1,000 Reviews. Three Developers. The Road to 1.0 and Beyond.

1,000 Reviews. Three Developers. The Road to 1.0 and Beyond.

Greetings, Wastelanders!

Today, Plains of Pain reached 1,000 Steam reviews.

For a team of three people who once dreamed about making their own game, that is a difficult thing to casually scroll past.

We have spent so much time working on what comes next that sometimes we forget to look back at how far this whole thing has come. Today, we are taking a moment. Because behind that number are people who gave our strange, unforgiving wasteland a chance, spent their time here, and cared enough to tell us about it.

And we have something big to share with you.

A dream that became our everyday life

Plains of Pain began as a dream we had carried around for a long time. Eventually, the three of us decided we had to find out whether we could actually build it.

After roughly a year and a half of internal development, we entered Early Access in January 2023. That was the moment our little world opened its doors, and you started making it yours.

Since then, we have built, expanded, tested, adjusted, and kept going. You have been right there with us, telling us what you loved, what frustrated you, what surprised you, and what you hoped this game could become.

A huge number of changes happened because someone in this community took the time to speak up. Sometimes a small suggestion gave us a better solution. Sometimes your feedback made us rethink an entire approach.

There are still just three of us. We are independent, with no big company behind us. This game gets made because we care about it deeply and keep putting our hearts, time, and energy into it.

Having people care about what we are building is something we still struggle to put into words.

So, on the day we reach 1,000 reviews, we want to tell you where all of this is going.

The Road to 1.0 and Beyond begins today

We are moving Plains of Pain to the latest version of Unity and rebuilding its core, brick by brick, mechanic by mechanic.

This is the biggest development decision we have made since starting the project.

The technology we began with has carried Plains of Pain through years of development and growth. As the game has expanded, however, working within that older engine has increasingly limited how far we can take our ideas.

We could continue adding content to that foundation. But when we look at everything we want Plains of Pain to become, investing in its future now makes sense.

That means opening up every major system, bringing it forward, and using everything we have learned to take it further.

And we have learned a lot.

Years of Early Access have given us experience we simply could not have had at the beginning. We have seen our ideas survive contact with actual players. We have watched unexpected playstyles emerge, found out which concepts deserve more depth, and understood where things could flow more naturally.

All of that experience is going into the next evolution of Plains of Pain.

The game you have helped shape is the foundation for this work. Its identity, freedom, strange encounters, and wasteland character are coming with us as we give the whole experience a new level of refinement.

This will be the hardest and most challenging phase we have taken on. We know the amount of work involved.

We also know that we have never been better prepared for it.

What we are taking to the next level

Our plans reach across the whole experience:

• New maps and locations to explore, survive in, and make your own.
• More dynamic map information.
• Reworked melee and firearm combat, with more immersive handling, feedback, and encounters.
• A new trading system that makes dealing with the wasteland’s traders a richer part of the experience.
• A new building system, opening up far more possibilities for what you can create.
• A deeper crafting system, with new features and more room to develop your way of surviving.
• A completely reworked inventory system, with smoother, more intuitive inventory management.
• Simpler, clearer UI and UX, keeping more of your attention on playing.
• Improved animations throughout the game.
• New NPC interactions and improved behaviour, bringing more life to the people you meet.
• Major CPU and GPU performance improvements as a central goal of the rebuild.
• Lag compensation for more responsive and consistent PvP combat.
• Full Steam Deck support, with controls and an interface designed for comfortable handheld play.
• Full controller support throughout gameplay, menus, and inventory management.
• Improved cross platform networking.
• A new faction territory system.
• An expanded reputation system.
• Reworked settlement management.
• Enhanced visuals and new 3D assets.
• A more immersive introduction for new players, helping them find their feet in the wasteland.

And yes, that includes the inventory and interface concerns many of you have shared with us. We have been listening. Those conversations are part of the work ahead, and this rebuild gives us the opportunity to address them properly across the whole experience.

This is also why we waited before revealing our plans. We wanted to be ready to commit to the direction we were sharing with you.

That moment has arrived.

And beyond means beyond

Version 1.0 is a huge milestone for us, and we are building toward it with the future already in mind.

The new foundation will give us more room to expand mechanics, connect systems and keep evolving Plains of Pain over time.

Thank you for getting us here

To everyone who has played, left a review, reported a bug, shared an idea, hosted a server, brought a friend, or kept coming back to see how the game was growing: thank you.

Thank you for the patience. For the honest criticism. For the encouragement that arrived when we were exhausted and needed it more than you could have known.

You see the updates arrive. We get to see the messages behind them, the conversations, the people who notice a tiny change because it mattered to the way they play.

Those things stay with us.

We dreamed about making this game. Having a community that wants to see it grow alongside us has given that dream a weight and meaning we could never have understood before Early Access.

Reaching 1,000 reviews with you feels like the right moment to begin the biggest chapter yet.

Something is happening in the bunker

From now on, we will keep you posted as this work progresses, share the systems taking shape, and let you see the road to 1.0 as we build it.

Right now, we are somewhere between three very focused developers and a group of wasteland scavenger scientists who found a working reactor and disappeared into their bunker with far too many ideas.

There is a lot happening down here. We are ridiculously excited to start showing you.

If you have been following Plains of Pain and waiting to join us, add it to your wishlist and follow our progress. If you are already part of this wasteland, sharing the news with someone who might enjoy it helps our little team reach further.

Thank you for helping us reach this day.

Back to the bunker. We have a whole future to build.

The Road to 1.0 and Beyond has begun.

With love and gratitude, The three developers behind Plains of Pain

Special thanks to

Ph4n_T0m (The French Connection), Regulator (Floridian Legend), Vectorr66, HaTsUnE NeKo and ffnull.

And to everybody else who has contributed along the way. Thank you for putting your time, energy, and heart into helping our little team bring this world to life.

With version 1.0, a full credits section will follow to give everyone who contributed the recognition they deserve. This journey has a lot of names behind it, and we want to make room for all of you.