preventing him from using inferior weapons. - The Last Bodybuilder only has one weapon slot, since he already has two massive guns. - LNK now has two weapon slots because the NES controller only had two buttons. - Contender now has two weapons slots because the third was extraneous anyway. - Horse Man now has 1 weapon slot. He loses his frying pans, sadly. - DSYP now has 1 weapon slot. In exchange, he gets to use his cardboard tube. - Knight now has 1 weapon slot, to prevent her from using non-chivalrous weapons. - Special message for people that kill the ending guy. - Other tweaks and fixes.

Experimental testing out a big AI tweak and a big change to the final sieges. Please give opinions on both! HOW TO: Right click Death Road to Canada in Steam. Go to Properties. Go to the new BETAS tab. Select TESTBRANCH. - The AI is now much braver. This needs lots of testing as to whether this is a good or bad thing. - Removed the Rough Morning siege, the Final Siege, and the city before the final siege. It has been replaced with one single event. - New event: The City of Crushed Hopes, now a 4 hour siege that takes place in a 3 row city. The spawn difficulty is somewhere between the old Rough Morning and Final Siege events. - Looting safes now is much more obvious that a weapon is dropping. - Checks for making sure a safe weapon doesn't end up under the safe. - If you're indoors, most sieges will now silently kill the zombies stuck outside. - Changed how siphoning/pumping gas works so you won't be interrupted so much. - Some personality stats now influence AI. Example: A hot tempered character will sometimes go nuts with attacking. - Healing break added back after the walking without car camping events. - The mall cops no longer stare at you slack jawed for 5 seconds after talking. - Fixed bug with not being able to see zombies break down doors from other side. - Toilet genie no longer steals your loot. - More reliable checks for having things that give events disappear or stop being interactive when they should. - Characters now use their own voice when grappled by zombies. - Game now gives you ceiling ambush if indoors, dig ambush if outdoors. - Zombies track you better in sieges. - Fix for extra hotdog car keys. - iOS stuff. - G**f nightmare now has a weird dream echo. - Yallmart worker zombies added. - Clowns added. May god have mercy on our souls. - Less spammy floor weapon message. - Can now grab stuff off corner shelves against wall easier. - Can no longer get stuck in closet due to floor weapons. We should have left this one in because it was funny. - More tweaks and fixes.

Lots and lots of requests, including the Team Orders menu and co-op tweaks and fixes! Now you can have finer control over the behavior of your followers, including what weapons they use. Update speed is going to slow down for awhile as we work the first big content update. Check announcements for news on this! We'll still do some smaller updates until then, for both fixes and for things we want to add in early. Changes: - New ability to set team orders for combat preferences and tactics! - The old defaults are called TACTIC: DEFEND and COMBAT: EITHER. - COMBAT: SMASHIN! tells your group only use melee weapons. - COMBAT: SHOOTIN! tells your group to only use firearms. - TACTICS: RUNNIN! makes everyone try to stay close to you, and makes them ignore zombies. It also stops them from picking things up. - TACTICS: FIGHTIN! makes everyone try to kill every close zombie they see, instead of waiting for zombies to get close. - Group can ignore your orders in some situations. - Fixed some bugs for Player 2 accidentally controlling Player 1. - New AI indicator for co-op, as a little running man. - Messages for joining/leaving co-op. - Fixed a bug that made the AI buddies use guns far less than they should have been in the default DEFEND mode. This bug has been in since release, so they'll get out firearms way more easily now. - LOOT tab changed to TEAM tab. - Team tab now contains all the team loot info in a single tab, plus Orders. - Bottom of team tab lets you swap leader, like the weapon swap tab. - The game now remembers what tab you were on and where your cursor was in the pause screen. Unpausing and repausing keeps your tab position. - Molotov now sails over zombie heads like a grenade or pipebomb. - Molotov fire patch now lasts much longer. - A megafailure robbery will no longer do 3 damage to the main robber. Now it's locked at 2, so it's possible to survive without vitality buffs. - L*nk's special items, except for his swords, now go to the trunk when he gets them. - L*nk's special items are no longer stuck to him (except for his sword). - LNK bombs no longer regenerate until they're completely used up. - Lighting tweaks. - Health indicator heart doesn't linger so long after death now. - Game now tracks if a gator ate your car keys, for text events. - Turning a special character into a dog now UNLOCKS THEIR MAIN WEAPON. This is for weird bug purposes, but it's exploitable so go nuts. - Slightly nerfed chainsaw damage now that it's an avatar of the death god. - Propane tank, tire, big tire, cinderblock health reduced downwards. - You can no longer whiff the deer shot if your skill is super high. - Changes to Ultimatum text if you only have two people left. - Changes to booting someone out to account for only one person left. - Made shotguns and rayguns count as guns for CYOA event checks. - Better collision against circular objects and cars. - Valkyrie fixes. - Safe opening text more vague now. - Weapons like pipebombs and other stackables now stack better. - Runnin' mode now prevents followers from picking up weapons. - When you're standing near a weapon on the floor, that weapon's name now shows up. - Fixed a glitch where an AI buddy could get stuck swapping their weapons over and over while standing on top of a different weapon. - Some more logging for system crashes. - A couple more lab rooms. - Rewording for the last Canada events so it hints how many more there are. - Lots of little tweaks and fixes. - Removed some advanced crash logging that could cause some slowdowns - Fix for some old detours taking negative gas, leading to a +gas error when it reduced you to nothing. - Better handling for trashed rooms and locations. This was causing some new houses and apartments to have 2 or 3 blank rooms. - Fix for the entire world becoming zombie cops if you found a single zombie cop. We shouldn't have fixed this.

Some hopefully final fixes and small features before launching the new Team Orders update! HOW TO: Right click Death Road to Canada in Steam. Go to Properties. Go to the new BETAS tab. Select TESTBRANCH. - Runnin' mode now prevents followers from picking up weapons. - When you're standing near a weapon on the floor, that weapon's name now shows up. - Fixed a glitch where an AI buddy could get stuck swapping their weapons over and over while standing on top of a different weapon. - Some more logging for system crashes.

This includes fixes for co-op, Team Orders, and some other things. Hoping to make this the main update tomorrow morning. HOW TO: Right click Death Road to Canada in Steam. Go to Properties. Go to the new BETAS tab. Select TESTBRANCH. - Fixed some bugs for Player 2 accidentally controlling Player 1. - New AI indicator for co-op, as a little running man. - Messages for joining/leaving co-op. - FIGHTIN! tactic now works properly. Your team should be very aggressive when this is turned on. - Tactics/combat settings should no longer silently revert to Defensive/Either when going into a new location. - Better handling for trashed rooms and locations. This was causing some new houses and apartments to have 2 or 3 blank rooms. - Fix for the entire world becoming zombie cops if you found a single zombie cop. We shouldn't have fixed this.

This is the Team Orders testing from yesterday, with some tweaks. Help us test and we'll make this a main update! HOW TO: Right click Death Road to Canada in Steam. Go to Properties. Go to the new BETAS tab. Select TESTBRANCH. - The road screen tab position is now saved, like the in-mission pause - Removed some advanced crash logging that could cause some slowdowns - Fix for some old detours taking negative gas, leading to a +gas error when it reduced you to nothing.

