Deadly Days: Roadtrip News

Hi survivors,

We hope you are enjoying the playtest so far! A new patch just went live, tackling the first round of feedback:

Changes:

• Improved: The inventory is now fully accessible at the merchant.
  
• Improved: The Sheriff character's backpack has been changed so the star item is immediately active without requiring inventory rearrangement.
  
• Improved: We made several performance adjustments that should make the game run a bit smoother, especially in late-game scenarios. This includes a rate limiter for damage numbers and impact effects (like Fireworks). We'd appreciate your feedback on whether this change feels responsive or introduces too much delay.
  
• Improved: Map stat information is now displayed on the loading screen.
  
• Improved: The loading screen now has a smooth transition animation.
  
• Improved: Settings menu improvements: Added confirmation popup for resolution changes, added tabs at the top (switchable with controller bumpers), increased navigation speed, added display monitor selection.
  
• Fixed: An issue where muting individual sound categories (other than Master Volume) didn't correctly silence those sounds.
  
• Fixed: Panels (e.g., character selection) can now be closed with the Escape key again.
  
• Fixed: A crash that occurred when rotating items in the inventory.
  
• Fixed: An issue with workbench recipes not accepting ingredients if they were upgraded before.
  
• Fixed: Several miscellaneous settings issues.
  
• Fixed: Loot sometimes spawning inside geometry.
  
• Fixed: An issue where switching input methods could sometimes cause multiple items to rotate simultaneously.
  
• Fixed: An issue where graffiti decals could sometimes be duplicated (e.g., appearing identically on a wall directly in front of a house).
  
• Fixed: Various typos.
  
• Fixed: Character being able to shoot while the merchant panel is open.
  
• Fixed: Strange visual artifacts appearing when opening the settings menu.
  
• (Potentially) Fixed: Items disappearing from inventory (e.g., during upgrades).
  
• (Potentially) Fixed: Crashes related to the garbage collector.
  
• (Potentially) Fixed: Another crash potentially caused by throwable items.
  

If the game crashes and the reporter window appears, please make sure to click "Send".
Feel free to use the in-game bug report button if you encounter any bugs or have feedback. You're also welcome to join our Discord to chat about Deadly Days: Roadtrip, and join our "Open Deck" community to upvote issues and ideas.

See the full details for initial playtest patch #4 here:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3026450/Deadly_Days_Roadtrip/

- Your Team Pixelsplit

Hi survivors,

we just released another hotfix which fixes a regression caused by 0.6.8.

When interacting with multiple airdrop boxes at once the game did soft-lock and you couldn't continue. This is fixed now.

- Your Team Pixelsplit

Hi survivors,

we just released the first hotfix for playtest #4.

Changes
- Improved: Settings category highlighted now if selected
- Improved: Some audio improvements
- FIxed: Flickering when opening / closing settings
- Fixed: Controller displaying a keyboard glyph in inveotry
- Fixed: Inconsistent controller glyphs
- Fixed: Crash when looting a powerup while dying
- Fixed (potentially): Rare crash at boss
- Fixed (potentially): Rare crash when throwing projectiles

See the full changes of playtest #4 here:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3026450/Deadly_Days_Roadtrip/

- Your Team Pixelsplit

Hi survivors,

today we are releasing our fourth playtest for “Deadly Days: Roadtrip”. It has been a bit over 3 months and a LOT has changed. More than we can fit into these notes. Thanks to everyone who participated in the previous playtest for your feedback. We are curious to hear what you think of the changes that we have implemented.

The most important thing first: Go to the store page and sign up for the playtest.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3026450/Deadly_Days_Roadtrip/

Enjoy the game and share your thoughts with us afterwards! There are two ways to do so:

1. Using the feedback form built into the game.
   
2. Directly via our Discord server in our new submission channel.
   

The whole mission system has been reworked. We now divide the map into "biomes". Each biome can have its own type of mission. Later we want to add more gameplay around this system (e.g. biome specific enemy types). In this process we also completeley redesigned the mission selection map:


We have also added a mechanic to add events between two days. For now, we added a merchant you can randomly find and buy some items to improve your build.


