Derail Valley News

Hello everyone,

As we’ve been working on our Overhauled update over the past year, we found that the former name “Derail Valley” did no longer match the true nature of this project. Having revamped the derailment system, trains now fall off the tracks less frequently. At the same time we’ve also established the habit of successfully delaying and postponing updates, and have become exceptionally good at this.

To better accommodate these changes, we decided to overhaul not only the game, but its name too. We proudly present you the new branding, “Delay Very”:



We feel the new name will add a whole new dimension of transparency to our project, while maintaining the same old rhythm to it. You can look forward to its use along with the next update later this month.

That’s all for today – stay tuned while we’re preparing the all new trailer “Delay Very: Overhauled” for launch in the first weeks of April.

Hello engineers!

We know you’ve been eager for news about the next update! We’re happy to announce that Overhauled, the major update that we’ve been working on for nearly a year, will launch in late April 2020. The specific date will be announced early that month, along with the launch of a new trailer.



For anyone unfamiliar, the update overhauls a lot of systems and features under the hood and will improve most core issues, from unexpected derailments, janky controls and low performance, to things such as more engaging gameplay, adding new cargo types, and the eye-catching HAZMAT cargo.

Work on Overhauled started in April 2019, and since July, the entire team has been working exclusively on it, every working day. With roughly 6 years of man-hours done on it by the time of release, the update will be the biggest accomplishment of our team to date.

[h2]Closed beta starts early March[/h2]
While doing the final touches, we will share the game to a closed group of testers in early March. The testers will be chosen among the most trust-worthy/active members on our Discord, where we’re active daily. We'll form a small team of testers with diverse hardware and controller types for both VR and NonVR.



[h2]Community Unlocks v3[/h2]
With many changes coming to the game, we will also be revamping our online and social presence. The first to go live is our new Community Unlocks page.



Many new rewards were added to it, making it the new official public roadmap for Derail Valley. Here you can see what our plans are for the game, and the order it will be done in.

As we stated in the past, after Overhauled we aim to go back to regular weekly updates. Many of the “in progress” tasks will be done with Overhauled or soon after, and we aim for the future rewards to be released with the same frequency as the new ones getting unlocked.

Please let us know what you think and keep in mind that, until the new points economy settles, it may be further adjusted.

[h2]Going to Train Jam & GDC[/h2]
In March, Slobodan and Nenad will be attending the Train Jam, a yearly event in which indie developers gather in a rented Amtrak train to jam games while travelling from Chicago to San Francisco. After that we’ll attend GDC. We’d like to thank the Train Jam organizers and their sponsors for the generous help they provided for us to visit these events! If you’re in the SF area (or LA) in that period and would like to meet up, let us know!

That's all for today, see you soon with more news!

-Slobodan

Hi everyone,

We're incredibly flattered to see the 98% positive rating on Steam from 50+ recent reviews, and will continue to do our best to make Derail Valley better and bigger, going into 2020!

Given our story of how we went from a few flatmates dreaming about a next-gen train sim to now having our own train simulator be the highest-rated one in the world, it seemed that going for "The VR Game of the Year" Steam Award might be worth a shot.

Vote for Derail Valley in the embedded widget above, or here:
https://store.steampowered.com/steamawards/nominations

Thank you so much for the superb positive feedback over the past few months, we can't wait to share the huge new update with you in Q1 next year!

Hi everyone!

It’s been a few months since our last post, and with many of you asking about the progress lately, we decided we needed to make a new status update. In principle, our news hasn't changed much - the whole team is still working on the new major update every day, focusing mainly on bug-fixes and polish. The release date is still unknown, however we do realize that it’s time for some fresh information. Therefore, this time we’re excited to reveal some never-before-seen footage and screenshots of the stuff we’ve been working on!



What used to be known as the ‘Hazmat’ update, we now call ‘Derail Valley: Overhauled’. With the new name we want to illustrate that almost every aspect of the game has been improved. The Hazmat cargo will only be a small part of it.

‘Overhauled’ is extremely important to us, as its success will define the future of Derail Valley. Despite the time pressure, we need to get things right the first time we launch it. This means that, given there’s still a lot of work to be done, we’ll need to stretch the update’s release into 2020. We didn’t originally plan for this, and technically could still rush to have the update released this year; however, that would leave us with two major problems:

1. We’d need to cut bug-fixes and polish in order to meet the deadline. This is what we needed to do with the original release, which left us with numerous issues that we can now afford to avoid.

2. We’d clash with AAA releases and the general press saturation that comes with the Christmas period. With the update being so important to us, we need to maximize the chance of having good press/influencer coverage when ‘Overhauled’ comes out.



Needless to say, rest assured that we want the update released sooner than anyone else, but “when it’s ready” is simply the best approach we can take for everyone involved. The same is also why we don’t like revealing information too much in advance, but we understand the need to be in the loop.



Prior to the release we’ll have videos going into detail about what’s new, but knowing that you guys are thirsty for info, here's a list of some of the upcoming changes:

The complete overhaul of derailment, coupling, and brake simulation, major changes to UI, inventory, item retrieval and in-game economy, as well as a fully remade harbor complex. The update also includes the addition of Hazmat cargo and effects, worldwide railway signs, new licenses, military base, train status saving, damage detection and many related interfaces and gameplay features. One of the core goals with the update is to have a much more engaging career building gameplay, leaning towards the eventual 100+ hour playthrough mark. Apart from that there are numerous improvements to performance, VR controls, non-VR controls and many, many bug fixes, and we’re still not done.



With all that being said, we hope you guys understand why this took time. Once ‘Overhauled’ is out, we plan to go back to our regular weekly updates, just like we used to do before build #77. Please be patient a little more and we’ll do what we can to have the update ready for release as early next year as possible.

Hi everyone,

With the next update increasingly becoming a hot topic, a proper status report post is due. Technically, our statement didn't change much from the last Steam post, but it's time to reiterate. We frequently respond to questions about the progress on Discord, but understandably not everyone can follow that.

As most of you know, for several months now all of the team has been working on the first upcoming major Derail Valley update, titled “Hazmat.” Due to notable code differences between the game versions, we stopped releasing small updates to the public version and are entirely focused on completing the Hazmat one instead.

The Hazmat update will be big, and despite its name, will include a lot more than just hazardous cargo. We’re treating this update as if we were releasing the game for the first time, except this time around we have a lot more time to properly address things than when the game was originally released. We'll make everything in it as ready as reasonably possible, before announcing the release date.

Knowing it would take a while, we weren't sharing many details about the update in order not to prematurely over-hype it. It is still too early to know the exact contents of the update which is why we've been quiet, but when it does get announced we’ll need half a dozen video updates just to showcase the highlights.

I'm glad to say that, even though there were some very tedious, difficult and risky hurdles to overcome, at this point most of them are behind us. The update is progressing very well and we’re doing internal test builds on a weekly basis. Almost all of the core features and changes are now complete and usable in-game. For a while now we’ve been in the phase of testing, resolving bug fixes and doing general polish and balancing.

Our primary focus with this update was about giving the game a focus on gameplay, with more goals to strive for as a player, and more challenges to overcome - however, to achieve that, we had to make a lot of changes to the game that would otherwise make it unfair. Therefore, we’ve entirely revamped how derailments work, how couplers work, how you retrieve items, we’ve added speed signs and made a ton of core improvements that are yet to be revealed. With Hazmat we aim to get Derail Valley to a state where we can focus on adding new content, rather than the bug fixing.

That concludes this status report. The release announcement will still take a while, but if things go according to plan, it should be the next post coming from us!

-Slobodan