Reacting to Day 1 Feedback

Hi Everyone,

Thank you for jumping into Stream Train and giving us feedback on your experience with the game. We are sorry to hear that so many players feel frustrated with the game, but we also appreciate that players see the potential in Stream Train and want to role-play in the Uncanny Valley with their friends. We never expected to be launching the game to mostly negative reviews, but the upside is that we are seeing clear gameplay issues that the community is aligned on. We have just pushed an update to the game which targets these main issues (to the best of our ability, using the tools we have) and we plan on building more sophisticated solutions in the coming weeks.

TL;DR

• Collision bug with the farm house is fixed (sorry)
• Bigfoot is now less oppressive, they will show up later and give you more room to breath when they are around
• Death Screen feedback update now shows how far the train needs to move before you are respawned
• We are listening and more updates will be coming soon

Glaring Farm Bug

This is entirely an oversight on our side. A colider that should have been a trigger was blocking entry to the barn and causing issues if players were dropped on it from above. This is something that flew under our radar when playtesting throughout the week because it was added close to launch as a way to "hide" from the UFO. In its bugged state, it did the opposite, blocking players from getting inside the barn. This is fixed now, we apologise for the poor first impression that it made.

Oppressive Bigfoot

This is something that surprised us in some ways and caused a forehead slapping "of course" moment in others. We added Bigfoot to the game so that players are forced to keep moving forward through the valley. It was also a way for us to create a fail state if the journey is getting boring (no fuel, no money, and a lost camera). For us, part of the game was the pressure that Bigfoot puts on the journey to continue, but the feedback coming from players makes sense and more breathing room is required. It is clear that Bigfoot is simply too much in its current state. To remedy this quickly for this update, we have:

• Increased the "exploration timer" on all points of interest in the valley: it will take longer for Bigfoot to show up
• Slower Bigfoot for the first encounter: when Bigfoot shows up at the first location, it will chase players at a slower pace, speed is currently unchanged at other locations
• Move downtime between attacks: you should be able to get up and start running away from Bigfoot before it starts to give chase again

We hope that these changes improve the experience of the game and let players explore and role-play more in the world. We will look at creating more sophisticated solutions in the near future.

Death and Revival

With an oppressive Bigfoot (and other monsters) also comes feedback surrounding death and reviving your friends. The in-game signalling surrounding how players return to life after dying was non-exsistent. While in the "unconscious state", players can be brought back with the Defibrillator item, after enter the "dead state", they can only spectate and post chat messages until they are revived on the train tracks, ready to be saved by their friends. The system behind when players were brought is linked to the train moving a certain distance, this was completely opaque. We have updated the Death Screen with a visual representation of how far the train needs to move before you are brought back to life.

General Bugs/Polish Issues

The latest update also covers a few other small bugs and polish issues with the release build. There have been a lot of little things noted by the community and we are keeping track of them. All the issues aren't fixed with this build, but it is a starting point that we will continue to work from in the coming weeks.

We are listening

We are doing our best to keep up with all the feedback we are getting. I haven't been able to respond to every post or question in the last 24 hours, but I will be playing catch up over the next week. We will be supporting Stream Train with additional content as well as adding quality of life improvements and continuing to refine the game. We hope that you will give the game another try and continue to give helpful feedback via Steam, the Community Hub, and our Discord.

Thanks, Max.

Patch Notes

• Main Patch: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/4071650/view/672882996184876341
• Farm Bug Patch: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/4071650/view/672882996184876319