In the process, we also changed the way you get scrap: it now drops randomly on the maps, so you better pick it up.

We also added a more dangerous encounter in the middle of the road trip. You will notice it.


We added two new enemy types (the jumper and the sneaky one). Jumper preview:


We also added two new items (Rubber Ball and Battery). Battery preview:



A major focus for this new version was the refinement of the game's fundamentals and infrastructure.

We added full controller support to the game and improved performance. This allows the game to be played on Steamdeck.

We also added a new settings menu with full input mapping, but also accessibility options like a non-pixelated font and automatic use of powerups. Feel free to customize the game to your needs.


We also switched to DirectX11 for now, we had several issues with DirectX12. But if you are brave, you can optionally choose the unstable DirectX12 option. This might give you better graphics, but may crash occasionally. Give us a feedback if you dare to try it.


There was a strong initiative to rework the game visually as well. All the UI screens were redesigned, we added cool transition animations, etc.


We also added more variety to the map generation and ground textures to make the visual appearance more vivid. Another neat detail of many is the increasing wetness of the map when it rains.



We have made several changes to the balance of the game. Overall, it should be harder now, but hopefully not too hard for new players. Please give us feedback about this!

Here is an incomplete list of balance changes:

• Normal enemies now attack faster and are generally more aggressive, don't get too close to them!
  
• Days are longer now, but the night becomes more and more dangerous (up to the point where the threat level increases every second)
  
• Complete overhaul of how fire and poison work. Poison for example weakens over time, but is stackable now:
  
• Player debuff speed when damaged
  
• Banana item explodes on bounce and is reduced by 1 bounce
  
• Boss health doubled
  
• Explosive powerup now scales with player level
  
• Epic weapons + throwables do more damage
  
• Barrels do -50% damage to player
  
• More fuel on maps, especially large maps
  
• Player speed increased slightly
  
• Some more invincibility frames after dash and opening airdrop
  
• Slower growth of max enemies, enemy speed and enemy health
  
• Easier to craft some recipes (requires lower rarities)
  

As mentioned at the beginning, we were only able to cover some of the changes and improvements in these notes. We have documented 835 changes in our Github since the last playtest.

That being said, we would like to point out the following:

1. We want to offer a transparent insight into the development of 'Deadly Days: Roadtrip' through Open Decks. Your bug reports and suggestions for improvement will appear there and you can keep track of the tickets we are working on.
   
2. We are hosting giveaways for the full version of the game with exciting challenges for the community. Feel free to drop by and take part!
   
3. This playtest will probably be the last open playtest. If you are interested in continuing to help with the development, stay active on our Discord and we will reach out to you personally.
   

We also updated our trailer:
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

About the game:
Deadly Days: Roadtrip is an exciting action roguelite, that combines reverse bullet hell gameplay with strategic inventory management.

Start your road trip through the zombie apocalypse! Fight your way through, gain experience and collect items to assemble an epic inventory. Craft more effective weapons and find out what items you can combine to withstand the ever-increasing waves of zombies.

How to play:


Feel free to join our Discord and chat about Deadly Days: Roadtrip.

Have fun playing the game,
- Your Team Pixelsplit

Dear survivors,

We are very pleased to announce that we have partnered with a publisher. Not just any publisher, but INSTINCT3 - a team with expertise in roguelites, love for indie developers and strong content creators with humor and attitude.

The collaboration was announced at the i3 Indie Expo. Be sure to check out the other titles and follow INSTINCT3 on Steam!





Soon the time has come and we can start the fourth (and probably last) playtest round.

We were able to make great progress in development, especially with the help of your feedback and bug reports. We want to further strengthen the communication with our community, for instance by connecting our Discord server directly to our ticket system. So feel free to join our server - there are also monthly giveaways.





We would like to take this opportunity to thank our community once again for their support. Your bug reports, ideas and reactions help us a lot in the development of Deadly Days: Roadtrip.

We are very excited to hear what you have to say about the new features, improvements and changes in the upcoming playtest version. Detailed information will follow.

Your Team Pixelsplit