Highway to Heal News

Hello everyone!

We have been talking about it for two months, it's finally here! This is a big update with numerous changes that, we hope, greatly improve the game. With these changes it's more comfort and more fun that are coming to Highway to Heal!



[h2]Changelog[/h2]
🏎 More fun driving : a slight straight line assistance and drifting! Be careful when it's raining 😜
🗺 Holowatch disppeared! Missions are now started automatically and the map is semi-automated
💉 You can now start treatments by yourself while driving!
💬 Dialogs while driving have been completely revamped
🚑 First missions have been simplified
🥇 New end of mission screen
🎁 More explicit display of rewards
🚸 The tutorial is now directly integrated into the adventure
🌳 Many shortcuts to discover
🚑 Collisions have been improved: it's now easier to slip through!
💥 Re-balanced damages
🚧 Roadworks are now automatically added to the minimap
🐈 New equipment to discover: The Cat Siren!
⚙ New interface for the integrity and equipment of the ambulance
💡 Flash on the ambulance and patient when they are hit
🛠 Time is added when the ambulance gets towed
📻 New display of the radioradio with the top left corner and control with a dedicated key
🎥 Alternate view following the vehicle
🚨 The siren can't get damaged anymore and is available outside of missions
🚮 Trashcans and street lamps don't cause damage anymore
📦 Trucks transports cargo
💻 Vehicles now know how to stop before turning at crossroads
🐞 Many many bugfixes, varied improvements and optimizations

It's crazy how two months of work can be condensed in such a short list.

C'est fou comme deux mois de travail peuvent être condensés dans une liste si courte. It must be said that we don't necessarily realize how much work goes into the last line! 😆

We have updated the feedback questionnaire. Do not hesitate to fill it again to tell us what you think of all the changes. We are especially interested in what you think about the two camera views.

If you would like to support us, you can still pre-order the game in our crowdfunding campaign.

Thanks for reading this news. We hope you will enjoy all the changes. Good luck & have fun!

Hello everyone,

No, this news won't be about announcing the update of the demo... But we are approaching something that works and oh boy, so many new things there is. I wrote this first in french and I'm now translating it to english, maybe it will more interesting this way? Let's check this out.

As teased previously, we revamped quite a bit of the interface and design of the game. The holowatch is over, the bottom right corner now always displays the minimap. To start a new mission, just go to the patient.


We also modified how

Hey hey! I hope you're healthy!

[h2]Third Person View Progress[/h2]
Or should I call this "Behind view"? The top down view is third person too, after all.



It feels quite different a game, right? Don't ask for both, the final game shall only have one! The 3D is designed for being viewed from above. As such, the models have some deformations that are not very elegant when seen from a more common perspective. That's the reason the game won't feature both views: we will have to remove all those deformations, if we make the change.

Which one do you like the most? Or, better, which one looks more fun?

(If only steam allowed for better image file formats, we wouldn't be posting 7FPS stamp sized animations... Come to our discord if you want a smooth video!)

[h2]Drifting[/h2]
Finally! It's back! Back you say? In January, Daniel completely rewrote the physics of the vehicles starting from code published on Github by Sergey Makeev. The new version was better in MANY regards but lacked some... dancing? It was too stiif! It took a while for Daniel to find a way to add that feeling back to the game without loosing all the improvements of the new code.



This is the kind of thing that is tweaked for months, little steps at a time. So, it's not perfect yet, but we feel it's already better, especially for sharp turns. We hope you will like it too!

[h2]Games Made in France Replay[/h2]
We have uploaded the replay from our time at the Games Made in France Twitch Event. Check it out, we had quite some fun! (in french)
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h2]For next time[/h2]
Maybe a demo update? We sure wish! But we have a lot of testing to do. We made quite some heavy changes to the design of the game. All for the better, we hope!

See you next time!

I'm not sure if we can call this weekly since the last one was almost a month ago, haha! But we're going to try to keep this weekly (or biweekly) again. Anyway, Hello everyone!

[h2]A Successful Crowdfunding[/h2]
We're very glad to be out of this one. Crowdfunding campaigns are super stressful. Ours concluded with a success but a mere hours before the end! It was to be expected, especially with a small platform like Ulule. Even with our half way start due to our Game Cup prize, it was tough.


But it's very nice that we got not just our 5000€ prize but double that! A massive thank you to all our supporters, we won't thank you enough. This money will surely help us get through the year!

Also... It's still active! We left it open until the end of the year so people can still pledge. If you want to name a street of the game, there's still time! :)



Since the campaign ended, Daniel took a much needed week off while Thomas went on to pitch the game at the Game Camp in Lille. For us, the goal in going to this event was double. Find partners to help us finish financing the game and see if we could help other developers in their developments.

