November Developer Letter

The end of the year is approaching, and December—the month we promised for our Early Access release—is now just around the corner. We originally planned to release the game on December 19th, but… well, it turns out that this date aligns perfectly with the Steam Winter Sale. And that’s a problem.

As a small indie team, we’re painfully aware of how risky it is to launch a new game during a major Steam sale.

We must acknowledge this oversight on our part. This is entirely due to our failure to properly consider the Winter Sale period.

Therefore, Early Access will officially launch on January 9th.

Decisions

“Decisions” are one of the core new features in Frostrain 2. If you’ve played the demo, you probably felt that some decisions were a bit… underwhelming. And underwhelming mechanics aren’t fun.

We’ve been working to give each decision more weight—something that reflects the story and personality of the Conductor.

Decisions take time to complete, and once finished, they grant meaningful effects. For example, many of you found the Shanty Carriage frustrating in the demo. With the updated decision system, you can now strengthen it… or eliminate it entirely. This won’t drastically alter the main storyline, but it will open up much more interesting synergy-building possibilities.

We’ve also introduced mutually exclusive decisions. If there’s a decision to welcome the poor, then naturally, there should be one to reject them as well. But you shouldn’t be able to choose both at the same time. These conflicting decisions will force you to consider your path—saint or tyrant, the choice is yours.

Drone Supply Reroll

A common piece of feedback was that in the late game, once your deck is complete, drone supplies lose their meaning. Most players would just accept the highest-tier car and then immediately recycle it, over and over again. Understandably, this became tedious.

However, due to the legacy structure of the original game, we couldn’t easily redesign the system—so instead, we decided to adjust the rules.

You may have noticed a new button where the drone supply used to be. Now, instead of receiving a drone car directly whenever you reach a new outpost, you gain a new resource called Supplies. Supplies can be used to receive a carriage or invested into experience.

Unlike the previous drone supplies, this resource does not decay over time. You can save as much as you want and spend it whenever you feel it’s right. This gives you the choice: invest in faster XP to unlock better trains and artifacts, or cash in for a new car.

And if you have enough Supplies, you can now reroll a drone supply. Don’t worry—when you reroll, you automatically receive the recycle points for the highest-tier car that was shown.

Overperformance!

A new mechanic has arrived: Overperformance. Think of it as a type of critical hit for happiness production. Whenever your passengers produce happiness, they have a chance—based on your card’s stats—to generate even more.

Each card now displays its Overperformance chance and the bonus amount. When it triggers…

You’ll see a significantly larger burst of happiness! The UI also adjusts the size of the numbers based on how much happiness you generated. A +3 will appear small, while a +21 will appear much larger. The more you produce, the better it feels!

Limitless Growth!

I love limitless growth systems. They just feel… right. Even one infinitely scaling mechanic can be thrilling. “Sadism” worked like that, and so did “Power Cycle Amplifier.” The problem is that these artifacts scaled by doubling—making them too powerful—so we had to impose upper limits.

Originally, Sadism worked like this:

[c] Sadism [/c]

[c]Happiness +1/cycle[/c]

[c]This value doubles each time you execute a passenger. (Max +512)[/c]

This creates two issues:

1. Executions are not intuitive as a trigger compared to simply ‘losing’ passengers

2. After 8 executions, it's capped—no more growth. That’s just not fun.

Now it works like this:

[c] Sadism [/c]

[c]Happiness +44/cycle[/c]

[c]This value increases every time you lose a passenger, and grows faster each time it increases. (Next: +88)[/c]

Each loss increases it by 44, 48, 52… meaning after losing 8 passengers, the bonus reaches +540. And it keeps going. I did the math—after losing 20 passengers, it goes up to +1764!

Suddenly… losing passengers starts to feel tempting, doesn’t it?

Improved Visibility

In addition to improving the visibility of happiness production, we’ve also made small visual adjustments throughout the game.

For example, Platinum cards should naturally feel more prestigious—but many players reported that Silver and Platinum looked too similar. So we increased the saturation and added a gentle aura-like effect to Platinum cards, making them feel much more powerful.

We also received feedback that the screen brightness was tiring for the eyes, so we reduced gamma values by about 10%. It’s a small change, but we hope it helps.

Closing Words

We sincerely apologize for not being able to keep our promise of a December Early Access release. However, we promise to deliver a far more polished and enhanced experience when we finally launch. Thank you for your understanding and your patience.

We’ll return soon with even more updates.

With gratitude,

nemonan

Discord : https://discord.gg/CJrENcMXqh