Highway to Heal News

Hello to our wanabee paramedics!

A weekly devlog on a monday?! Yes, we worked a lot to deliver the update of the demo and it delayed the news a bit... As promised last week, we updated the demo of Highway to Heal! This update takes into account some of your feedback (others need more time) and let's you discover new areas of the game.



It might(?) not seem much, but a lot of work went into this update. There is a lot of things that happens behind the curtains and doesn't necessarily show explicitly, but it's necessary work for the development of a video game. We tried a lot of things to improve the minimap and it's still not perfect yet. We do believe it's better though and we have a few things up our sleeves that might finally make it just right. If you need a copilot to read it, bring in a friend, it's fun!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2899360/Highway_to_Heal_Demo/
[h2]Changelog[/h2]
🚑 Mission replay (from the ambulance center)
📜 Added two new missions in the evening (removed Basile's mission)
🗺️ Minimap interface update
🚘 AI vehicles now avoid colliding with trashcans and lamp posts when the siren is active...
💡 Cars and lamp posts more visible in bad weather conditions
🥵 Rebalanced difficulty
📝 Feedback survey accessible from pause menu
🐞 Various bugfixes and minor improvements
🪧 Fixed missing credits
👀 And a few surprises!

[h2]Crowdfunding[/h2]
We are seeing the finish line! The campaign ends this sunday so there's barely seven days left and we need all your help to ensure we complete those last 14%! We know a few of you are waiting for the last minute to pledge, but we really need your help sooner than later! We would very much love adding a few stretch goals.



If you already contributed, please share the campaign with your friends, family... Ask your favorite streamers to play the demo, that could help a lot too!



While this campaign is ending, work on funding and developing the game continues. We will be at Game Invest in Bordeaux and Game Camp in Lille to find partners to help us bring the complete game to you.

In the next update, you should finally be able to go to the City Hall and get the list of ongoing works added to your minimap, amongst other things.

Take care!

Hey you! Fancy some adrenaline? I got a few things that might be to your taste.

[h2]New missions![/h2]
As I've hinted last week, you won't be able to help Basile after the next update of the demo... Because you'll meet two new characters with quite a few surprises! First you'll help Celeste, firefighter, who is feeling really well. Nothing to do then? Except distributing oxygen bottles over town while a sandstorm is ongoing! After that, you'll meet Jawara, a meteorologist, and... a surprise passenger! 🙀



[h2]Speedrunning![/h2]
It was grayed out, it will be available in the upcoming update: from the ambulance center, you'll now be able to open the list of past missions to check out how you did exactly in each of them. Unsatisfied of your care? You'll be able to immediately replay any mission and try to do better! We can't wait to check out your speedruns! With patients at maximum health, obviously!



[h2]Minimap[/h2]
We have heard your feedback and are going to do some changes to the minimap. This was is a tricky one to get right as a lot of the game revolves around it!

In an earlier version of the game, that never saw that light of Steam, the minimap could either display your position or your target, at various zoom levels. When the distance between the two was too great, people were often confused and that's how we got to this situation that shows both.



But now the streets are very small when the distance is too great! So we are going to try a solution in between. We also made a few minor adjustments that should make how it works clearer from the start.

[h2]Crowdfunding Status[/h2]
Like all crowdfunding campaigns, in the middle, it starts to stagnate as people just wait for the end to see if their help is "needed". But little know that the help is needed right now! Not only it is a very stressful time for us, the more we wait, the less chance for stretch goals there is!

As you might probably have guessed, the game doesn't just cost 10 000€ to finish (that's about 11,300$US for you on the far away coast). We are raising more money through other means. But the more money we can get with the crowdfunding, the more confident investors are in us!

But even more important, if we reach the main goal before the end, we will unveil a "stretch goal" which will help us make a better game. ALL of our planned stretch goals are about making MORE GAME, so you can have more and for the same price, of course!



We are only 16% off the goal! To help us, please continue sharing the link to the campaign and remind people that with more money, we do more! https://ulule.com/highwaytoheal

HHHHHHEEEEEEEELLLLLLLLLLLLOOOOOOOOO!

It's THIS LOUD that MisterMV introduced Highway to Heal on stream last Sunday. No-one was ready! That surprise was amazing. As was the rest of the stream! If you speak french and want to go watch it now, go ahead, I'll be here waiting for you to come back and tell you more!

Games Made in France Day 4 on MisterMV's Twitch

[h2]Games Made in France[/h2]
The team of Games Made in France was super nice, as were MisterMV and Trinity who did an amazing job presenting the game and interviewing us for about 50 minutes - 10 more than planned, ahah. Special mention to the copiloting session at the end, it was very fun.

It was hard for us to read the chat on stage... But friends gave us some amazing quotes which made us re-watch the stream to read the chat. People were suuuuuuper nice there too! It looks like everyone enjoyed the game and we had quite a laugh reading them. Here are my favorite quotes:

• Baapppptiste: The name of the game is a banger
• Youri8888: Can we play this game without a license? (much funnier when you know the main devs don't have any)
  
• pwynzy: I am a paramedic and I can confirm that this game is a simulation (it's not, definitely not, omg)
  
• Racingbob: Bordoulême (should have we named the city this way?)
  