Since launch, we've been working on continuous updates for fixes, tweaks, feedback requests, and new features. After wrapping a few more things up, we're going focus on our first big content update! COLD STEEL CAMEO
The CEO of Cold Steel is going to show up on the Death Road. You'll be getting a new megaweapon for melee from him, if you run into his rare event. We actually got permission for this. If you don't know what this means for the game, please check out this informative video: Cold Steel Great Sword FERAL CATS
Cats grew REALLY BIG after the zombocalypse, devolving back into their pre-domestication forms. They're also incredibly angry now. It's very rare to find one that's still tame. If you do find one, they're zombie shredding machines until they inevitably betray you. MORE RARE CHARACTERS
We'll be putting more rare and special characters you can find. Some that you can recruit, some you interact with temporarily. Also planned is a new type of special character, Rare Traders. They will have a small chance to show up in trader camps, and they'll sell strange and new things to you. ACHIEVEMENTS Instead of just doing a BEAT TUTORIAL and KILL 1,000,000 ZOMBIES achievement, we want ours to be interesting.* We want to make a bunch of Steam achivements for doing rare and difficult things. Achievements for winning the game in the different modes. An achievement for winning completely solo, never getting another recruit. Another achievement for never having anyone die in an entire run. *Though I still might put the KILL A MILLION ZOMBIES achievement in. AND MORE We have a bunch more features planned. The above is a teaser, and isn't close to a complete list. I'll post more news on this update before it comes out! We're thinking that this update will come out in either late August or early September. We will also most likely find some time to do smaller updates before this big one, like we've been doing. Maybe at a less relentless pace! Keep sending in feedback! Also, if you like the game, please leave a Steam review and tell your friends. The game mostly keeps going by word of mouth. If the game keeps being played by enough people, we'll keep doing updates for it! We have about a year's worth of free content planned, already.

There's a massive amount of stuff in this! Biggest thing: Team Orders! You can now give your team loose orders on what to do! HOW TO: Right click Death Road to Canada in Steam. Go to Properties. Go to the new BETAS tab. Select TESTBRANCH. Changes in this build: - New ability to set team orders for combat preferences and tactics! - The old defaults are called TACTIC: DEFEND and COMBAT: EITHER. - COMBAT: SMASHIN! tells your group only use melee weapons. - COMBAT: SHOOTIN! tells your group to only use firearms. - TACTICS: RUNNIN! makes everyone try to stay close to you, and makes them ignore zombies unless grabbed. - TACTICS: FIGHTIN! makes everyone try to kill every close zombie they see, instead of waiting for zombies to get close. - Group can ignore your orders in some situations. - Fixed a bug that made the AI buddies use guns far less than they should have been in the default DEFEND mode. - LOOT tab changed to TEAM tab. - Team tab now contains all the team loot info in a single tab. - Bottom of team tab lets you swap leader, like the weapon swap tab. - The game now remembers what tab you were on and where your cursor was in the pause screen. Unpausing and repausing keeps your tab position. - Molotov now sails over zombie heads like a grenade or pipebomb. - Molotov fire patch now lasts much longer. - A megafailure robbery will no longer do 3 damage to the main robber. Now it's locked at 2, so it's possible to survive without vitality buffs. - L*nk's special items, except for his swords, now go to the trunk when he gets them. - L*nk's special items are no longer stuck to him (except for his sword). - LNK bombs no longer regenerate until they're completely used up. - Lighting tweaks. - Health indicator heart doesn't linger so long after death now. - Game now tracks if a gator ate your car keys, for text events. - Turning a special character into a dog now UNLOCKS THEIR MAIN WEAPON. This is for weird bug purposes, but it's exploitable so go nuts. - Slightly nerfed chainsaw damage now that it's an avatar of the death god. - Propane tank, tire, big tire, cinderblock health reduced downwards. - You can no longer whiff the deer shot if your skill is super high. - Changes to Ultimatum text if you only have two people left. - Changes to booting someone out to account for only one person left. - Made shotguns and rayguns count as guns for CYOA event checks. - Better collision against circular objects and cars. - Valkyrie fixes. - Safe opening text more vague now. - A couple more lab rooms. - Rewording for the last Canada events so it hints how many more there are. - Lots of little tweaks and fixes.

We might do another big update tonight. This one has a bunch of tweaks and fixes. Next one coming up, we're trying to get in the TEAM ORDERS menu! - Heart report when injured - Player 2 now gets to control menus - Fixed a bug with the chainsaw being way less powerful than intended. - Chainsaw now has a flashing gas indicator when it's down to the last 10 gas. - More logging and crashproofing - Game will now automatically save crash logs in the same place as the save files - Fixed some human melee collision vs rectangular hitboxes - Some particle fixes - Made the junkyard goal (the junk pals, the keys, note, etc) spawn a little lower. This should clear up some cases where it would get stuck. - Dog Mega-Ammo-Trader is now vulnerable to Dog Psychology if Friend of Dog. - One big building in a city has now been changed to being partially trashed, mostly to make cities a little shorter. - To compensate, city kitchens have more guaranteed food on the ground. 1 to 3 food at random, in addition to any rare food that spawns. - Machete is 3 food cheaper. - Knight Sword, Medieval Axe, and Claymore are 5 food cheaper. - Some Junkyard Dog text changes. - Fix for the Junkyard dog not recognizing femur if held in third slot. - Cinderblock, tires, and big tires no longer have immense amounts of health. They're still pretty durable. - Dumpsters much less durable. But still very much so. - Coffee overdose sickness now clears after the mission. - Coffee can no longer kill you. - Having someone rest now properly clears their TIRED status. - C**l-It trigger is a little more consistent - Pause between events is now a little shorter if you're out of medical supplies. - Fixed an event bug where it said your car made a jump even if your car exploded. - Some typo corrections.

Wrapping up the changes from yesterday, and adding a few more. Hoping to make this the main update soon! Mac version coming. HOW TO: Right click Death Road to Canada in Steam. Go to Properties. Go to the new BETAS tab. Select TESTBRANCH. Changes: - Fixed a bug with the chainsaw being way less powerful than intended. - Chainsaw now has a flashing gas indicator when it's down to the last 10 gas. - More logging and crashproofing - Game will now automatically save crash logs in the same place as the save files - Fixed some human melee collision vs rectangular hitboxes - Some particle fixes

Testing out a whole bunch of small tweaks, and some more advanced error logging for people that still have issues. HOW TO: Right click Death Road to Canada in Steam. Go to Properties. Go to the new BETAS tab. Select TESTBRANCH. Changes: - Made the junkyard goal (the junk pals, the keys, note, etc) spawn a little lower. This should clear up some cases where it would get stuck. - Dog Mega-Ammo-Trader is now vulnerable to Dog Psychology if Friend of Dog. - One big building in a city has now been changed to being partially trashed, mostly to make cities a little shorter. - To compensate, city kitchens have more guaranteed food on the ground. 1 to 3 food at random, in addition to any rare food that spawns. - Lots of work on crash-proofing and better logging of errors. - Machete is 3 food cheaper. - Knight Sword, Medieval Axe, and Claymore are 5 food cheaper. - Some Junkyard Dog text changes. - Fix for the Junkyard dog not recognizing femur if held in third slot. - Cinderblock, tires, and big tires no longer have immense amounts of health. They're still pretty durable. - Dumpsters much less durable. But still very much so. - Coffee overdose sickness now clears after the mission. - Coffee can no longer kill you. - Having someone rest now properly clears their TIRED status. - C**l-It trigger is a little more consistent - Pause between events is now a little shorter if you're out of medical supplies. - Fixed an event bug where it said your car made a jump even if your car exploded. - Some typo corrections.

