Broken Roads — patch notes and updates
Stored observation / content update:
Dated developer announcements recorded from Steam. Open the source for the complete update.
| Update | Date | Excerpt / source |
|---|---|---|
| Patch Notes - 6 March 2025 🔥 | 2025-03-07 | Broken Roads Patch Notes - 6 March 2025 Greetings all - another month and another patch sees more features, bug fixes, and additional content added to Broken Roads. Party-wide skill checks Many players requested we allow party companions’ skills to be used in dialogue skill-check moments. This is now in, with some still set to player-only where it makes more sense. Expect more skill checks to be added, and the current skill checks in the game to likely be balanced (almost certainly to be made more challenging) Container naming and (empty) check This was hotfixed last month, but in case you missed it, another player-requested quality-of-life f |
| 4 February 2025 Hotfix | 2025-02-04 | 4 February 2025 hotfix details: Container names are now displayed when pressing TAB Containers/bodies which have been looted will display " (empty)" The names of items which can be picked up are now also displayed when pressing TAB Fixed various human and animal combatants' blood splatter VFX not playing in combat |
| Broken Roads’ Early 2025 Roadmap | 2025-01-28 | Hello everyone and welcome to 2025! We hope you’ve all had a good break over the new year and like us you’re likely back in the swing of work, study, or whatever you usually do with your time. A few community members have asked for a roadmap for what to expect this year. We’re hesitant to commit more than just a few months, so below is a rundown of what is on the way in early 2025. The biggest change is that from today’s patch, we now have a means to switch branches to the English-only updates, which is where we’ll be posting all of the new content fixes, narrative changes, journal improvements and so on, and once done we will work on localis |
| Patch Notes - 1.3.12859 | 2024-12-10 | Hey everyone, We’ve just released another small polish patch and also wanted to share an update on our user reviews. Steam User Reviews: Recent Reviews hit Very Positive We’re extremely happy to see the upturn in positive user reviews on Steam. While the number is still of course small, having enough people post reviews recently to see the shift not just to Mostly Positive, but Very Positive has been incredible. The number of players to reviewers has varied quite a lot throughout the year, with the unsurprising trend of unsatisfied players leaving negative reviews more often than happy players post a positive review. In April and May we were |
| Hotfix: Version 1.3.12743 🔥 | 2024-12-04 | The 4 December 2024 Hotfix is now live! We know It’s only been a few days since our big November patch but we wanted to get this update live as soon as possible. Four of the issues were reported by community members on Discord or Steam, so a huge thanks to everyone who reported bugs or problems they encountered during their playthroughs. - The team at Drop Bear Bytes Patch Notes WARNING: SOME SPOILERS INCLUDED AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PATCH NOTES: Fixed an issue where some users would not see an option to return the bullet casings to Hunter. Fixed an issue where the Moral Compass leaning could be inaccurate after loading a saved game immediately |
| November 2024 Update blog | 2024-11-29 | We’re very happy to bring you another polish update to Broken Roads, including increased font size when using the Large Font setting (especially handy on Steam Deck), improved companion reactions depending on player choices, removing some of the ‘teleporting’ moments that some players found rail-roady, TONS of combat, weapon and consumable balancing, plus a couple of spoilery bits and pieces we won’t mention here. What’s Been Happening with Broken Roads’ development? We have racked up hundreds of pages of feedback, notes, suggestions and draft material for improving Broken Roads, and now is the time to implement. We’ve been focusing on improv |
| AUGUST PATCH 2024 🔥 | 2024-08-20 | Hey everyone! We have a new patch for you and we've updated and fixed quite a bit. One of the big things here is we just took so much (I believe all) of the flirtatious/sexual advances out of the game. The feedback and general community consensus was that they were very poorly executed and there was not a good balance of them. We would have rather we did them right or not at all, and so now they are out of the game until we can do them properly. Then there are also a lot of small bug fixes, quest polish, little bits and pieces that improve certain interactions, and a lot of changes to remove unnecessary or repetitious dialogue choices that di |
| 🔥 HOTFIX - July | 2024-07-16 | Hotfix notes Fixed a bug where some players would not have the required NPCs spawning at The Ingot during the Liberty and Necessity quest. This will be solved the next time the player’s party spawns into Kalgoorlie. Fixed the bug of being able to infinitely pick up one of the Barter Crew Special (jackpot trade) numberplates in Narembeen. Added pine pitch to Karak’s shop and Tin Man’s shop as part of Lily’s quest. Clarified the objective for ‘Of Liberty and Necessity’ that you no longer need to go to the Ingot at night. Reduced the time of a fade to black when meeting Ruby Squier in Kalgoorlie Fixed an issue where you could keep talking to Geo |