[h2]Ulule Update[/h2]

Thanks to our amazing new backers we are now at 84%! Keep pushing!

https://ulule.com/highwaytoheal

Please share the link to the campaign with your friends, family, Discords, Whatsapp groups, Reddit, Instagram, Bluesky, you name it! It's with everyone's help that we will reach 100%. You can tell people that they'll be able to a name a street of Le Mascaret too, that's a pretty unique feat!

[h2]Development Progress[/h2]
We never stop. Ok sometimes, but not now! We are already planning and working on the next demo update! We already decided on removing a mission... but to add TWO new missions! Both will happen at end of day so you'll be able to see the game under a new light (pun intended) Also, you'll know be able to restart missions so that you can try to make a better score! I can't wait to see superplays of saving Jackie, hehe!



See you next week for more news!

PS: Yup, we're moving the weekly devlog to Thurdays.

Heallo! (bit of a stretch on that one, right?)

It's time for the weekly devlog again!

[h2]Demo Update[/h2]
Today, we are releasing a small update to our demo. While the last two weeks were very small to us, as France as many days off in May, and even if we were super busy with the crowdfunding campaign, we managed to squeeze in quite a few improvements!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2899360/Highway_to_Heal_Demo/
Most notable is a big audio improvement pass on the Super Stretcher, the caring games (almost playable just by ear!), etc. We also added audio to the main menu and it made a bit more playful in the process. I won't say more, I'll just let you discover that in our free demo.

Also, it looks like I lied last week. While the vehicle AI is still needs a lot of work, we managed to make a small bugfix that should help a lot!



[h3]Overall list of updates[/h3]
📢 Sound Design upgrade
🌧️ Lit windows while raining,
🗺️ Interface upgrades to the minimap and the mission icon,
🚗 Small vehicle AI bugfix,
🏙️ Some small changes in the level design,
🐞 Various minor bugfixes and typos.

[h2]Crowdfunding[/h2]
Our crowdfunding campaign went live last tuesday and it started off very well!



Thanks to everyone who supported us already, it is already 70% funded in just three days!

If you did not pitch in already, know that not only supporting us helps us finish the creation of the game, it also enables you to participate in its development! The reward tiers allow you to:

🪧 Name a street of Le Mascaret, (included at every level!)
🎮 Access the beta version of the game and provide feedback,
🗣️ And even contribute to the design of a character or a mission!

We started asking the current backers what ideas they had for street names in the game. Here's a few:

• Rue Hamtaro (that will probably end up being spelled Amtaraud or something, for legal reasons),
  
• Rue de la Procrastination (street of procrastinating, in which you probably never start a mission),
  
• Boulevard Andrew Hozier Byrne, (we will probably ask him if he's okay with that!)
  
• Rue Alain Proviste, (a classic and very nice french pun, it had to be there!)
  

Join our club and pitch in the crowdfunding campaign so you can also include your favorite pet's name in the game! 🐈



If you can't participate, that's fine, please just help us share the news around with your friends, your family and anyone you think could be interested!

[h2]Games Made in France[/h2]
Games Made in France has started yesterday and we're already seeing many great games! Come see us with MisterMV and Trinity this Sunday at 8pm! We will tell all the nice things about the game and answer your questions in the Twitch Chat! (in french)



To conclude: drive fast... but carefully! 😎

PS: join on our Discord server. There, we unveiled a special link allowing you to support the project with a 20% discount!

Oh, hey you!

Want to read good news about Highway to Heal? You came to the right place!

[h2]Demo feedback[/h2]
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2899360/Highway_to_Heal_Demo/

Many of you have played the demo already and we've heard mostly good things! It's so nice to have so many people freely playing the game now, instead of just waiting for events where we manually show it. Feedback is much more genuine this way!

Thanks to everyone who answered our demo survey. It's pretty clear that everyone loves the music of the game! That's one thing we couldn't know if you'd like it from showing you screenshots, haha! But your feedbacks already started shifting our priorities in the development of the game. For example, we noticed many of you thought the game was quite hard and the problem seems to often come from the AI of the vehicles.



We released the demo thinking the vehicle AI was "good enough" for now. And while this extreme case may look like just another day in Paris, we never planned for this kind of situation to show up. We did not realize the vehicle AI would pose such a threat to many of you, as most of the time it does good enough. So this is a task that clearly moved up the chain!

Thanks for your honest feedback, keep it coming!

[h2]Ulule[/h2]
We worked a lot on our Ulule crowdfunding campaign page and we hope it will show! We are now ready and it we can safely say that the campaign will start on May 13th! Subscribe now so you don't forget!


By supporting us on Ulule, as you would expect, you will be able to preorder the game. But that's not all, you will also be able to participate in the development of the game! That's right, not only we have added two reward levels that let you participate in the design of a character or a mission, but we have added something that will probably surprise you: ALL backers will be able to name a street of Le Mascaret!



Also, come to our Discord, it's there only that we will share a special link that will let you preorder with a 20% discount!

[h2]Coming up[/h2]
We are working on a minor update that should improve a few things: improved minimap, better sounds for the care mini-games, a few bugfixes, etc. No vehicle AI improvement yet, sorry, that's a not a couple of days work ;)

Also, as we teased before, Daniel & Thomas will be on MisterMV's twitch on Sunday to tell you - in french - everything you'd like to know about the game. Indeed, we will be part of Games Made in France festival!

Tune in to watch amazing french indie games!