Captains,
Thank you for your feedback. It helped us find and fix an issue with incorrect Clan Leaderboard scoring.
To keep clan seeding fair before RvR starts, we are delaying the end of the Conquest Truce on the Caribbean Server by one week.
Conquest missions will be available after daily maintenance on Thursday, October 30.
Got your almond water, Wanderer? It’s time to plot your next escape.
Escape the Backrooms has officially launched into Version 1.0 on Steam, marking the end of early access and just the beginning of our full release!
Here’s a reminder of the new additions in the 1.0 launch, alongside a huge range of technical and performance improvements. Full patch notes will be shared over on Steam Discussions.
Four New Levels – discover more on the origins of the Bacteria in Overgrowth, expand your M.E.G research in Bunker, get some headspace in Grassrooms, and get up close and personal with Kitty in Level 974
Alternate Endings – search for ways to unlock new endings after completing the main ending. We can’t give too much away, just keep your access cards handy. Also, have a play around in Level 3999 to find a way to track which endings you’ve unlocked
Mission Select – after completing a mission in The Hub mode, you can now select that mission from a list in the lobby
Improved visuals and models – more detail and fidelity for lots of items, the player character, and the Entities
Improvements and expansions to existing levels – find new surprises and details in levels you’ve previously escaped from
We’ll also have more news to share as soon as possible on console versions, and a roadmap of content and support for both this year and next.
That's not all for today - watch the Twitch Galaxies showcase later and look out for the brand new official launch trailer for the Steam 1.0 update!
For all news make sure to follow Secret Mode’s social channels. For more Backrooms antics, check out the game’s new official TikTok channel and join the community on Discord to meet fellow Wanderers and share your thoughts.
Difficulty options are now correctly saved.
Fixed an audio issue.
Fixed an issue where soldiers would not move under certain conditions.
Fixed an issue where Pani would sometimes fail to move.
Another patch is here — fast, focused, and fueled by your feedback.
We’re working every day to improve Plains of Pain through regular, focused updates. These smaller but impactful patches help us react quickly to the community, keep the game world fresh, and bring new features and fixes to life without delay.
This update introduces a brand-new wasteland vehicle, quality-of-life additions, and continued fixes to polish core systems.
A reimagined classic reborn for the wasteland. The Diesellenger runs on Biodiesel, bringing a powerful, gritty diesel-fueled presence to your garage.
If you loved the Steamstang, you’ll want to test-drive this beast across the broken highways.
Vehicles: You can now press E to raise your vehicle to max hover height. A simple trick to get unstuck from tight terrain or bad landing spots.
Vehicle HUD Hints: We've added visual control hints when driving, to help players discover all functions more easily.
Caravan Radio: The Caravan with the dirty mattress now includes a functioning radio that plays dusty country tunes.
Biome Name Display: Fixed a delay in showing biome names when entering new zones.
Biome Visuals: Fixed visual flickering during transitions between biome effects.
Slipster Fix: Adjusted default attributes for the Slipster vehicle.
Code Maintenance: Continued backend optimizations to improve overall performance and reduce bugs.
We’ll continue releasing small and responsive QoL and content updates like this one. They help us improve things quickly without waiting for huge changelogs.
Looking ahead, we’re turning our focus toward Base Building 2.0 — a major upgrade that will allow players to build without limits on online servers. New build parts, decorations, and production features will follow in future updates, giving creative players more tools than ever to shape their homes in the wasteland.
Thank you again for being part of this journey. Every patch we release is a direct result of the passion and feedback from you — our players.
We're constantly inspired by your creativity, your ideas, and your dedication. We’re building this world together, and we're not slowing down.
See you on the road,
Your Plains of Pain Dev Team
This is an update focussed on removing a security vulnerability in the (Unity) game engine. It also includes an improvement to the movement input handling via keyboard.
The Saab 35 Draken made its maiden flight 70 years ago, on October 25th, 1955. It was Sweden’s first supersonic fighter and is known for its unique double-swept wing. Its various modifications remained in service for over 40 years!
When: From October 23rd (11:00 GMT) until October 27th (11:00 GMT).
Where: Sweden > Aviation > Premium vehicles.
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[/carousel]About this aircraft
Although the J35A Draken was designed as an interceptor, it has excellent flight characteristics, making it also a very capable fighter. The J35A accelerates and climbs quickly, reaching incredible speeds while maintaining excellent control. Because it’s an early version of the aircraft, it lacks countermeasures, so pilots must be prepared to counter enemy missiles the old fashioned way: on their own.
