We’re taking Ekholux offline for maintenance to address recent Unity security issues and improve the game based on your feedback.
The demo and store pages will be unavailable during this time.

We’ll be back with an updated demo once everything’s stable.

Huge thanks to everyone who played and shared feedback — it truly helps us make Ekholux better.

Thanks for your patience and support!

— Ekholux Dev Team

Hi everyone! 👋

Cropia has officially entered Early Access, and we’re so excited to finally share this version with you! This update introduces new features, systems, and improvements for you to explore. Here’s what’s new in this release:

• Daytime Cycle - Experience shifting atmospheres with fog, morning, afternoon, evening, and night.

• Radio & Recipe Book - Listen to radio shows that share new cooking recipes, and have them automatically saved in your recipe book.

• Cooking - Cook delicious meals using recipes and your home stove.

• Mining - Explore cave to discover gemstones and valuable resources.

• Fishing - Cast your line in rivers, lakes, or the sea to catch various kinds of fish.

• Swimming - You can now swim and explore the waters around Cropia.

• Farm Signboard - A new signboard now appears at your farm, giving it a more personal touch.

• Cat House - Your cat now has a cozy home on the farm, and you can choose whether they follow you or stay there.

• New NPCs to meet and interact with.

• Employee System - Unlock your right to manage employees, then hire workers to help around your farm and shops.

• Refrigerator System - Store your consumable items to keep them fresh.

• Storage Cabinet - Keep your items neatly organized.

• Tool Upgrades - Upgrade your tools for better efficiency.

• Achievements system - Earn Steam Achievements for your progress and milestones.

• Intro Story – Begin your adventure with a short introduction that tells the story behind your arrival in Cropia.

• Gymnasium - Train to increase your maximum stamina.

• Barber Shop - Customize your character’s look whenever you like.

• Pawn Shop - A quick trade spot where you can buy and sell unique items.

• Vehicle Store - Buy a bicycle and travel around town faster without draining your stamina.

• Mayor Office - The place where the mayor works and manages town affairs.

• Unknown Building - A mysterious place where hidden secrets are revealed.

• Controller defect fixed.

• Adjust camera inertia and FOV for smoother control and a better viewing experience

• Fixed an issue where items couldn’t be split when using a controller.

• Fixed seed bags not appearing transparent when held above the soil.

• Fixed an issue that prevented switching tabs in the Bug Report tablet when using a controller.

• Fixed margin alignment in the Map menu on the tablet.

• Fixed excessive decimal digits showing in the level number on the summary popup.

• Fixed the day always displaying as Monday.

• Fixed being unable to switch months after the 28th day.

• Fixed NPCs getting stuck after receiving a gift.

• Fixed cats becoming stuck after receiving a gift.

• Fixed interaction priority when harvesting.

• Fixed items remaining visible in the player’s hand during the tween animation when giving items to NPCs.

• Fixed player occasionally floating above the ground.

Thank you so much for being part of Cropia's journey!
We truly appreciate every feedback, report, and suggestion from the community. Your input plays a key role in helping us refine systems, improve balance, and bring new ideas to life.

We’ll continue to listen, improve, and grow together with you.
See you in Cropia! 🌱💛

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3714180/Cropia/

Time really flew by. Seeing Twitch streamers, random players, and even entire Discord groups having fun with the game has been surreal. I never expected One-In to get this kind of love, and I just wanna say thank you to everyone who gave it a shot.

The game turned out to be something I’m genuinely proud of: simple, weird and FUN, exactly how I wanted it. Sadly, there won’t be any more updates, since I’ve lost the project files completely. It sucks, but that’s part of the journey. (new thing I've learnt about back-ups I guess)

Still, One-In was a huge step forward for me, and I’m really happy with what it became.

