Last Train Outta' Wormtown News

Howdy!

TL:DR - The lobby browser feature is being fast tracked.

The last few days have been crazy! We've seen a huge influx of new players to Wormtown and I wanted to say THANK YOU for checking out the game!
With that huge spike in player count, the planned lobby browser feature (which was planned for sometime this Autumn) feels like a top priority now. I'll be fast tracking the lobby browser and releasing it ASAP. (I'm hoping by the weekend, but I can't make any promises!)


When designing Wormtown, I knew it would be very difficult as a small indie game to maintain player counts needed to keep a matchmaking queue active. So I focused more on making the game a "party" game, and making it as easy as possible to play with your friends (like the friends pass!). I knew there would still be people who would want to hop into public games though, and added the quickplay feature to the game, but in it's current state... Quickplay is just bad.

The quickplay service splits players by region (which is a good thing for ping & lag!), but also doesn't give necessary information to the players waiting in a quickplay lobby - like how many other players are looking for quickplay games etc. It's just not accomplishing it's purpose in the game, which is connecting people together *quickly* for games. So, I've heard your concerns about Quickplay and agree! It will be replaced entirely by the new lobby browser, which will display any open lobbies, player counts and latency to the server.

Thanks again for all the positive feedback on this silly little game of mine
Stay safe out there, Pardner!

I'm excited to announce we've teamed up with Trivia Tricks, the online trivia party game, to bring you the Friend Pass Party Bundle! Both games feature a Friend Pass, where all of your friends can play together with only ONE purchase of the game!

https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/33125/Friend_Pass_Party_Bundle/

Owners of Last Train Outta' Wormtown now get a 15% discount on Trivia Tricks through the new Friend Pass Party Bundle. And if you're new to both games, you can get Last Train Outta' Wormtown and Trivia Tricks with the special discounted price - It's the perfect time to get your friends together for game night!



After a grueling session of outsmarting the Worm, prove who's really the smartest Pardner in a game of Trivia Tricks! Trivia Tricks also supports creating and sharing custom questions through the Steam Workshop, making it super easy to customize the game for your specific group.



Check out Trivia Tricks by following this link to the Friend Pass Party Bundle, and thanks for the support!

Next Stop: Trivia Town!

Howdy! I've been hard at work on the biggest Wormtown content patch to date! - but that means I've been a bit radio silent the past two weeks.

Above is the brief roadmap of the content I want to have ready before Wormtown leaves early access later this year. It's a bit vague on some aspects of it, because a lot of my decision making will be a direct result of playtesting and hearing community feedback.

Keep an eye out for the next big content update sometime in the next few weeks (I imagine mid July), which will feature a handful of new Worm abilities and new Pardner "equipment" that will help them battle and survive against the Worm. I'm super excited about how these additions will affect the chaos and variety of each round of Wormtown!

Thanks again for everyone who's checked out Wormtown so far.
Until next time, Keep Wormin' and Squirmin'

Howdy!
A few gameplay additions this update:
* Tumbleweeds now spawn randomly around the map. They roll super well, making them a fantastic worm distraction item. They are a 0 fuel - 1 weight item, so they won't help you much in fueling the train, but may save your life in a pinch!

* Poltergeists!! (spooky!) Ghosts can now throw props short distances. This is on a 45 second cooldown, and can be used in creative ways to help out your fellow Pardners.

* Anti-Tunneling: When escaping a worm's mouth, the minigame difficulty is now drastically reduced for the next 15 seconds. This should help players who are getting focused by the Worms, especially in multi-worm games. Note: the difficulty ramps back up linearly throughout those 15 seconds.

Misc changes:
* Barrels are now worth slightly less fuel. Due to the the change in how they are thrown in the last update, it's now much easier to roll them to the train, so a slight nerf on fuel value seemed needed.
* The "Hard" worm mouth escape mini game now has an additional bubble.
* Reverted the fuse timer of dynamite when in a Worm's mouth. This was inadvertently changed last update. (aka: it goes boom faster)

Bug Fixes:
* Fixed the Pardner tutorial getting stuck on the "connecting" screen in the lobby. (This was only a bug in the Steam build and not in editor - sorry I didn't catch this!)
* Fixed Pardners heart jars not disappearing if they were revived without anyone picking up the heart jar. (Like if a pardner died within the revive zone)


The tumbleweeds and ghost ability add some interesting tweaks to the game, so let me know what you think!

Stay safe out there, Pardner!

Howdy!

Lobby Restarting:
You can now restart the lobbies when in the post game screens. The host can simply click the "Play Again" button, which will prompt the clients to do the same if they want to join back into the same lobby.

Gameplay changes:
- Pardners now hold barrels sideways, so when thrown they will roll on the ground for an effective worm distraction.
- Worm now "chomps" slower, meaning they will take longer to fully consume props and items they manage to grab. I'm hoping this will buy Pardners valuable seconds to get to safety when they manage to land a prop in the Worm's mouth.

UI Changes:
- Now displays living Pardners remaining health in the end game victory screens. I'm hoping this helps give all players a more realistic idea of how the game went. Sometimes the game was much closer and more dramatic than the initial end game result implied. Note: I'm planning on adding Worm stats to the end screen soon so everyone can see exactly how much carnage they caused.

Bug fixes:
FINALLY fixed the lobby bug causing some players to not load their pardner correctly. (This has been driving me crazy for months now!) This also fixes their pardner not showing up in the end game victory screens.

With lobby restarting and the lobby bug fixed, I can now focus on more significant gameplay changes and content. Expect some exciting updates in the near future!

Keep Wormin' and Squirmin',
- Get(Color)