The base game Wyrmspan let us step into the role of fantasy naturalists — explorers creating the perfect habitat for majestic dragons. We built caves, attracted new species, and shaped a self-sustaining ecosystem.
Now, the Dragon Academy expansion invites us to take the next step: from a humble caretaker to the headmaster of a prestigious academy where the next generation of winged giants is raised. This isn’t just a batch of new creatures — it’s a full course in advanced dragonology.
The expansion adds new cards, guilds, objectives, and — most importantly — fresh mechanics that subtly reshape the game’s rhythm and strategic depth.
First-Year Hatchlings
The most charming and defining addition is undoubtedly the fledgling dragons — the first-year students of your Academy. They require care and investment but promise huge potential rewards.
Mechanically, they’re represented through the new Academy board, which becomes the central hub of your decisions. Sending your researcher to the Academy allows you to take one of the available hatchlings under your wing. This moment marks your first major decision of the game. Each fledgling immediately grants a small bonus — a few coins, a drop of milk, or perhaps a precious gem.
After that, you place the fledgling token on one of your Dragon cards. And here lies the tactical dilemma: a fledgling occupies a resource slot that would otherwise generate income. Should you take the immediate benefit, or leave the space open, hoping your adult dragon will later produce something more valuable?
The process doesn’t end there. Special actions on your cards and at the Academy let you train your fledglings — flipping their tokens to the “graduate” side. Once trained, they no longer block a slot and instead provide victory points at the end of the game.
Building a strategy around training and graduating your dragons is a new, rewarding, and completely viable path to victory.
New Disciplines: How the Academy Reshapes the Game
While Dragon Academy doesn’t break the foundation of the base game, it introduces several key changes that add new layers of planning and interaction.
• Investment vs. Immediate Reward.
Fledgling dragons don’t pay off right away — you’re spending resources now for long-term benefits. This creates a new tension: should you invest in future power or stick to your tried-and-true tempo? Every decision now affects both your current turn and the overall growth of your lair.
Timing the “Pass”
Previously, the pass phase was just a pause between rounds. Now it’s a meaningful strategic choice. The new income system asks you to weigh when to stop acting: grab some coins now, or hold back to prepare for a stronger next round?
Shifting Incentives
Thanks to new guilds, objectives, and the option to gain dragons for free, formerly “weak” approaches can now become powerful. Slow growth through fledglings can be just as viable as rushing for big dragons.
Endgame Planning and Multipliers
Bonuses tied to the number of trained dragons make the final rounds especially tense. It’s no longer just about playing more cards — it’s about building a system where every trained dragon feeds into your multiplier for points.
Increased Competition
New dragons and caves are spread across all three lair levels, raising the competition for good positions. The upper levels, once quiet, are now just as valuable as the lower ones.
Final Exam: Verdict and Who It’s For
Wyrmspan: Dragon Academy feels like a second wind for the base game — more control, more depth, more meaningful decisions.
The best part? It doesn’t disrupt the balance or weigh the system down. Instead, it smooths the tempo: the early game feels slower, but every later turn becomes denser and more rewarding.
Now players don’t just collect dragons — they raise them, investing in long-term synergies where every detail can trigger a powerful chain reaction. It truly feels like an evolution of Wyrmspan.
Who It’s For:
Fans of engine-building and strategic growth.
If you love crafting systems where every piece interacts perfectly, Dragon Academy is for you. The expansion heightens the sense of progress — you build, optimize, and feel your engine hum to life.
Players familiar with Wyrmspan or Wingspan.
For those who already mastered the base game or its avian predecessor, this expansion is a natural next step. It deepens the experience, rewarding thoughtful play and long-term planning.
Strategic thinkers who enjoy personal competition.
If you prefer refining your own strategy over direct player conflict, this will suit you perfectly. Dragon Academy celebrates precision, foresight, and optimization over confrontation.
Solo players.
For those who enjoy the single-player mode, the expansion offers a full-fledged strategic challenge. You’ll plan several turns ahead, manage your resources carefully, and face a real sense of progression and pressure.
And that’s what Dragon Academy is really about — it’s a master class for experienced Wyrmspan players. It opens new strategic paths, deepens existing systems, and delivers the satisfying feeling of true growth.
Join the Academy on Tabletopia and prove that you’re ready to earn the title of Wyrmspan’s Grand Mentor.
Hi all !
NEW ENDLESS MODE, you now have the choice to continue in your adventure after defeating a final boss,
NEW UPGRADE/INCREASE/DELETE SLOT mechanic. Mostly similar as the previous version, but increasing a slot and destroying it must be bought as "standard upgrade" (ie the random ones after each battle)
NEW MONSTERS !