💙 Big thanks to everyone who helped make it happen:

• souls_like aka Alcholist Bot

• Benji

• Deutschman

• Max (Elmo)

• Enderfrogg

• Gaby

• Philip (Iamkiller)

• Olli

• Randomdude (Ilyas)

• Fatal (phyraxisal)

You guys were there testing, breaking things, giving feedback, and skyrocketed the development process.

🎵 Music composed by: Meal https://www.youtube.com/@mealcomposer
His tracks added so much atmosphere to the game.

And the biggest thanks goes to my girlfriend. she made all the 3D models, props, and somehow still puts up with me while I chase these crazy projects. We’re just two teenagers trying to bring life to what we imagine.

It’s been a wild ride, but this isn’t the end.
I’m already working on something new, a bigger, CrAzIeR PrOjEcT!

See you next summer 🏝️🐟🎣

So guys it's been a while, but it took some time to fix many bugs, together with your help.
You found them and took the time to point them out, now I know that we're nowhere close to having no bugs at all, but the nastiest are now addressed.

• BigScreen™, manual and the intermediate events should now like each other, before there were many instances where the game would be left frozen/in a paused state, with no way to recover.
  Again I'm sorry for those bugs, that shouldn't have happened.

• Switches on the panel, because of an invisible element the first switch was very hard to hit, which meant that you were all doomed to suffocate. Sorry for all the very time-limited runs.

• Solarpanel now produces energy, as expected, this bug was because of a new way of handling resource requests from the last update.

• Station Stores now increase the capacity, this was also caused by the last update.

• A bit of balancing, the amount of POW required and produced, as well as the amount of resources are now tweaked – hope you like it, should make your life a bit easier.

• Pulsing lights, instead of static lights for all modules that can be active/inactive, the resource extractor for example.
  This idea came from one of you, so thank you for sharing your ideas!

• Partially a fix; The introduction has now been revised and additional explanations for all the elements have been added. This also sort of explains a bit how the game works to get you started.
  It's these smaller things that make or break the experience, so let me know if this helps, or how to improve.

• I will use a bigger chunk of my time to build up the content for the release.
  This includes story, which will also involve some changes to the part you can already play.
  As well as a slight shift in general.

• New/Better music, as I love doing that also it was requested, and makes sense in the revised concept.

Happy Halloween, Chefs!

We've got a spooky update filled with tricks, treats, and the ghost of the most hated ingredient!

Introducing 3 new ingredients, one of which is 2-in-1 and another that's actually 5 distinct ingredients!

Plus 2 new helpers, one of which is featured in the latest Weekly Challenge.

And 3 new Haunted customers.

Lastly, we've reworked the input system to provide better support for controller input: specifically to get the game working much smoother on Steam Deck!

• Rotate/Select Ingredients - Bumpers, D-Pad, Backside Buttons

• Grab Ingredients - RT, A

• Move Cursor - Touchpads, Joysticks

• Open Feedback - Select

• Open Settings - Start

With that we can now apply for fully Verified Steam Deck status! If you play on Steam Deck we'd love to hear what you think after playing over on Discord!

Happy Halloween, chefs!

-Chef Schu

• 3 New Ingredients

• 2 New Helpers

• New Haunted Customer Trait

• 3 New Haunted Customers

• New Halloween-themed Weekly

• Reworked input to better support controller

• Created official Steam Deck layout

  • This should install automatically and feel more natural. We've now added multiple buttons for grabbing/rotating/selecting ingredients and you can move the cursor with joysticks.

  • Can open/submit feedback on Steam Deck now

  • Please feel free to give feedback if you think this could be improved further!

• Mayor Dog art tweaked to be more serious. He's a businessman afterall

• When purchasing new avocados in the shop, all existing avocados refresh to their full value

• Fixed critical bug where game would crash on certain devices

• Fixed bug where Pyromaniac customers could cause ingredients to burn during scoring

• Fixed bug where catalogue ingredient filter icon wouldn't be positioned correctly on start

• Fixed bug where Screwdrivers didn't earn $1 on side

• Fixed bug where no achievements would trigger

• Ingredients can be invisible

• Ingredients can appear Moldy/Gold/etc but not actually

I'm still investigating these issues and finding them tricky to reproduce, but I hope to have them fixed in the next patch. If you notice any patterns or have any theories feel free to share them on Discord!