[h2]Design changes[/h2]
While showing the game to professional game developers or editors and mixing it with the feedback we got on our demo from players and streamers, we got nice ideas that we are currently implementing. Some of it already is programmed but none of it already got an updated interface so it's going to be hard to show you the changes, ahah! You'll play them with the next demo update anyway so just be patient ;)

[h3]Caring[/h3]
Like many of the changes we are doing, this one is very small with big consequences. No more surprises, you are now going to be able to trigger the caring mini-games yourselves and actively treat your patient on the road! If you stop, pressing the A button will trigger the full screen game. If you dare press the A button while driving, you'll play the mini version above the ambulance. In both cases, there will be a cooldown period between each use.



[h3]Equipments[/h3]
The way equipments break was not very clear so we are going to make it simpler. Instead of each equipment having its own health status, there is going to be a general ambulance integrity bar above them with various sections. The more equipment you have, the more sections it has. When the integrity falls into a new section, one of your equipment breaks. It's not purely random, the ones on the left break later than the one on the right. You can build a strategy to protect the ones you care for the most!

Oh, also, all equipments will be fixed at the garage now. The drugstore will be there only to change and upgrade caring tools.

[h3]Holowatch[/h3]
We noticed something odd about the watch. At this point, its whole inner workings where you use it to select missions, check the minimap and change the radio, is just a side effect of an old design of the game that you never saw which enabled much more. Most of it was scrapped so... let's scrap it completely! To start a mission, you'll just have to go to the patient now. The radio? There will be a dedicated button to tune to the next. And the map? It will just look like your current experience: always there! The only controls you'll now have on the watch will be to change the current objective, so you can still easily go to the nearest garage or drugstore.



[h3]Third Person View?!![/h3]
On this, we would really love to hear you so read me out. It's really the biggest of all the changes. The games feels really different if we go this route and you can really help us by weighing in.

While we really love our top-down old school driving gameplay, it has some issues.

The glaring one is that not everyone is confortable with the inputs associated with it. That's why early on, we decided to add an alternative control scheme that lets you just push into the direction that you want. It's very tricky to get right and we're not happy with it yet, especially with a keyboard. I noticed Deliver at All Costs also as it but completely removes the feature if you're playing with a keyboard, I understand why...

Another issue is that top down games are actually really hard to market! "Who cares?" you might say. Well, we put more than 200 000€ in this game already and we're not even halfway through. So you might understand why we would really love for it to be successful, you know... Our lives literally depend on it.

There are other minor reasons, but I wanted to try something... I did a very quick hack of a third person view of our game. It's probably quite different that what it would be if done properly, but it already gives an idea. It's still pretty much top-down so you can see our beautiful rooftops, but it's much closer to what a regular driving game looks like.



I was not expecting much of it. We were surprised. We put the videos here and there, on discords, slacks, subreddits... Comments seem to lean towards the 3rd person view but both sides have very good arguments!



Advantages are: it's easier to pick up as left and right are never reversed. It's probably easier to market (we are going to make some tests, don't act surprised if you come across those on socials :D)
Disadvantages: it's much harder to see cars coming from adjacent roads! It's also less cute...

What do you think? This is not a drill, we really want your opinion on this.

[h2]For Next Time[/h2]
There's a lot more that I wanted to say but I'm going to keep this for next time! Want a tease? We are also making big changes to the pacing of the game! Did you think we were sleeping for a month? Not at all! Well, except Daniel, a bit...

Please come tell us what you think of these upcoming changes in the comments, on discord, on socials, wherever!

Hi everyone,

Two months ago we released the demo of our upcoming game, Highway to Heal. It's a solarpunk adventure game where you drive an ambulance to reach out to patients and provide them first care in the beautiful city of Le Mascaret, a utopian city thriving in the middle of the difficulties of a very unstable climate.



Feedback so far is pretty good! We already updated it twice to add show new features, improve the game, the interface, fix bugs, etc. We plan on regularly updating it as a our development goes so that you're always able to play the best version of it. We think it's also interesting as a speedrunning challenge!



As you might know, we then started a crowdfunding campaign on Ulule and it's doing quite well! It ends in just two days and we're missing barely 6% of our 10000€ goal.

A few days from the end, we would like to thank everyone who supported us so far in the campaign! We really hope we can reach our 10000€ goal. It would really help us in pursuing the development of the game.



If you did not try the demo yet, please take a moment to go play it. If it convinces you, please consider contributing to our campaign on Ulule. Not only you'll be pre-ordering the game, you will also get to name a street of Le Mascaret!



🙏 Please share this message to help us reach our goal and finish the development! 🙏