New update! Windows only for now, more platforms coming soon. I'll update this post as the Mac and Linux builds are available. Let us know if there's any new problems! Changes: - You can now mess with your equipment whenever you want. It's in the pause menu when on the road screen or road event screen. Let us know if this leads to any cheesy exploit. - Co-op entering car AI fixed. - Fixed the game mode screen not properly unlocking things right away until you restarted the game. - Fixed the game dumping you back to the title screen too quickly if you killed your entire party in a robbery attempt. - MORE HATS - New indicator for leaving a map on foot. - Easier stacking of items in the trunk itself. - Both USE and ATTACK will throw a carried chair. - SWAP now drops a carried chair. - Tutorial now reflects the new button changes to throwing chairs - AI buddies now have weapon rumble. - You can no longer throw pipebombs while inside a car. - Anime girl fix for the "Nothing happening here" text. It was related to her name -chan additions. - Fixed some room generation errors with the rangers. - Potential fix for the silent danger rangers bug. - Game now remembers your starting car as Car Nut. Currently for the purpose of having the Deja Vu car finding event be accurate. - Fixed a bug that prevented the god-tier melee weapons from killing 4 zombies at once. - Some more logging for a trunk crash - Full hardware fullscreen mode, by request. - Imrpovements to windowing. - Better debug messages for the whitebox error people. - Expanded error logging. - Fixed a bug with moving out of the custom characters screen, that glitched out the buttons on the main menu - Corrections to the loot report

Test this and let us know in the comments if it breaks anything. We'd like to get this out as the main update. HOW TO: Right click Death Road to Canada in Steam. Go to Properties. Go to the new BETAS tab. Select TESTBRANCH. It contains all of yesterday's changes, and adds a few more: - New indicator for leaving a map on foot. - Tutorial now reflects the new button changes to throwing chairs - You can now mess with your equipment whenever you want. It's in the pause menu when on the road screen or road event screen. Let us know if this leads to any more of cheesy exploit. - Some more logging for a trunk crash

Here's a bunch of stuff we're testing. Help us test by trying it and posting replies! After testing things, we can get Linux and Mac versions then post as an update for everyone. Thanks for all the feedback so far! HOW TO: Right click Death Road to Canada in Steam. Go to Properties. Go to the new BETAS tab. Select TESTBRANCH. - Co-op entering car AI fixed. - Fixed the game mode screen not properly unlocking things right away until you restarted the game. - Fixed the game dumping you back to the title screen too quickly if you killed your entire party in a robbery attempt. - Anime girl fix for the "Nothing happening here" text. - Fixed some room generation errors with the rangers. - Potential fix for the silent danger rangers bug. - Game now remembers your starting car as Car Nut. Currently for the purpose of having the Deja Vu car finding event be accurate. - Fixed a bug that prevented the god-tier melee weapons from killing 4 zombies at once. - Full hardware fullscreen mode, by request. - Imrpovements to windowing. - Better debug messages for the whitebox error people. - Expanded error logging. - Fixed a bug with moving out of the custom characters screen, that glitched out the buttons on the main menu - Corrections to the loot report - MORE HATS

Here's a big update we've been working on in the testing branch. Note: If you weren't getting custom characters in Familiar Faces mode, this update lets you fix it by saving a new custom character BALANCE: - Car breakdown is less subject to RNG, now much more deterministic. - New healing system! Now you constantly attempt healing when driving, so it's more of a steady trickle. - Bad medical skill now takes more supplies, while medical over :) only takes 1 supply per health. - Medical skill over 3 now gives you double heal attempts per session, with maxed medical giving you triple attempts or a free heal if you're out of medical supplies. - Medical training from healing now stops at 3. - Old healing event can still be found in resting events and some other places. - Dogs are now much easier to train how to drive a car. - Old obscure training method now gives extra stat bonuses in addition. - There was a bug that made it easier than expected to run through large crowds of zombies. That's fixed now. - Billy now gets a Ridiculous Fishing Pole so he can melee things. - Boomerang nerf for using it in melee range. - Toilets adjusted - Claymore costs 40 food now. - Heavy swords now have a 100% chance to cleave 4 targets, up from 60% FEATURES: - If you've beaten a game mode, it now mentions how many times you've on on the game mode screen. - You can now unequip weapons on the road screen. You can't currently unequip weapons in a CYOA screen on the road, but we're thinking about making it so you can. - Support for up to 64 custom characters, up from 16. - Custom chars will save much faster. - Pathfinding tweaks for your AI buddies not avoiding things they could easily push around. - Zweihander added. - Music now plays on title by popular request. BUGS AND CORRECTIONS: - Display fixes for black screen bugs, white boxes bug, and more - Fix for the Familiar Faces bug, where custom characters wouldn't show up if you didn't press Randomize when making them. - Fixes for some co-op and co-op controls bugs. - New default deadzone for controllers. - Fix for some special characters with locked weapons also locking the weapons of people in your party if you went into the Trunk screen. - Fixed Woof's head being too high. - Safes can no longer be destroyed. - Fixed a crash involving going through door when throwing a windstar - Fixed weirdness for putting " in a character name - Limit of 96 pixels for char names in creator - Fixes for ending crash - Crash volume reduced - Car now doesn't get stuck if you're driving in the tunnel map on a really wide monitor. - No more trees in UFO encounter. - Bunker fix for getting stuck there. - Changed the Mechanic perk description to give more leeway to how bad it is at the lowest perk level. - Opening a safe or sacrificing someone to an altar will now drop the weapon you get to the south of the object, instead of sometimes inside the object. - Temperament is now known as Composure... easier to understand? - Tree lift event text states that you'll need a strong team to pass it. - RPM blurb changed to make more sense given game mechanics - Trimmed beat the game credits, expanded info credits. - Lots more fixes and tweaks.

Testing branch up for Windows, Mac, and Linux! Tons of stuff, including co-op and Familiar Faces fixes. Please test so we can put this up on the main release branch ASAP. HOW TO: Right click Death Road to Canada in Steam. Go to Properties. Go to the new BETAS tab. Select TESTBRANCH. TESTBRANCH JUL-27-2016.19.40 - What's new: - Familiar faces bug fixed! To get the fix to work, please save a new custom character after you update. - Potential fix for "AI trollface" co-op bug. - Potential fix for controller co-op bug. - New default deadzone for controllers. - New healing system is now much more generous! - Healing skill over 4 now means you'll only need 1 medical supply per heal. - 0 skill healing costs 4 medical supplies, 1 skill healing costs 3. - 0 healing has a 40% chance to give you a point in medical. - Under 3 healing gives you a 10% chance to get a point in medical. - Healing skill over 3 now gives you double heal attempts per session. - Maxed healing skill gives you triple heal attempts per session, plus a freebie heal if you're out of medical supplies. - Toilets adjusted - Fixed a bug with pausing a lot in the first location pick event. - Made Zweihander a little faster. - Fixed Woof's head being too high. - Safes can no longer be destroyed. - Some store text corrections. - Typo fixes. - Fixed ESC from some tabscreens.

Testing branch up for Windows and Mac! Bug fixing, tweaks, and now some new systems! Expect at least one more testing branch update today, then hopefully it'll become the main update. Coming up next: Familiar faces fix, co-op fixes. HOW TO: Right click Death Road to Canada in Steam. Go to Properties. Go to the new BETAS tab. Select TESTBRANCH. TESTBRANCH JUL-27-2016.15.11 - What's new: - Support for 64 custom characters, up from 16. Please test this especially. - Custom chars will save much faster. - New healing system. Now you constantly get minor healing while driving. - Healing costs 1 to 4 medical supplies, depending on your skill. May tweak this, leave feedback on your thoughts. - The old daily healing event was removed, but you can still get it in "resting" events. - Dogs are much more easily able to learn how to drive a car. - Old and secret "superdog training" event now gives even more bonuses. - Claymore now costs 40 food instead of 35. - Claymore and Zweihander now have a 100% cleave chance of up to 4 zombies, up from 60%. - No more trees in UFO encounter. - Fix for driving to a new location in the beginning of the game causing a black screen.

Testing branch up for Windows and Mac! This is a mix of bug/error fixes, tweaks, and new content. Expect a bunch of test updates today. Try this out if you're having display or crashing problems, or want to try out upcoming stuff. HOW TO: Right click Death Road to Canada in Steam. Go to Properties. Go to the new BETAS tab. Select TESTBRANCH. TESTBRANCH Jul-27-2016.10.08 - What's new: - Made the Canada ending more like a road transition, to catch some crashes affecting some. - Crash sound reduced. - Pathfinding tweaks for your AI buddies not avoiding things they could easily push around. See if these help! - Zweihander added. - Fixed some character blurbs. - Logging format changes. - Looking into volume weirdness.

