Hi Truckers,

Happy New Year! Seriously though we actually mean that because 2022 can’t possibly be worse than the last seven hundred and thirty days of dumpster fires… right?

Let’s hope this year is a better one and STL finally gets launched probably. While we’ve talked about Fleet quite a bit in the last few weeks, and taken some time off for the holidays, we’ve mentioned things coming after Fleet (the final mini-game) is released, and that info was all about ascensions. The first three ascensions unlock mini-games, the fourth a drone, the fifth unlimited buffs, and the sixth the official (soft) end of the game. Today we’re going to talk about the fourth; the drone.

Like most incremental games, the goal is to slowly but steadily introduce mechanics that simply make your life easier and shift your focus away from tedium and towards fun mini-games like Fleet. While some of you are probably thinking “but I love clicking on collectables!” you still can if you want to turn the drone off, otherwise once you’ve ascended 4 times you gain a little homie that’ll grab them for you, no matter what you’re doing (or not doing) in STL. Also if you’ve ascended 4 times do you still love clicking on collectibles? Do you though?

That little guy will accompany you for the rest of your journey through STL, and stick around on the Endless Road if you choose to chase down those last badges and crafting resources. Our more veteran players might recall a time where we discussed the drone being a fully upgradable “pet” with a drone shop and customization where you could improve collectible rewards, turn it into a butterfly or whatever weird shit, and other great ideas completely out of scope. Which leads me to the final part of this post; with the new year here, we spent some time over the holidays putting together a more realistic scope for outstanding items. It’s lean, practical, and we think wraps up this endless project quite nicely.

We do realize that on a much, much smaller scale (I really can’t emphasize that enough), we kind of Star Citizen’d STL, which is a phrase I am officially coining because that game has been in development for 9 years with a budget of half a billion dollars and it still doesn’t have a release date. Not a critique, just kind of what happens by default when you throw a bunch of creatives and no budget in a box, keep any semblance of project management out, and the only thing the “shareholders” (which don’t exist) require is that your game is “rad af.”

We’ve finally narrowed it down to a handful of things — not to diminish the effort here, it’s still a lot — that are actually accomplishable before 2023.  So there’s that.

This Year Better Be Better,

Dan & Mike