It’s October! Truly... what a month it has been. As mentioned in our previous developer letter, we participated in the Steam Next Fest with the Frostrain 2 demo and received a wide range of feedback from players. To be honest—yes, not all of it was positive. After all, no one gets it perfect on the first try. We’ll take all the feedback we’ve received during the demo period to heart, polish the game with diligence, and continue striving to present a more complete, refined version of Frostrain 2!

Oh, and—our team has finally opened a Discord server! Until now, our only ways of communicating with you were through the Steam Discussion board and X (formerly Twitter). With the Discord server, we hope to connect more directly with you, gather feedback efficiently, and create a closer community together. Here’s the invite link: https://discord.gg/YwHyfdpK

Wait, it says “nemonan” instead of “Frostrain 2”? Yes, that’s us—nemonan! Nothing to worry about!

So, what’s the most notable difference between Frostrain 2 and its predecessor? The answer is Artifacts. Artifacts are powerful items that greatly enhance your train—and while playing the demo, I’ve often found myself in the following situation:

There were about 70–80 artifacts available in the demo, and somehow… I managed to collect all of them. Of course, this was mainly due to the limited pool of available artifacts in the demo. However, for the Shadow Merchant Guild, this kind of situation was particularly easy to achieve. Unlike the Children of the Engine, they could simply skip any undesirable artifacts—building a fleet of powerful relics without any penalty.

To address this, we’re making a change: The Shadow Merchant Guild will now have increased reroll opportunities, but the price of items will rise with each purchase. In other words, it’s time to shop a little more wisely.

Similarly, the Children of the Engine were forced to accept every artifact—whether useful or not—and bear the penalties that came with them. That was, admittedly, part of the design philosophy: an abundance of blessings balanced by accompanying risks. However, being forced to accept an unwanted gift can indeed feel unpleasant. Based on your feedback, we’ve now added a “Refuse Gift” button.

But beware—refusing a divine gift from the Engine is an act of blasphemy. Those who reject a gift will need to accumulate even more Faith before they can receive the next one.

Now, what’s the biggest difference between the images above and below? Yes—the number of Contaminated Zones has been significantly reduced. If you can avoid them, you should. But sometimes, what lies beyond the contamination is too valuable to ignore—and so, you must decide whether to break through or bypass the danger. Previously, the zones were too vast, making meaningful decisions impossible and reducing their overall significance. We’ve now reduced their number but increased their intensity, encouraging more deliberate route planning.

Of course, as you approach the Promised Land, the contamination will once again spread widely. As the temperature rises, so too does the pollution—it’s an observable phenomenon.

We’ve listened carefully to your feedback, and we’ve decided to remove all AI-generated art from our game. It wasn’t an easy choice for us—a decision that could bring uncertainty to our small team’s future. Still, we believe it’s the right step forward. Even so, we believe it’s the right step forward, and we want to stay true to the trust and expectations you’ve placed in us.

We hope this decision will give you confidence in our direction. Your continued encouragement and positive support mean the world to us, and they truly help us keep moving forward.

We’re also working on numerous other updates:

• Decision Rework (More than half of all decisions are being rewritten to better fit Choi Soon-ja’s story! You’ll now be able to make use of—or even discard—the Shanty Carriage.)

• Knights of the Red Frost rework

• Guild of Explorers rework

• Neutral train expansion

• Artifact mechanic updates (e.g., Sadism, Power Cycle Amplifier, etc.)

• etc…

There’s a lot in motion, and we plan to showcase these improvements in the next developer letter—so please stay tuned!