Testing branch up for Windows! This is to check the next update for errors. Try this out if you're having display or crashing problems, or want to try out a bunch of tweaks coming up. HOW TO: Right click Death Road to Canada in Steam. Go to Properties. Go to the new BETAS tab. Select TESTBRANCH. TESTBRANCH Jul-26-2016.20.20 - What's new: - Fixed more display issues. - Testing a TRUNK tab in the road menu. You can now unequip weapons on the road screen. You currently can't unequip weapons in a CYOA screen on the road, but we're thinking about making it so you can. - Music now plays on title by popular request. - Billy now gets a Ridiculous Fishing Pole so he can melee things. - Boomerang nerf for using it in melee range. - Things that mention bad weather now tend to make the weather bad. - Hotwiring no longer says it hurts the car (it never did) - 2x3 city layout not used for now, due to special building generation bugs with this layout - Fixed a crash involving going through door when throwing a windstar - Fixed weirdness for putting " in a character name - Limit of 96 pixels for char names in creator - Opening a safe or sacrificing someone to an altar will now drop the weapon you get to the south of the object, instead of sometimes inside the object. - Temperament is now known as Composure... easier to understand? - Tree lift event text states that you'll need a strong team to pass it. - More typos - RPM blurb changed to make more sense given game mechanics - Trimmed beat the game credits, expanded info credits.

Testing branch up! This is to check the next update for errors. For Windows, Mac, and Linux. Try this out if you're having display or crashing problems, or want to try out the less frequent car breakdowns. HOW TO: Right click Death Road to Canada in Steam. Go to Properties. Go to the new BETAS tab. Select TESTBRANCH. TESTBRANCH Jul-25-2016.20.47 What's new: - Attempted fix for the black screen bug. - Trying to fix the "white boxes" bug. - Car now doesn't get stuck if you're driving through a tunnel on a really wide monitor. - Fixed some crashes. - Car breakdown is less subject to RNG, now much more deterministic. - Changed the Mechanic perk description to give more leeway to how bad it is at the lowest perk level. - If you've beaten a game mode, the game modes screen now mentions how many time you've won. - Typo fixes

This is for Windows, and primarily tries to fix crashing bugs some people have been having. Linux and Mac updates will come later, once we do a content update after some fixes and feedback requests we want to get through. Send feedback and thoughts! Especially if you still get a crash. Changes: - Crash fix related to the zombie guts that could happen even before attacking any zombies. This was likely the biggest cause of crashes. Check to see if it crashes now, if you had issues before! - The Vehicle tab in the road pause screen now shows what game mode you're playing. - Fixed game mode tracking getting messed up if you closed the game fully and then reloaded a save. This was preventing new game modes from getting cleared. - Better reporting for crashes. The RISKY CODES are more detailed now, if you send us what they said. - Temporarily shut off quitting+saving from road events. You can still save if you pause when the car is driving. We'll fix this soon. - Looking into some weirdness with Familiar Characters mode. - Error sprite (pink face) will show up if something goes horribly wrong. - Some typo fixes that players sent in.

It's out right now! We'll be around all day tomorrow to answer feedback and bug reports. Post them here or on my Twitter account: http://www.twitter.com/rocketcatgames/ We want to do a bunch of updates for this game. Paul and I will be reading suggestions we get! Have fun!

Mac, Linux, and Windows builds are all up! This is the release build. - Bound the start/pause button to "spacebar" by default. - Secret stuff.

Here are patch notes for all the builds since 7/16! Latest build is Windows, but Mac and Linux have been updated recently, too. Later tonight, there will be a small build to get the Mac and Linux versions up to the latest one. - Mohawk is now back in the game for women - Fix for it sometimes taking too long for the Player 2 to control a character. - Tutorial mentions how to drop weapons - Pause loot screen in mission now displays total trunk loot - Road screen now displays your total trunk loot - INFO button on title screen for easy credits viewing and version information. - Junkyard dog fixes, and warning. - Sewer zombies spawn faster. - Fixes for some city layouts. - Tutorial text now changes based on what keys you have bound. - Some firearms are unbreakable now for pistol whipping. - Player 2 can now control a cursor in Character Maker and Player 2 Controls. - AI will try to avoid gun butting/pistol whipping with firearms that are fragile. - Character Maker share button removed for now, until we can put it back in. - The easy bandit modes now lock most bandit types to 1 damage, instead of randomly 1 or 2. - Softened some bandit damage for special personality options. Some remain really harsh. - New healiing rewards for siege reward rotation and rescue reward rotation. - Buffed pipebomb explosive power by 100% and grenades by 150%. - Lots of various menu improvements - Exiting to main screen now lets you know whether or not the save will get deleted - Some save file fixes, like not losing your third weapon on continuing a save - Fixes for Car Nut actually giving you the right cars - More blurb variety based on stats - More starter hints - Lots of new character descriptions - Morale now needs to be at 0 to get a despair event - The really bad despair events now at least give the survivors some morale. - Lots of blurb additions and changes - Music update to final versions of the songs - Made AI not bug you if you're pumping gas. - Loot summary popup when you get new loot - Zombies are way easier to hit now with thrown furniture - Zombies way easier now to hit with firearms shots - Better car CYOA handling - Morale tweaks, generally on the side of the player. - Way more trader camp camper sayings. - ENDGAME now properly saves the kills you make in it for stat tracking. - ENDGAME now has a road block. - Sieges now 10% harder. - Added a hard hotel location. - Pushy Recruit can now be denied if you're solo. - Genie appearance tweak and smoke poof. - Toilet Genies now require way more toilets opened to spawn, sorry. - Combination notes and car keys no longer spawn under cars. - Improvements to AI pathfinding, especially when leader leaves the room. - Pipebombs and grenades can properly sail above zombies now. - More skeleton types. - Tons of random fixes

There's been a few builds since 7/13, just haven't had time to put notes up for them. This is a Windows build again, Linux should be really soon with Mac a little past that. - Difficulty toned down a bit for some rare locations - More work on the game ending - Perk requirements are now about 30% lower - Pathfinding AI improvements for your buddies - 2x4 weapon added to hardware stores. - Fixes for pipebombs/grenades breaking. - Safe combinations and car keys now check if they're obstructed by something heavy, then removes those obstructions. - Pep talk recruit reward fix - Tweaks to despair morale gains - Removed closet from city apartment, as it's a large map already - Pushy recruit text changes - Lowered some morale penalties for camps - Tweaking some tired camps by either removing tired or adding an alternate option to pick one person to stay up on watch, instead of everyone. - Yallmart siege starts with less zombies initially, still high compared to other sieges - More sayings for mounties

Last night's build, now with patch notes. Still Windows only! Linux and Mac should be over the weekend. Been making builds so rapidly that we haven't had time to do the other platforms. Builds from now on will mostly be small tweaks and bugfixes. After the game launches, we plan to go back to content updates. We'll likely continue the beta builds as a passworded alternate branch for anyone that's interested. - Some bandit easy mode descriptions made more accurate - Toilet genie fully in the game! Currently requires 10 toilets to be opened to find, though soon this will change to 200 or so. - Doors that you haven't gone through yet now sparkle. - Exit signs now over the door that exits the building you are in. - Lots of tweaks and work to the END GAME event. - Fixed a bug where the ceiling ambush spawns were twice as big as they should have been. - Increased the siege difficulty by 10% after the above fix. - camp2-creepy, the guaranteed GET TIRED camp, replaced with a new one, camp2-smell. - Fixed some bugs with things moving slightly after being opened. - Tweaks to the hint text. - More logic fixes for losing your car right before Canada. - Lots of checks/fixes for sleeping or not sleeping in camps - Additional chances for healing added to many events - Many of the "best weapons" are now increased in value in the eyes of AI buddies switching to them for use. - Fixes for some weird grammar - Ending now properly clears the save - Ending now tracks how many times you've won in each mode

Here's notes for the build that was posted last night. Windows again. Linux and Mac builds will be later this week, as we wrap some final things up. - Fixed some infinite logic loop bugs when walking near Canada. - Bandits are now less harsh in the first 5 game modes. They'll usually take 25-50% of your stuff instead of 50-100%, and one instance of weapon robbery is removed. - Bear camping event also follows above less harsh rule in the easier game modes. - Hints added to the game's intro event. - Many new city layout variants! - City building types now change depending on where you are relative to Canada. - Adjustments for Florida and Carolina building heights. - Many new city scenarios. Variants of difficulty, time, aggression, weather. - New house type. - New location, finding a working car in front of a row of houses. - Fleshed out the teleporter accident events for turning into a fly or dog hybrid creature. - Fixed some errors with not resting properly in camps. - Some slight siege nerfs, such as to the mall and badweather events. - Frying pan is now unbreakable, but 0.05 seconds slower. - Arcade machines now animate - New days now have an 80% chance to reset the weather to normal conditions. - Fixed a buggy treasure room. - Nicer looking Maple Leaf for the days left indicator.

