Progress Racer RPG News

I am very happy to announce Progress Racer RPG's official release date:

[h3]June 17th, 2025

12:00pm PDT (noon)[/h3]


It will have a launch discount of 20%, bringing the price down to $5.59 USD. Playtesters have averaged ~9-11 hours to complete the game, give or take.

We haven't had much time or budget to do a lot of marketing, so we're keeping our expectations low. However I can confidently say we are very proud of what we have made, and we hope that it reminds you of why you fell in love with video games. Please mark your calendars, I promise it will be the ride of a lifetime.

Thank you all for your patience and interest,
- Dave

Hello everyone,

Since the most recent Next Fest we've made a ton of changes to the game and have been working on it as much as we possibly can. I can confidently say that Progress Racer RPG has evolved and is drastically better than it ever was before.

However because of all the extra improvements we made, the game will take slightly longer than expected (maybe ~1 more month). I believe it will be very worth it, but you'll have to wait just a bit longer.

Thank you for your patience and your interest in Progress Racer RPG. I hope it will surpass all your expectations.

- Dave

Hello,

Progress Racer RPG's demo is now playable again as of right now.

We've made a ton of improvements from the version you played during the Steam Idler Fest (~3 weeks ago). They include but are not limited to the following:

UI Improvements:

• The Upgrade Menu is now organized in a set order so that it's much easier to find and keep track of all your Upgrades.
  
• Stats & Upgrade Tabs no longer move across the screen. Both Tabs are now always clickable even when other menus are open. Clicking on Tabs also open and close their respective Menu properly without forcing the next one open.
  
• Milestone Cards now appear on a layer above the Stats & Upgrade Menus so you don't have to close Menus to select one.
  
• Selecting Bank of Km or +1 Stat upgrades now automatically provide you with the Stat or Km bonus upon selecting the Milestone Card without you needing to purchase them from the Upgrade Tab.
  
• Added additional clarity to Upgrade icons. They now fill up with a white color as you gain Km, and only turn green when they are actually purchase-able.
  

Gameplay improvements:

• Upgrades have been overhauled and now have multiple "Tiers". Reaching the "MAXED" Upgrade state will unlock the next Tier in Milestone Card selections. (This is a bit hard to explain over text, it should make sense once you start playing)
  
• Gameplay pacing has been smoothed out. Rather than feeling frenetic at the start and sluggish towards the end, there should be a much more consistent pace of things to aim for and consider throughout the length of the demo.
  
• Tractor Beam's effective range is now visible in-game.
  
• Obstacle Eradicator can now be turned on or off at your discretion. This should allow both active Handling builds and automated idle builds to benefit at any time you want (aka this no longer works against the Dynamic Collisions / Collision Boost upgrade).
  
• The vehicle now moves at a more appropriate rate at the start of the game.
  
• We've made dialogue options only appear during Milestone selections. Since this is more of a subjective call, please let us know how you feel about this and we will adjust accordingly.
  
• Stock Market default investment costs have been adjusted to their intended amount (although this upgrade is really more of a teaser than anything).
  

Bug Fixes

• The vehicle should no longer respawn twice when falling off the track when reducing Respawn time under 1.0s.
  
• You can no longer accidentally go into debt by spam-clicking an upgrade while a Milestone Card selection is active.
  
• Speed Line VFX should no longer trigger multiple times when a Top Speed Power-Up wears off.
  

Please let us know of any other issues you encounter and we'll do our best to address them ASAP.


Thank you so much for following along. We are working hard to complete the content for the game's full release and are excited and hopeful that it will surpass your expectations.

Sincerely,
Dave


(If you are confused as to why the game's name is no longer "Idle Racer RPG", please see the previous devlog).

Hello everyone,

Thank you to everyone who played Idle Racer RPG's demo. We got a lot of amazing feedback from you all and are working hard to make a lot of changes before Steam Next Fest in two weeks. Until these changes are implemented, we are temporarily taking down the demo and will have it back up in time for Next Fest. This is because we don't want to show a version of the game that doesn't reflect what will be in the final build.

We have already made the following improvements (you may have noticed these if you played the demo more recently:

• Stats & Upgrade Tab QoL changes. The Tabs no longer slide to a different position, and both Tabs are now always clickable even when other menus are open. Clicking on Tabs also open and close their respective Menu properly without forcing the next one open.
  
• Milestone Cards now appear on a layer above the Stats & Upgrade Menus so you don't have to close Menus to select one.
  

We plan to address the following issues before launch. (These are not ALL the issues we plan to address, just a handful of the more common ones. Please let us know if there are more you want to add):

• Gameplay not pausing while dialogue is active. (We also considered making the Dialogue smaller and off to the side, but then players still never felt like they had a good time to read through it)
• Selecting Bank of Km or +1 Stat upgrades shouldn't require you to purchase them from the shop to activate them.
  
• Feeling like the vehicle moves too slow at the start of the game.
  
• Coins being an unbalanced generator of Km compared to other sources.
  
• Obstacle Eradicator and Obstacle Boost working at-odds with each other.
  
• Stock Market investment costs not being set at an appropriate amount relative to when you can unlock it.
  
• Various UI adjustments, such as the upgrades only turning green when they are actually purchase-able rather than while they are filling up.
  
• Various bug fixes. Some include accidentally going into debt by spam-clicking an upgrade, falling twice before respawning back onto the track, Speed Line VFX triggering at incorrect times, etc.
  

Also for everyone wondering, yes there will be new mechanics in the full release that have not been shown in the demo. Fear not, there will be much more content and mechanics to interact with.

Lastly, we've officially changed our name to Progress Racer RPG. The game is much more active than people expect an idle game to be, so we replaced the word "idle" with "progress" so as not to mislead players about what our game is, yet still maintain an incremental descriptor. I apologize for the potential confusion and hope you can still continue to support our game.

Thank you so much,
Dave

PLAY THE DEMO HERE.

The demo is approx ~1 hr long.

We would love feedback in order to improve our game as much as possible before release. You can leave feedback in any of the following ways:

• As a review on the demo's Steam page
• As a discussion topic in the community hub
• On this Google survey

Please be brutally honest, as this is the only way we can improve our game.

Thank you so much for playing,
Dave