Hi Truckers,
Well, the day has finally come. The day you’ve all been waiting for or some of you have been waiting for or hopefully at least one of you has been waiting for because we kind of worked our balls off on this patch. That’s right, it’s MEGA PATCH day. Before I dive into the details, let me preface it with this: we’ve basically reworked the entire game based on player feedback, internal testing, and spending so much time talking about this patch that we don’t even hang out casually anymore because we’re secretly sick of each other’s faces (just kidding Mike; love you).
Let’s talk about the major changes first.
Cash and upgrades are now permanent. This means you carry all the cash and upgrades with you through each level. They’ll never reset, and you’ll never have to build them back up from scratch. If you want to read about the entire philosophy behind this design choice feel free to check one of the many blog posts where we did a deep dive. This change also created a ton of balance rework, but after weeks of tuning/testing it finally feels right.
The routes have been squished. Overall all length, scaling, and the inevitable tedium of the higher levels has been drastically reduced with an aggressive squish. You can fly through the first level in a few tiny hours, and carry that momentum into the next with big upgrades, parts, unlocks, and new recipes. Hell yeah.
Fleet has been effectively rebuilt. While this is easily the most involved mini-game in STL for the player, it’s also the most complicated on our end. It requires a lot of balance and consideration with so many other systems in place. If none of those words meant anything to you, this might; we smashed Fleet into a million pieces and put it back together so it feels beneficial, fun, and balanced. This rework made Fleet super fun and before you say “yeah but you guys are kinda biased, you made it” rest assured we hate approximately 95% of what we create five minutes later and can’t stop rebuilding things so jokes on you.
Buff base time has been doubled. This might not seem like a big deal but we want players to be a lot less concerned about rebuffing in the first 20+ minutes after acquiring them the first time. This seemingly small change makes the level 2 buff timer start at 30 minutes, level 3 at 40, and so on (without upgrades) and that just felt perfect.
Loot has been rebalanced. Again. For the 200th time probably. Rarer loot tiers feel rare. Getting a legendary item might not even happen until late into your the first level, because they’re legendary items. Loot tiers unlock each level and others fade into the abyss (like Cracked). Got two legendaries? Amazing, put that one on your Fleet driver and watch them fly. And between certain crafted items, level changes, and a late game buff, you’ll eventually be drowning in loot, just like you should be.
A soft “ending” has been placed on the game. As much as we love incremental games that go on until the end of time, we felt like STL needed some kind of conclusion. Hitting the Endless Road will result in a quick credits screen but that doesn’t mean it’s game over; just a reminder that you’ve hit that endless loop and maybe go outside or something because you’re getting a little pasty my dude.
Speaking of game over, you can now simply reset your progress at any time from a new option in the Stats > Options menu. This will basically remove all progress and throw you back on route 1, level 1 as if you were a new player. Maybe you got a few garbage rolls right out of the gate. Maybe you beat the game and you want to relive the thrilling idle experience all over again. Whatever your reason, you can do it now without submitting a support ticket which was super annoying and we apologize.
Lastly, Collectables were completely reworked to spawn on a consistent timer, every time, and clovers reduce that timer. Previously, collectables had a chance to spawn every x time, and this could result in them not spawning for quite a while. Compounding the issue, equipping a clover could potentially have very little effect. Clovers matter now, and you can actually get the collectables to spawn very rapidly with the right gear.
Aside from the major changes listed above, we also did a lot of other things that weren’t just balance or bug smashing. We’ve added tooltips to a whole bunch of UI elements. We’ve added more sound effects and audio feedback when things happen. Goals were reworked to be more feasible and the timer is 15 minutes, with rewards that don’t destroy loot box value. Crafting recipes now auto sort as you level up so they’re easier to find. Offline progress was reeled in a bit so you don’t sleep through level 1. Scroll through recent blog posts for more details on various things — if I list absolutely every little thing we did for this patch this post will be ten miles long.
Also, after going back and forth for literal years, no microtransactions is where we’ve landed, officially. We’re working on a standalone version of the game aiming for a Steam release, and the game will be a flat price (point pending, but probably around 5 bucks). Anyone that did purchase the full game in the shop with the cheat menu will simply be given a Steam key. Granted a standalone version is going to require a ton of work on Mike’s end, and a good chunk on mine, so this could be a longish/frustrating road.
But it’s important that our players and potential new truckers know we’re steering away from microtransactions but clearly not driving puns.
As a personal note to players, thank you. Seriously. This is the part where I get all gushy and talk about your support and patience and feedback and just for playing our stupid little game, but it’s true. Mike and I started this game as a simple idle concept and years later we’re still reworking and building. And there’s no way in hell we’d have pushed on without our players. So again, thanks for that.
Super Truck Life is a strange amalgamation of our ideas, thoughts, fever dreams, and ridiculous sense of humor. It’s everything we wanted to put into multiple games, rolled into one. We started with a simple idle mechanic and an upgrade system with a stock image of a truck puttering across a looping background and now it’s… I don’t even know what this is. I do know at one point, this beautiful disaster was a full blown MMO with live chat, leaderboards, friend lists, gifting/trading, and more. And now it’s just a really solid single player experience that doesn’t require moderation cause honestly some of y’all nasty. For real though, we hope you have fun. We hope you like what we’ve done and if you don’t hey that’s cool too. But know that this was the epitome of a passion project. We made good decisions, and some unbelievably bad ones with no regrets. We’re self-funded and self-motivated. Aside from our amazing radio friends, Mike and I did everything ourselves from sys admin to email deployment to UX/UI to the blog to the website, the goofy trailer, ad campaign, discord, sound design, and everything in between. And we’re proud of that shit. And we thank you for being a part of all of it.
As far as what’s next for STL, we both know this patch comes with some unavoidable clean up. If you do encounter any issues that seem off, feel free to give the game a quick refresh to resolve the issue. If that doesn’t work, we’re probably already working on it.
We also have some quality of life items we want to get in the game sooner than later, so look forward to that. But for now, we’re mostly focused on the standalone version as I mentioned earlier. Drop by the discord and give us some love, or don’t. Just have fun damnit.
Lastly, we highly recommend you reset your progress since we did not wipe the servers. This will let you experience the game in its current state from the beginning. As a reminder, hit Stats, then Options, then Reset Game. Mike suggested players might also need a screenshot but I’m super tired now so here’s one I did sarcastically:
Keep Truckin,
Dan & Mike