Red Rust Pioneers - Development Update #9

Howdy, Pioneers,

This is a special one.

One year ago today, we launched the Red Rust Pioneers store page and shared our announcement trailer with the world. We had an idea for a game we believed in, a small team with a lot of ambition, and absolutely no idea how many of you would want to come along for the ride.

It turns out, quite a few of you did.

To every one of you who has wishlisted the game, joined our Discord, voted in our polls, shared your thoughts and your excitement; thank you. Your support over this past year has meant more to us than we can properly put into words. This is a game we're building for you, and we mean that. The conversations we have with you, particularly those of you in our Discord community, genuinely shape the direction of development. When you tell us what matters to you, we listen. You'll see proof of that in this very update.

So, to mark the occasion, we've been saving up. There's been a lot happening behind the scenes at Rusty Robot over the past few months, and we're finally ready to show you some of it. This is a big update, so pour a coffee, settle yourself by the campfire, and let's get into it.

A New Way to See the Frontier

To celebrate one year of Red Rust Pioneers, we've released a brand new teaser trailer. If you haven't seen it yet, go watch it now. We'll wait.

We've also refreshed the screenshots on our store page to better reflect where the game is today. If you visited the page when we first launched it a year ago, it's worth another look. A lot has changed.

Backed by the UK Games Fund

We're incredibly proud to share some news that has made a real difference to what we're able to achieve with Red Rust Pioneers.

Earlier this year, Rusty Robot was awarded a Content Grant by the UK Games Fund. This funding has allowed us to expand our development team, bringing in additional talent to help us deliver the game we know our community is waiting for.

The UK Games Fund supports studios whose projects demonstrate quality, ambition, and potential. Their team reviewed Red Rust Pioneers, assessed what we're building, and chose to back us. That support has been invaluable, and we want to thank the UK Games Fund for believing in what we're trying to create.

The grant is helping us to do more of what we're already doing; build a deep, authentic, immersive frontier survival experience, but do it better and faster than we could on our own. More hands on deck means more features, more polish, and a better game for you.

We don't take that kind of support lightly, and we intend to make the most of it.

Building a Pioneer: The Character Journey

From the very beginning, we knew that Red Rust Pioneers needed characters that felt real. Not just functional models wearing frontier clothes, but people with faces you'd remember. Pioneers who look like they've lived a life before they ever set foot on the trail.

When we first started building the game, we used off-the-shelf character assets to get things moving. They did the job for prototyping, but they never felt like our pioneers. They were placeholders, and we always knew we'd need to do better.

Steam post image Left: original character model, Right: latest character model

The first step in that journey was an experiment. Some of you might remember Red, our campfire storyteller from the Halloween update. Red was actually our first MetaHuman character in the game, and building him taught us a lot about what was possible. The way the firelight caught his face, the detail in his expression, the sense that there was a real person sitting across from you; that was the moment we knew MetaHumans were the right path for Red Rust Pioneers.

Since then, we've been quietly rebuilding every player character from scratch using Unreal Engine's MetaHuman technology. This isn't just a visual upgrade; it's a completely new character pipeline. We've been developing face presets, period-appropriate hairstyles, and a modular system that lets us mix and match features to give every pioneer their own identity.

We've put a lot of care into making sure the hairstyles and features represent a diverse range of pioneers heading west, with styles that feel authentic to the period and look great in-engine. Here's a look at some of the female hair options we've been working on.

We're also working on a full character creation system that will let you build your own pioneer before you ever set foot in Red Rust Valley; choosing your face, hair, skin tone, facial hair, and clothing. That system is still in development, but we'll have more to show you soon.

You Said Build. We Listened.

Back in February, we ran a poll on our Discord asking you one simple question: "What's the ONE thing you'd most like to be able to do in Red Rust Pioneers?"

The answer wasn't even close. Over half of you, 53%, said build a homestead.

We heard you. And we've been working on it.

Over the past few months, we've been integrating our cabin construction system into the main game. This has been in development on a separate branch for a while now, and bringing it all together with the rest of the game has been one of the big milestones for this spring.

We're building a system where you can lay wooden foundations, snap together log walls with proper corner joints, add doors and windows, put up a pitched roof, and extend outward with a porch. The goal is a construction experience that feels authentic to frontier building; log cabins that look like they belong in the world, not prefab structures dropped from the sky.

There's more to the building system than we're ready to show right now, but we'll say this: we want the moment you finish your first cabin and step out onto the porch to look out at the valley to be one of the most satisfying moments in the game.

What's Next

We've got a few things we're keeping under our hat for the moment. What we can tell you is that some of those things involve music, and we recently had a very special recording session that we can't wait to tell you about. More on that soon.

Steam post imageOn the development side, the Equilibrium Engine continues to grow, the crafting system is getting a major overhaul, and the team is pushing hard across the board. It's been quite a year, and we're just getting started.

Come Join the Campfire

If you haven't already, come say hey over on our Discord. It's the best place to chat with the team, share your thoughts on what you've read today, and be first in line when we've got something new to show.

And if you haven't wishlisted Red Rust Pioneers yet, now's the time. Every wishlist helps us get the word out to more folks who'd love this kind of game, and it means you'll be notified the moment there's something to play.

Red Rust Pioneers Multiplayer Western Survival Simulator

What kind of pioneer are you going to build? Come tell us on Discord.

Stay safe out there, Pioneers. - Rusty and the Rusty Robot dev team P.S. Don't forget to boil your tea.