Another build coming in a couple days. This one is Windows only, Linux and Mac will follow. - Mall copz - Mall made more difficult due to help from cops - Persistent zombie blood/guts/bones! Kick and squish them. - AI improvements for NOT PICKING UP BONES so much - Old pseudocity difficulties decreased to be same as real cities - Moved some common test-region things to building-pick-layout - 9 trader camp hut rooms added. - Wipe screen transition effect added to trade-camp-reset. - Sleeping added to the trader camp rest campfire. - An open1 room tweak. - Furniture health tweaks, things are more durable now. - Common events checked for making sense if you don't have a car. - Hard hotel and hard house difficulty tweaked downwards. - Moved the tired/sleeping words to charstats. - Made sure restaurant gives at least some food. - Changed safe ultraloot to: 20% Knight Sword, 20% Slug Shotgun, 30% Assault Rifle, 30% Autoshotgun - Tweaked sacrificial altar firearms rewards slightly - Another reduction to loot in the Lost City before Canada - Some more cowboy rifle spawns given a 10% chance to be a hunting rifle instead - BIG DAWG price reduction from 50 to 40. - SLUG SHOTGUN price reduction from 40 to 25. - HUNTING RIFLE price reduction from 20 to 15. - Firearms dealer's secret shop UZI price increase from 10 food to 12 food. - More changes to the siege open house rooms. - Hunting Rifle buffs: Firing speed is 1.3 seconds now, formerly 1.4. - Autoshotgun buffs: Firing speed 0.4 up from 0.5 Now equal damage/pellets to a shotgun. Now has 80 max ammo instead of 60. - Slug shotgun changes: 1.5 firing speed up from 1.6. Now has less shot piercing, from 0.4 to 0.3 so the same as a hunting rifle. - BIG DAWG changes: 0.7 shot power instead of 1, so 40% stronger than a shotgun rather than double. Still fires 40% more pellets. Now has doubled knockback/knockdown, as strong as a minigun's. - Uzi nerfs: 1.2 shot power instead of 1.5, so a bit weaker that a pistol per shot. 160 max ammo instead of 200. - No more swinging melee weapons through walls or yallmart shelves - Fix for "Very close to Canada" text in vehicle tab

Linux and Windows builds! I'll post in the comments when Mac build is up, might take a few days. Lots of balancing, including pretty big changes to sieges. - Additional ambush zombies now appear in waves, based on the difficulty. - Added ceiling falling zombies to the indoor sieges. - Added ground dig zombies to the outdoor sieges sieges. - Less sieges overall. After the first easy siege, sieges are now every 4 days instead of 3. - Sieges now tend to be shorter. Most are an hour now, some optional or penalty ones are 2 hour. The final one is 3 hours. - Siege spawning difficulty increased around 60% to compensate for shorter sieges. - Open Entry room tweaks (the ones that a house sieges take place in). - Siege mall is now less crowded with zombies initially. - Siege duration forecast text now is colored/flashing if difficult. - Cabin and house sieges combined into one event that gives a 50% chance of either one. - Very slight increase to sewer difficulty. - Dirt Road starter siege now has doubled spawnrate, much smaller playfield, takes only 0.7 hours. - Cabin, House, and Mall sieges now have less zombies in them initially. - Siege forecast changed so it's harder to get the "NO HOPE" warning. - Game mode difficulties are now usually +30% or +60%, but kept one +100% mode. - Toned down the rare location difficulties for most part. - Trader camps now skip the mission summary. - Some corrections for trader icons and charm bonuses. - Trader charm bonuses now work 100% of the time, but you no longer get a bonus for buying the smallest amount and buying the medium amount gives you half the bonus. -When traders reset, now their "stuff bought" values reset too. - Charm ammo balancing for weapon vendors. - Trader text now includes how much food or gas you have left. - Random weather effects added to trader camps. - New word added for "lightweight" weapons. These have less of a swing speed penalty for exhausted characters. - Lightweight weapons: nail board, kitchen knife, meat cleaver, cane, all katana types, cricket bat, golf club, all hockey sticks, umbrella, cardboard tube, all machetes, Lovely Wand, rapier, Debutante Umbrella, Rambeux Knife, Broom, Mop, Ultramop, Fishing Pole, Gnomey Poke. - Hatchets no longer break for real this time - Rare city events down to 10% chance instead of 100%. - Cities now have a 90% chance of having their doors blocked externally if it's a dud building. - Lost City before Canada gives a bit less loot. - Indicator added for how many days left till Canada, in top left of screen. - More recruit events now give you an option to boot someone out if group is full. - New rescue reward added that gives the group 2 morale. - No more bandit events on penultimate day. - New text in the "days till Canada" menu for being very close. - Started some special text for events you may get with no car. - More tile types can now be shot through. - Fixed some bugs with the "can still walk to Canada" last two days bits - Added a missing .drift for a cheapweapons that could cause errors. - Made a couple secret end characters less god-like but still really strong. - Fixed error with a couple of rest stop variants not loading in.

Getting pretty close! This is a Windows build for now. Linux and Mac should be coming this week. This update adds many things, the biggest being trading events being replaced with Trader Camps you can run around in. Also lots more additions to rare special content you can find in cities. - Traders of all sorts now show you how much food you have without needing to go into a menu. - Trader Events replaced with Trader Camps. Visit random traders, and buy multiple items from them instead of just one. This greatly increases the opportunities you can trade food for supplies, training, or weapons. - New appearances for all the different traders. - 10 different varieties of Trader Camp added. - Most traders now track what you've bought, and have a set limit before they run out of stuff. - Telling a trainer to COOL IT will likely get you booted from the camp. - COOL IT miracle to a trainer now gives +3 to a skill rather than maxing it out. - COOL IT rewards nerfed somewhat, overall. - Charm only works once per trading camp. - Trader Camp campfires added to about 40% of camps, they let you rest and heal if you don't mind using the time and food. - Traders now have handy icons over their heads - Special extra trader added to 30% of camps that lets you exchange gas for food. CYOA shows you gas remaining. - Traders can now spawn indoors. - Rare buildings added that can show up in cities: Secret Lab. Secret Bunker. Toilet Heaven. Apartment Altar. Comic Book Store. Anime Store. - Rare special characters added that can show up in cities: Panda, Gordon, Fairy Queen, Her-Man. - Special CYOA event added for Fairy Queen, where you can make a wish between Wealth, Health, or True Friendship. - Special CYOA event added for Her-Man where you discover what truly makes a hero. - Anime girl mask added to Anime Store. - Anime Club Kids added to Anime Store. - More anime added to Anime Store. - Comic book added that gives multiple stats to one character. - You can now ditch your car by running away from a mission. You get a warning if you're about to do this. - Most locations now let you run away off the map on any side. - Car starting now has a 10% minimum chance, even right before the car breaks. - Walking music now properly restarts if you prolong it. - Fix for walk events glitching out and lasting forever. - "Pass it By" option for finding a car while walking has been removed - More verbose info in mission summary for loot total changes - Car menu modified so when driving in the only option at first is leaving the car - Car menu changed so that START THE CAR is at the top. - Gnomey buffed, given new gnome ability - Fire emits sparks that help spread fire to zombies or your fragile team members. - Cars now explode and set everything around them on fire. - Skeletons now spookier - Support for screen wipes - Support for special skeletons - Melee hits cause a blue hit effect - Eaten characters no longer sometimes linger in the group - Gym equipment now gets sweaty after use - Lots of fixes and tweaks

