Update log
Full Trailmakers update
The complete published notes, normalized for clean reading and source attribution.
Repeated intro
Hello Trailmakers.
Extracted changes
- Gameplay
- Events
Before we all go home to our families for Christmas, we want to revisit this year and everything that happened. All the way from Pioneers up to the release of Frozen Tracks. It’s been a year of grand and ambitious updates!
New tech was developed this year, opening up for millions of new possibilities in Trailmakers. We’ve had bugs of both the funny and frustrating kind. We met ScrapMan and we rented an APC for the Tank Tracks announcement. Let’s dive into it all.
Early Pioneers
In January we announced the biggest update in Trailmakers history: Pioneers. The development of Pioneers began in Spring 2023 with the ambition to make a better first-hand impression of Trailmakers for new players, while at the same time giving existing players a campaign unlike anything they’ve seen before.
Screenshot from ALVAROP1NG testing a very early build of Pioneers, August 2023.
In this version, you had to build power grids to expand the zone in which your battery blocks would recharge. Both the power grids and battery blocks were later scrapped, with the battery block being replaced by the fuel system in the final version.
Catarinth Collab
The announcement of Pioneers came with the unveiling of our collaboration with Catarinth (more commonly known as ScrapMan in the Trailmakers community). For years, we have enjoyed a mutually beneficial relationship with ScrapMan and we wanted him to be immortalized in the game as a token of appreciation for the many new players he has introduced to Trailmakers.
We contacted him with the proposal of him creating boss music for the Megadrill fight. For months, Catarinth and former Trailmakers composer Carl Lindegaard worked together to create the epic symphony of battle that is in the game today.
The New Tech of Pioneers
From the get-go we wanted crafting and survival to be part of the new campaign, inspired by games like TerraTech and Scrap Mechanic.
We succeeded with resource gathering and crafting and created opportunities for ourselves to use this tech in future Trailmakers adventures. The fuel system was the “survival” part of Pioneers which in retrospect was less impactful. We didn’t really get the impression that fuel was ever a challenge for players and instead of tweaking it we decided to remove it altogether from Frozen Tracks, the new expansion released in November.
The NPCs weren't anything new, as we already had the Chirpos in Airborne, but in Pioneers we did build on this to create NPCs that felt a bit more alive and responsive than our flightless friends in Airborne.
Froggit NPCs in an early build of Pioneers, Winter 2023.
Pioneers Launch
On March 6 we released Pioneers after the longest development cycle of any Trailmakers update.
We flew ScrapMan and his wife to Copenhagen to partake in the festivities
Our good friend Yzuei surprised us by showing up in person, resulting in a wholesome release party with the people who have helped Trailmakers become what it is today.
From left to right: Henrique (Graphics Programmer), Melvin (Melvin), Yzuei, ScrapMan, Johannes (Community Manager), Rune (Game Co-Director)
Bottom: Gui (UX Designer), March 6 2025.
PVP Update Part 2
When we were concepting the first PVP update in 2024 we had a meeting that went something like this: “This will be the first PVP update of two but what do we call it?” “What about PVP Update Part 1?” “Genius.”
And in the summer of 2025 it all came together with PVP Update Part 2, Packing Heat, and the Frontline DLC. This
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