NEW DEFENSIVE SPELLS
NEW STATUS EFFECTS !
Better informations about what's going on during your turn in the combat (value bonuses, slots effects etc),
Some balancing tweaks
Fixed a nasty crash in certain events (well, altar...)
Tomatoes now disapear for the entire combat when they reach 0
Defense slots and walls can no longer be increased
Added a few missing infos in the UI (current floor, max lvl, slot types etc)
The showcase will take place at 2PM CEST on the RTP Arena Twich channel : https://www.twitch.tv/rtparena
Hello! Dave here with a short dev blog in which I give the low-down on recent shenanigans alongside what's going on with a mini Autumn update that should start rollin' out soon...
When we started developing Star Trucker we had no way of knowing the Steam Deck was imminent and that playing PC games on portable devices would become as big as it has today.
Now that we know a bunch of players enjoy taking the game “on the road” I decided to spend a bit of time poking our UI with the aim of improving the experience for handheld devices.
The meat of this mini-update is that the game now detects if it’s running on a selection of handheld devices, such as the Steam Deck, and if so enables what we’ve come to call Big HUD mode.
This mode boosts the scale of HUD elements, waypoint markers and pop-ups to be more readable. Of course, this might be a bit of a shock to some veteran truckers who already play on a handheld so we’ve also added an option to disable this if you’d prefer the OG look.
For those of you who might want a larger UI while playing on desktop we also allow the mode to be manually enabled via the Game Settings. Oh, and as we save game preferences per device, you shouldn’t need to change these settings when moving between your PC and handheld devices.
It’s also worth noting that we made the waypoint visibility angle a bit tighter in Big HUD mode - this basically means you’ll see less waypoint labels grouped together, something we found works very nicely when playing on a small display.
In the future we’d love to revisit some of this tech and provide more scaling options for everyone but for now we hope it improves the experience for those on handheld devices or who found some of the key text a little hard on the eyes.
Alongside the Big HUD Mode I’ve also done a pass on the game text and where possible tried to improve legibility using a combination of the following…
Boosting the size of important text that we felt was a too small
Adding drop shadows to text (and icons) that we felt needed it
Tweaking kerning and line spacing to help with separation
To be honest, I was a bit limited as to the extent I could improve things but I think the result is an overall improvement across the board. Just keep in mind a lot of these tweaks will be quite subtle as I didn’t want to rock the metaphorical boat.
Wrapping up this section of the dev blog, I’d also like to mention that I’ve learned a lot from revisiting the initial UI implementation and I’ll certainly strive to be a bit more aware of accessibility and scale issues on future projects.
This update should also solve a couple of progression issues and unblock a handful of players who managed to discover those edge cases. There’s also a couple of other little fixes alongside general engine maintenance.
With regards to other issues, we’re always looking to squash bugs and resolve edge cases with every update. As we’re such a small team this is easier said than done but please continue to report any issues you encounter to the Raw Fury Support Desk so we can prioritise important issues. In fact, the next big one to tackle will be the mysterious warp asteroids. We haven’t been able to reproduce this issue ourselves but we know it’s out there (we’ve seen the videos!) so we’ll continue to poke things until we work out the cause - and then we'll stomp it 🦶
I’d also like to take this opportunity to thank the players who have taken the time to get in touch about peripherals. It’s always hard to know how this kinda feature will pan out and overall I think it’s held up pretty well and it’s great to hear so many of you are enjoying playing via HOTAS and steering wheels.
Saying that we are aware of some specific device combinations that Star Trucker is struggling with. We are currently investigating what’s going on here and we’ll keep you updated when we have news on potential solutions.
In the meantime if you have an awesome configuration you’d like to share with us or want to report a specific peripheral problem, please use our Peripheral Support Form to tell us more.
In other news we recently had the opportunity to team up with our good friend Martin. For those who don’t know, Martin is the concept artist who took my original (and very shonky) white box truck and gave it life, oh so many moons ago…
This time round he managed to rattle through some fantastic <REDACTED> concepts before moving onto a brand new piece of kinetic key art to celebrate our 1 Year Anniversary*
Follow the links below for higher res versions suitable for desktops and Steam Decks...
1280 x 720
1280 x 800
1920 x 1080
1920 x 1440
2560 x 1440
3840 x 2160
* Yeaaaaah, I know I’m posting this late but I’ve been really busy!?
As I bring this dev blog to an end it’s worth noting that we currently have our heads down and are working hard towards our biggest Star Trucker update yet! Expect a nice chunky blog post next month as we delve into that side of development and a bunch of cool new stuff.
Until then, keep the sunny side up and the greasy side down!
Dave ( aka the Art Monster )