This is for Windows and Linux. Mac build will likely be next week, as we work on completing a big feature. Coming up next: We're replacing the trader events with little RPG town segments, where you can see and talk to all the traders and other friendlies. - Rare buildings added for cities. Every city now has a small chance to have an extra special building included. - Many locations now have a 10-30% chance of having a skill training magazine, usually placed in a bathroom. - Bookstores now always have a book instead of a chance between book or magazine. - Bookstores have less decoy trash lying around, no longer have magazines on floor. - Magazine/book apartment and house now have a 50% chance of having a book rather than a magazine, formerly 20% - Laboratory teleporter added to the rare locations. - Various wacky teleporter accidents added. - Fly/human and dog/human hybrids added. What has science done? - Inside locations now once again properly have a low outdoor spawn rate, so the exit gets less flooded with zombies over time. - Fatigue is now part of the "switch to gun" calculations for AI buddies. - Big rebalance for the walking events. Now you get 2 penalty events, with a 25% chance of getting 3. Rather than getting up to 6 if you were really unlucky. - Car detour events now account for car miles per gallon efficiency. - Reaching maximum medical skill now lets you use 1 medical supply per heal instead of 2. - If you're out of medical supplies but have max medical skill, your healer is able to do one free heal. - Rescue rewards and bandit Cool It rewards training is now group training instead of single training. - Training rewards for above are now mixed in with the loot rewards. - Rescue rewards now give a choice between 2 rewards (plus recruitment) rather than 3. - Fixes for rest stop weapon caches. - Junkyard pals use their proper special character graphics. - Fix for healing event sometimes not working properly. - Bear walking camp penalty event now gives you an option to just abandon your supplies entirely. - AI fix for buddies not attacking properly. - Fix for the swap/leader mission screen. - Typo correction to Argument event. - Fancy lighting for Clown Hell event. - G#rfield despair event text fix. - Fix for AI following dead leader. - Fix for joystick1 and joystick2 support for player 1 and 2. - Offscreen buddy deaths now trigger the red flash. - Safeguards added to goal room generation for the Bruce Leee and Danger Ranger events. - Fixed a bug with group training. - Fixed a bug with one of the living room furniture sets.

Big build that adds local co-op! For now, it's single screen. The AI takes over if your buddy goes offscreen. Press START on the Player 2 controls to drop in or drop out of control. Let me know what you think! Windows and Linux builds for now. Will post in the comments when the Mac build is up. - Local same-screen co-op is in! - Added support for multiple joysticks - New pathfinding for characters/followers - Drop in/out for second player - Junkyard Pals Rescue and Secret Underground Bunker rare locations now available - Weather effects can now happen in a location - Improved keymapping support - Flies added - Wind effects added - Groundwork for trader camps - Lighting tweaks - Bugfixes for rest stop locations - New alternate vehicle appearances

Linux and Windows build! Mac builds probably middle of this week to Friday, depending on some issues. These are notes for the builds posted earlier today. Lots of bugfixing and prep work, along with some polish to the car system. Next big thing is various backer rewards getting in, then maybe a revamp for the trading events. After that it's mostly bugfixes, tweaks, and some missing features. - Fixed variable handling when finding car variants. - Car variants with different colors. - Car wheels now spin more obviously. - Lots more car work. - Made skeletons more spooky. - Made skeletons less spooky but moreso than they were in older versions. - Support for ghostly people (warning: spooky) - New menu for car interaction! Minimenu. - More Ending Mission stuff. No spoilers. - Zombie wave spawning words added. - Alertlcxy added as a better way to attract zombies generated via wave. - Lots of work on city generation. - Working on campsite/trading camp area. - Car engine damage now messes up your car ignition. - Lots of bugfixing

Windows and Linux builds! Mac build should be on the weekend, with a new version. Plan for the rest of the month is to add more rare locations, then switch over to backer-related stuff for a little while. After that, lots of balancing, tweaking, bugfixing, and small additions for awhile. - Rare museum location added! Has four different major exhibits that could happen there. If you're lucky you can get a minigun or medieval axe. - Rare fishing spot location added. Catch a magic fish. Make a wish. - Rare junkyward pals location added. Can YOU save the junkyard pals? Gives group training to shooting and mechanical, depending on how well you do. - True Katana added. Not from a mall. A tiny bit heavier than a mall katana, but no longer snaps in half when used. - Some changes to the rescue NPC AI so they don't run around so much. - Tweaks to dying sayings - Lighting adjustments. - Some more special character work done. - ESC button brings up a temporary quit menu now. - Work on more special characters. - Work on special zombie appearances. - Figuring out some new zombie spawning tricks. - Small issue bugfixing and plenty of it

Windows and Linux. Been having a lot of difficulty with the Mac builds. I'll post in the comments to this announcement when Mac is up, too. Heads up: the final level is being worked on more, so you can't currently win it yet. If you get to the end, consider it a victory for now. Will fix this in next build! Here's the change notes: - More work on the endgame event. - Wienermobile rare event! - Sacrificial altar rare event! - Hermit rare event revamped to be more interesting. - UFO rare event! - Raygun added, can be used by player. - Swarmed Gym and Swarmed Arcade updated with new stuff. - Gachapon machines added. - "Incredible Hulk" effect added. - Lots of little AI adjustments for followers. - Shotgun nerfs, all shotguns now fire one less projectile. - Some new zombie appearances. - Clown Car, Wienermobile, and Futuristic Car no longer spawn at random. - Bugfixes for a mission-start tweak. - Wandering followers get less distracted by loot - Followers no longer count no-collide stuff as obstacles. - Support for new pet types, like puppies and moose. - Anime Girl heart beam update. - SECRET STUFF

After getting opinions from other developers, followers on Twitter, and some press people, we're going to end up delaying the launch of Death Road to July 22nd. I've updated the release date on Steam to show this. The rest of this post is going to be about explaining why we decided to do this, and what it will mean for the game. The main reason for doing this is that E3 is a swirling vortex that destroys most other games that aren't huge enough to get major E3 coverage. This is combined with May being pretty bad for unknown game releases due to Overwatch and Stellaris. It became more clear that releasing the game in late May would probably kill the launch. Due to the above and also No Man's Sky, it makes a long period of being brutal to get press for a new game. E3+NMS means about 1.5 months where there's a wasteland of press coverage. I don't think this would end until after the middle of July, where coverage opens up for games that aren't heavily promoted in E3. This gives us another 2 months to develop Death Road to Canada more. The game's nearly done right now, we're putting Steam achievements in at the moment. With the extra time we now have, here's how we're going to spend it: - More rare locations. I wanted the game to have lots of super rare things you can find. Now I have a lot more time to add these. - A nice implementation of local co-op. With a May launch, we were going to have to cut it out completely and add it back in after the game was out. - More testing and balancing. - Getting more press and streamers to know about the game, so it has a better chance on its launch day. - A solid month where we add little things that make Death Road better. No big new features, just small polish until the game is really shiny. - Not dying from the stress of trying to sneak in before E3 took over everything. Sorry for this one last delay. It was just looking like sticking with the May launch would have killed the game due to scheduling.

