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Steam News28 June 20268d ago

Update: School and Meet Records, Design Enhancements

Before I get started here, want to remind everyone to join the discord to see some of this dev work as it happens and to ask questions: https://discord.

Full notes

Full Track Star update

Read the full published notes in a cleaner layout. The original post stays linked below.

What changed

1 fix5 additions1 change0 removals
  • Gameplay
  • UI and audio
  • Events
addedThis update is focused on surfacing new game content to make the experience more immersive and streamlining design. The headline item is the record book - at the start of every game, school and championship meet records are preseeded and evolve in the living game world.
addedThe record book is accessed through a new button at the bottom of the left sidebar. The race preview screen, which was added in the last update, now flags when you're within striking distance of a record before a race. When you break the record, a teal card flags it on the race results screen.
addedOver the course of building the game, I've added a lot of small features along the way - achievements, milestones, perks, personal bests, records, etc. All of these elements were built and designed individually. Unfortunately, the design looked that way too.
changedTwo key tweaks on rivals. The first is that in the endgame screen, it now surfaces your best rivalry and recaps your win/loss record. The second, and more important, is that your rivals get better! It had come to my attention that it was way too easy to stomp your rivals in your senior season, so I've increased their growth curve to hopefully mitigate that.
addedAdded rivalry deescalation: if you win enough races in a row, the rivalry can downgrade
addedEarly rivalries (fewer than 3 meetings) no longer show an empty writeup — added a small content pool just for emerging rivalries

Track Star changes

addedThis update is focused on surfacing new game content to make the experience more immersive and streamlining design. The headline item is the record book - at the start of every game, school and championship meet records are preseeded and evolve in the living game world.
addedThe record book is accessed through a new button at the bottom of the left sidebar. The race preview screen, which was added in the last update, now flags when you're within striking distance of a record before a race. When you break the record, a teal card flags it on the race results screen.
addedOver the course of building the game, I've added a lot of small features along the way - achievements, milestones, perks, personal bests, records, etc. All of these elements were built and designed individually. Unfortunately, the design looked that way too.
changedTwo key tweaks on rivals. The first is that in the endgame screen, it now surfaces your best rivalry and recaps your win/loss record. The second, and more important, is that your rivals get better! It had come to my attention that it was way too easy to stomp your rivals in your senior season, so I've increased their growth curve to hopefully mitigate that.
addedAdded rivalry deescalation: if you win enough races in a row, the rivalry can downgrade

Before I get started here, want to remind everyone to join the discord to see some of this dev work as it happens and to ask questions: https://discord.gg/8BFuwmStGK

This update is focused on surfacing new game content to make the experience more immersive and streamlining design. The headline item is the record book - at the start of every game, school and championship meet records are preseeded and evolve in the living game world.

The record book is accessed through a new button at the bottom of the left sidebar. The race preview screen, which was added in the last update, now flags when you're within striking distance of a record before a race. When you break the record, a teal card flags it on the race results screen.

Streamlined Design

Over the course of building the game, I've added a lot of small features along the way - achievements, milestones, perks, personal bests, records, etc. All of these elements were built and designed individually. Unfortunately, the design looked that way too.

The dashboard was a mess of pop-ups and colors, the information hierarchy was all off, etc. So I've done a design pass, taking the number of colors down a notch and standardizing on how certain information is presented. I've focused on using that amber color in more places because to me it screams track and field - I picked it because it evokes the medals, the sand, and the color of the track.

Rivalry Tweaks

Two key tweaks on rivals. The first is that in the endgame screen, it now surfaces your best rivalry and recaps your win/loss record. The second, and more important, is that your rivals get better! It had come to my attention that it was way too easy to stomp your rivals in your senior season, so I've increased their growth curve to hopefully mitigate that.

The Small Stuff

  • Race log now records the actual times/distances, not just placements — rival screen shows "W 1st vs 2nd (10.92 vs 11.04)" instead of just the result

  • Added rivalry deescalation: if you win enough races in a row, the rivalry can downgrade

  • Early rivalries (fewer than 3 meetings) no longer show an empty writeup — added a small content pool just for emerging rivalries

  • Rival cards on the race preview screen are now clickable, same as the spotlight cards

  • Field on the preview screen sorts by projected time/distance instead of alphabetically

  • Fixed a bug where small "pressure" events were getting cut to zero and doing nothing

Thanks for playing, more to come!

Source

Steam News / 28 June 2026

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