Oh—and one more thing! In the demo, the playable character Choi Soon-ja features her own exclusive scenario. It’s designed more like a campaign, so the Shanty Carriages will not appear in Im Seok-dae or Jo Mimi’s scenarios as they do now. So, don’t worry— if you’ve thought, “Even with two extra train cars, Soon-ja’s train feels cramped—what about the others?”, rest assured—each character will have their own unique story events and decision sets.

Perhaps it’s because we’ve been so deep in post-demo improvements, but this letter feels like it’s been a long time coming. Unlike our previous monthly letters, this one feels like it’s been three months in the making.

To every player who shared feedback during the demo period—thank you, truly. Because of you, we’ve been able to better understand how to make this game more enjoyable, and your support keeps our train moving forward. This game is, in every sense, one we are building together with you. We’ll continue to work tirelessly so that when you next see Frostrain 2,

it will be far more polished and evolved—something truly worthy of your time. Thank you for staying with us on this journey.

• Added Crown

• Minor visual update

Dear CEOs,

The On and Hot Time event, scheduled during the A Flower Blooming in the Mud release celebration is as follows. 

Please read carefully to use all vital buffs to enhance your company. 

◆ On-time Event Schedule

• Oct. 30, 10:00 - Nov. 4, 2025, 09:59 (UTC-5)

◆ On-Time Event Gift

• 300,000 Credits

• 5,000 Eternium

• 3 Simulation Training Permit 

◆ How to Participate in the On-Time Event

• Event gifts will be given to your mailbox every day upon login.

◆ Hot Time Event Buff

1) Oct. 28, 10:00 - Nov. 4, 2025, 09:59 (UTC-5)

▷ 20% Decreased Credit Cost on Crafting Gears

▷ 20% Decreased Credit Cost on Gear Tuning & Precision

▷ 20% Decreased Credit Cost on Latent Reset Cost 

\[Note]

- CEOs can only receive the On-Time event gift once a day.

- The On-Time event gift will be deleted when the valid period expires. Please receive it within this period.

- You can check the applied Hot Time effect by clicking the Hot Time buff image next to the nickname on the lobby screen.

------------------------------

This concludes the On-Time & Hot Time event details for this week.

Thank you.

Dear CEOs,

Here is the list of new products featured in this week’s update.

Please check the link below for more updates and information on the maintenance schedule.

▷ \[October 28 Patch Notes] Link

 ▣ Packages

【 Special Recruitment Package Vol 1 】

Price: 690 Admin Coins

Purchase Limit: 1 time/account

Available Schedule: Oct. 29, after the maintenance - Nov. 11, 2025, 20:00 (UTC-5)

▼ Composition:

▷ 1 Wishful Random Box

▷ 10 Employment Contracts

※ The product is not refundable after purchase.

【 Special Recruitment Package Vol 2 】

Price: 1,290 Admin Coins

Purchase Limit: 1 time/account

Available Schedule: Oct. 29, after the maintenance - Nov. 11, 2025, 20:00 (UTC-5)

▼ Composition:

▷ 2 Wishful Random Box

▷ 20 Employment Contracts

※ The product is not refundable after purchase.

【 Special Recruitment Package Vol 3 】

Price: 3,090 Admin Coins

Purchase Limit: 2 times/account

Available Schedule: Oct. 29, after the maintenance - Nov. 11, 2025, 20:00 (UTC-5)

▼ Composition:

▷ 6 Wishful Random Box

▷ 50 Employment Contracts

※ The product is not refundable after purchase.

【Daily Special Training Packages 1, 2, & 3 】

Price: 100 Admin Coins each
Purchase Limit: 1 time/day

Available Schedule: Oct. 29, after the maintenance - Nov. 11, 2025, 20:00 (UTC-5)

▼ Composition▷150 Quartz
▷5,000 Eternium
▷1 Attack, Defense, OR Anti-air Training Permit

 ※ This product is not refundable after purchase.

------------------------------

This concludes the shop update details for this week.

Thank you.