Windows and Linux builds. Mac build hasn't been updated for awhile, getting on that immediately. - Added 3 super rare locations. - Added Hazmat Family. - Added Bryce Lu. - Added Danger Rangers. - Furniture is no longer harder to pick up as you're pushing into it. - Most (not all) sieges and other hazard locations now force you to bring your entire party. No Resting if it doesn't make sense to story-wise. - Sound bug fixed. Music should play now, let me know if it doesn't. - Tutorial now in the game! Some text is placeholder (it should later adapt to what you've bound). - More work to the game's ending battle. - More work on the ending scene. - Mounties have 4 health instead of 80 - Fixed bug where dead characters no longer count as people to wait for. - Car now emits smoke and debris depending on condition. - Car stats renamed to "chassis" for HP and "engine" for maintenance condition. - Vehicle getting damaged in a mission now translates to actual chassis damage. - Kung Fu added as a special, powerful fighting style you can get. - Rescue NPC's are now mostly unseen by zombies till you talk to them, to prevent most instances of them getting eaten before you never see them.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1297103658/death-road-to-canada-permadeath-road-trip-simulato/posts/1569497 Let me know what you think! You can also comment here and I'll see it. Also, a new build should be up Monday night, along with some private news for backers. The build will fix the music issues, add the tutorial, and a bunch of other things.

Windows and Linux up for Kickstarter backers! Mac coming in a bit. In the middle of a bunch of rare event stuff. After that, achievements. - Nerfs to some robbery and cool-it miracle events. - Zombies now attack obstacles they get stuck on. - Fixes for the knight special character bug. - Fixes for demon event. - AI teammates can now automatically run around and loot stuff if they're not busy with zombies. - Furniture now pierces through zombies - Music added! - Music now changes based on mission difficulty. - Lots of AI tweaks! - AI tries to avoid shooting through walls and heavy obstacles now. - Teammates should now more intelligently swap to firearms and back to melee. - Gas pumping. - Barking now taunts zombies. - Tweaks to superdogs. They can now stand on two feet while using weapons. - Changes to locked slots. Unavailable slots are now not visible. - Trashcan slot added to the trunk, for easy deletion of weapons. - Trashcan now also serves as a slot of last resort if you get a weapon from an event while your trunk is full. - AI now snap aims again, to compensate for them not being smart about aiming.

If you're at PAX East, you can play Dad By The Sword and Death Road to Canada. Find me at the Dad By The Sword section in the Indiemegabooth, in one of the outside corners. Booth #8180. Look for the Death Road banner or enormous banner of my dad. Once I'm back from PAX East, I'll be posting more than patch notes here now that the page is public. I'll also be updating the videos on the Steam page with more recent footage. I'll also read any comments that are posted to here, if you have any questions.

Windows and Linux builds up! Mac builds should be up in a couple days. - Perk tweaks - Lots of AI tweaks. Allies now pick up weapons and swap to the ones they prefer. - 6 new hazard event types. 5 sieges, 1 gauntlet. - Clarification text for the bar rescue if you have no food - Alley fence fix - AI wandering fixes - Shotgun shell cost correction - gHis pronoun added - spawn-end-car now supports all the cars that may spawn - All road locations have a small chance of a working car - Rest stop car event when walking now properly has a lot of zombies in the final room - Carfind and ruined car road events now have slightly less zombies - Carfind and ruined car events now properly warn that they have a lot of zombies - New setting for maps you can only leave to the right on - AI work for humans and zombies avoiding each other - Fixes for some wits and attitude reveals - Difficulty adustments for canada crossing and endgame city. They're easier now. - Fixed an endgame city bug that made it generate far too much loot. - Made endgame city generate less food, more medicine and gas. - Stack fixes for endgame city. - More variety for loot building placement for endgame city. - Claymore slightly more expensive. - New LLgasmed and looselootgasmed words. - Claymore has slightly less range. - Pitchfork is 0.2 faster. Shovel is 0.1 faster. - Shovel has 25% less kill power to compensate - Your characters sometimes yell a message on death - Areas can now pick a side or sides to spawn the most zombies on. - Most sieges now spawn zombies in primarily from one direction. - Fix for safehouse relax event. - Inside maps now have zombie spawns reduced from 3 day 20 night to 2 day 6 night. - Rare locations now shuffle properly. - Fix for showing KILLED twice. - Igloo added somewhere. - Initial gun logic for AI. Gun pickup, threat assessment, switch from gun to melee.

Mac build up! Linux build will be posted a bit later. It's delayed due to us wanting to finish the AI changes first.

Windows build. I'll post when Linux or Mac builds are up. They're a bit delayed since we're in the middle of the AI changes. - Tweaks to recruit/safe rewards - Fix for having a special character cheating you out of the camp3-precanada event. - Took out the innerevent from the hazard days, easy city day, and normal city days. This means there's much less locations to visit per game, making games shorter with less resource gain. - Fixes for some off perk unlock values. - Fixed/improved follower door scanning when leader leaves room - Gave fencer 3 strength. - Trying new difficulty curve where it gets to 1 road difficulty faster and stays there for four days. - Revamped how cool-it works so the miracle indicator is correct again. - Nerfed medstorage loot slightly, one less medical gets spawned. - Toned down the endgame sieges a bit. - Lowered trader costs for weapons by 25-33% in most cases. - Ammo capacity for many weapons was increased, by 25-50% - Start of some new sieges and hazards - Fixed/improved follower door scanning when leader leaves room - The gas guzzlers guzzle a bit less now - Change to how cool-it works so it supports the random element to it while still letting you know if the next one will be successful - Buffs to ammosearch and homesearch, both levels about 50% higher - Tweaking difficulty downward - Fix for can camp not letting you sleep properly - Easy factory treasure rooms now 10% chance instead of 25% - Swarmgym and swarmarcade difficulty range tightened. - Rebalancing to all traders. About 66% to 75% of the cost they used to be. This included trainers. - Got rid of the difficulty increase for quick play mode. Quick play is likely hard enough as-is. - Fixed a bug with having 0 gas in the last two days. - Improvements on NPC following/pathfinding - Easier tuning for perk unlocks. - Made many perks a bit faster to unlock. - Made easy factory much smaller, made the loot more consistent. May remove the treasure rooms next. - Made the inner apartments a little smaller. - Work on buddy AI, adding distance values for different purposes, scanning for doors, - You can smash open vending machines - Familiar face events now wait on activating the perk/trait until they are recruited. - Familiar face events now showing the reveals when you recruit someone in the CYOA. - Fixed the game freaking out if you met one requirement for a perk but not the other. - Some sleep check fixes.

Windows build update. Linux and Mac will usually be on the weekend. - New junkyard layouts for both inside and outside - Lots of tweaks to the saving system. See if it works better now! - Fixes for the magazine/book finding apartment. - Changes to city generation. The looty buildings should be scattered around better. - Did some background fixes for the blurbs. - Rare location deck created and added to saving. - Tweaks and additions for the swarmgym and swarmarcade locations. - Blowtorch guzzles more fuel. - Zombies are at 50% flammability, instead of 75%. Humans are 25% for comparison. - Molotov flames last longer. - Cleaning up some formatting for the pause screens. - Anime Girl's name now always ends with "-chan" - Fix for rare-character-events happening constantly instead of at the end of a day. - Fixed issue with police HQ. - Hospitals and Clinics now give more medicine. - Fixed the high medical option for the bar person. - Cool Its are now randomly worth double the cool its half the time. - Nerfed the energy efficiency of the Valkyrie hammer by 33%. - Some trait descriptions tweaked to show numbers. - Tweaks to make perks a little easier to level up. - Global difficulty tweaks to make the game a little easier. Now the normal game ends at 130% difficulty instead of 150%. Still starts at 80%. - Fixes for the ultimatum and hustle argument events. - Factory and sewer difficulty reductions. - Mall difficulty reductions. - Some fixes for sewer.

Linux and Windows builds! Mac should be tomorrow. - Fixed some bugs involving the safes not resetting properly. - Perks now go from level 1 to 3, gaining in power as you unlock higher versions. - Perk descriptions say how to unlock the next level. - Per rebalancing. Some bad ones got stronger. - Control menu now has a deadzone slider for controller sticks. - Your characters will now drop their ammo and supplies on death. - People/dogs you're trying to save will now follow you into the car. - Gungineer added, gives both mechanical and shooting up to +2. - Car Nut added. Start with a random cool car, plus mechanical skill. Replaces Engineer. - All perks now get at least some weapon to start with. - Doctor removed due to being boring. Replaced with Surgeon. - Molotov cocktails added. - Grenades and Pipebombs now no longer collide with zombies, so you can throw them in the middle of a group. - Perks and Trait page redesign so that you can see 8 at once. - Global stat tracking for kills, skill gains, and healing. All of which are used to unlock different perks. - Boxer and Mason fixes. - Sewer stack fixes. Sewers now obey correct time of day. Sewers now use their different wall types. Lot of sewers work. - Lots of fixes for weapon generation. - Shuffled order of perks/traits around. - Office location fixes. - Got rid of the clown's extra morale gimmick. - Lots of stack fixes for different weapons, including brooms and mops. - Fix for that SIEGE! text bug if part of your team died in a siege, but not all of them.

Windows build up now, Linux and Mac should be tomorrow. - Car stats now update properly if you drive off in a new car. - You can now swap what character in your party is controlled by the player! - Game takes a short bit of time to resume after swapping leaders, so you can prepare. - Familiar chararacters are in! Characters you make in the creator and save can show up in your game. You usually find one or two in a normal game for now. - Lots of new gameplay modes added. All are unlocked currently. - Lots of changes to various special characters. Tweaks, fixes, some redesigns. - Fancier game mode picker. - Different cars have different stats and motor sounds. - Found cars tend to have random wear. - Added 3 new possible cars to the used car lot. - No longer take gas if walking on the final days. - Random flavor text for the familiar recruit event. - Car stats are now properly saved, along with some other missing things. - Boxer improvements. Swap to use her uppercut. She gets 5 health now in exchange for no free weapon slots. - Uppercut Boxing Glove added. - Characters now display extra info in their status screens, like their perk and trait, carried weapons. - Characters now display some flavor text about themselves. Special characters have special text. - Took out catlady and mad scientist until their abilities are in. - Lots of corrections to drift and scatter words that were causing errors. - Removed some deprecated weapon words. - Broom and mop weapons added. You can find them in closets now. - Ultramop added. Cleaning Woman now uses this. - Fixes to some grammar. - Anime girl wand has a 10% chance of killing her if she's fully mutated. - Anime girl now gets more mutated with every mission, and Knight quits after one mission. - Fixed some bugs with post-mission events. - Garfield can now send you to another time and place. Imagine a forest full of skeletons. - Special super secret Clown event. - Rainbow blurbs and anime smiley faces for Anime Girl. - Got rid of "replace weapon swapping with saying stuff" for Anime Girl, Alvis, Fencer. They now just yell while attacking like L*nk. - Dogs and Horsemann have one less health than normal. - Better sorting and handling for special characters, with lots of bugfixes. - Game can now check for a specific special character being alive at end of mission. - Hockey masked murderer now ressurects himself if he dies. - Ninja now gives smoke bombs when she leaves. - Failsafe text added for if a special character dies before their final-event can take place. - Final event logic reworking and bugfixes. Now happens before a location instead of after it. - Tweak to Jerk betrayal event. - Nerf to catlady despair event. Now gives 2 morale instead of 3, and takes food. - Valkyrie now hotter tempered. - Most special characters now give you the option of replacing someone in your group, if the group is full. - Anime girl now correctly mutates and eventually explodes. - The game can now detect your computer clock. Gives special characters on - Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Christmas Eve. - Fixed a bug where having two special characters with timed events would stop one of their timers. - Valkyrie now gets her hammer back if it's missing. - Increased change for special character camping events to happen. - Made Lnk's Master Sword less powerful, from 1.75 to 1.5. - Lnk's bombs now half as strong as they were, but still pretty strong. - Thrown explosives now dud way less. - Lots of car stat adjustments. - Fixed an incorrect wits/attitude reveal for innkeeper event.

Mac and Linux should be coming in a few days. - Adjusted trading event texts to accommodate the different game lengths. - Made final camping event always happen on penultimate day. - Final Canada event correctly happens on variable game lengths. - Lowered difficulty for the short road mode. Now ends only slightly more difficult than the normal game, since the shorter days makes the game more difficult anyway since you have less time to gather supplies and skills. - Adjusted the "walk rest of way if close to Canada" feature to work with the different game lengths. - Fixed pressing t or y on the character create screen bringing up menus it shouldn't have. - Kepa Mode now starts you with a Kepa. - Fixed cursor reset if using keyboard in character creator screen. - Fixed a bug that would put you in an endless driving screen if the countdown went to a negative number instead of 0. - Fixed an error with the game scenery changing with the new variable game length. - Fixed some various typos. - Removed some deprecated weapon constants that were causing stack inconsistencies.

Windows Build update: - Most of the different game modes are now in! Check them out! Especially the one that makes all recruits special characters. - Modes still missing: Familiar Faces, Familiar Faces EXTREME, and Kepa Mode only gives a Fake Kepa right now. - Explorer and Friend of Dog perks now work. Friend of Dog replaces 70% of the recruit events with dogs! - New Pet Shop special-city-building. Contains a little bit of food and a bunch of feral dogs. - Save support for the new modes. - Junkyard Dogs now use the appropriate CYOA. - Junkyard Dogs now are affected by Friend of Dog. - New VEHICLE INFO tab in the road pause screen. - Vehicle info now includes how many days till Canada there are. - Drinking coffee now clears the TIRED debuff. - The perfect cup of coffee now also gives a permanent dexterity bonus. - Coffee should now properly applies a runspeed bonus for rest of mission. - Nicer fuel gauge. - Game now supports easy difficulty changes for the different modes. - Speedometer added. - New garage event that lets you put rocket boosters on a car, increases speed. - Some new zombie body/pants types. - Two new events where you get stuck and can opt in for a siege.

Catching up from the builds over the last week, here's a partial list of changes: - 19 new common events added. This is a lot! There's now about triple the common CYOA events that you can ever see in any one game. This is likely the amount we'll go for the release of the game, though I may add a few more. - Golf Course Pro Shop camping event moved back to original design, now has a working siege option. - Sped up the menus for creating/deleting games. - More support for different button icons. - New characters now start with 0 in skills, to make room for traits and perks giving skill points. - Traits and Perks for characters you create. Mix and match. - Character Creator is in! - Game now supports starting with one or two created characters. - Fix for wits and attitude reveals sometimes not working right. - Fix for calm shot events sometimes not working right. - New category added for RARE EVENTS, 8 made total. These are events that tend to give you something really good, maybe, but only a couple can happen per game. - Demon event can now give you a unique devil pitchfork like in the cartoons. - Old events tweaked/fixed. Some buffed and made into rare events. - Fixes, tweaks, balance changes.

Canada end-game event days added! Special camp event for the last camping day. Boosted the rescue rewards for ammo. Morale boost for finding a car in a walking event was lowered. Walking events are generally shorter now, unless you're unlucky. Death sieges and a massively swarmed city added for the end day. Fixed error message for having a missing driver. Clarified text in one of the car find events to assure that a car was there. Clarified text for the bear-cabin event. Tells you that you're getting food and meds now. Got rid of the burningwrecks in the Canada event. Made Xtreme hockey stick rarer. 10% chance to replace a hockey stick instead of 20%. Added a special extra difficult siege for right before the end day. Fixed a pronoun issue for recruit flavor text. Added a clearer warning about the 2nd to last chance to trade. Fixed some gas buying incorrect numbers. Made melee weapons cheaper to trade for. Fixed a bug where the autoshotgun wasn't bought properly. If the car breaks down on the final days, you'll walk to the next events without it. Chainsaw nerf from 1.5 power to 1.2 Made blowtorch use more gas when active. Medieval Axe cleave chance is now 100%. Claymore now does 3.5 power damage instead of 3. Claymore now hits further away. Fix for the Scary Stories Camp not making people tired.