| 🔥 JUNE 2024 UPDATE 🔥 | 2024-06-27 | Hi all, We’re thrilled to be bringing you our second major update since launch. This should be considered more of a hotfix than a major content update (although that is in the works) as it addresses many small bugs, quest logic fixes, a late-game issue that could cause a soft lock for some players, item and container fixes to vendor inventories, tweaks to certain skill checks, and more. We’re also very excited to announce two additional Narrative Consultants who are now working with us to make Broken Roads the best game it can be, and you’ll start seeing their changes in our next content updates. So, without further ado… George Ziets and Olga |
| 🔥 MAY PATCH UPDATE IS HERE 🔥 | 2024-05-31 | Hi everyone! Thank you for your patience while we worked on this major update to get the Broken Roads 1.2 patch live. We've taken on board the feedback from your reviews to add features, make changes, include new options, completely open up the early game, and greatly expand on companion reactions. The work is not at all done and there is much more still to come, but we hope you enjoy this first big patch which focuses on all four origin stories through to the gates of Merredin. We did also tackle some mid and late game moments that players requested, so take note that THERE ARE SPOILERS IN THE NOTES BELOW. Have fun, and as always please let |
| Want to preview our latest update? 🔥 | 2024-05-27 | Want to preview the upcoming update in English? We're calling our community to let us know your thoughts on Broken Roads builds/updates before release. The instructions can be found below along with the different ways you can send us your feedback! Keep scrolling and you'll see the list of the different improvements we're making in the latest patch. Please note: This update is currently English only (other languages are still in localisation). The fully patched version will have over 10,000 new words fully translated. Beta: english_updates Password: EnglishUpdates How to install the build: 1 - Select 'Broken Roads' and right click and select |
| April PC Update | 2024-04-19 | Hey everyone, Thank you for your ongoing patience while we address player feedback, add requested features, and, of course, continue to fix bugs. The major changes in this patch are that you can now manually level up your companions. There are now auto-assign buttons for each companion on level-up, following the same auto-level profiles that they had at launch. Just like when leveling up your player character, if don't go to a companion's character sheet, that companion will stay at a lower level until leveled up. We've also added an Agility check when fleeing random encounters on the overworld map. If you are not successful, your party enter |
| What's next? Post-Launch Roadmap | 2024-04-13 | This launch has been a rough one. We’re glad so many people have enjoyed playing the game. We’ve loved watching the streams, engaging with you all and hearing about your positive experience with Broken Roads. But we know that, overall, we’ve fallen short of player expectations in some key areas and in many ways we’ve not delivered the quality game we had hoped to ship, so we’re changing that. Our work on Broken Roads is far from over. We have taken the criticism on board. There’s a lot we can improve and a lot we can outright redo because it just isn’t good enough. On top of fixing bugs and issues with quest logic, we’ve also been gathering f |
| 🔥 HOTFIX - 1.40.7 | 2024-04-12 | Hey everyone! It's been a crazy 48 hours at Drop Bear Bytes since we launched Broken Roads, we've received a lot of feedback, suggestions, and reported bugs with translation and a range of other QoL improvements needed to make all of your experience better. We appreciate some of you may also have been disappointed with Broken Roads for a range of different reasons such as the lack of combat, companion interjections, and many more. However, we wanted to let you all know that we hear you, understand your frustrations, and that we're not going anywhere. Everything from the Steam reviews and discussion board has all been noted down for the develo |
| BROKEN ROADS IS OUT NOW! 🔥 | 2024-04-10 | Happy Broken Roads Day! We finally hit that release button on the backend of Steam! Thank you everyone for your interest in Broken Roads and your support in getting us here today. You have helped tremendously with identifying bugs during our closed playtests, feedback on translations, quest polish, item and combat balancing, all improving the gameplay experience, and now the release of our game! It's taken us more than 5 years to reach this point - we started as a small team with a big idea and now it's finally arrived. There have been a number of bumps in the road to get Broken Roads ready and we appreciate everyone's patience... but now we |
| Global Release Times 🔥 | 2024-04-09 | Hey there mate! We can't wait to release Broken Roads to all of you tomorrow 🔥 Here is a world map of when you can finally play on PC and consoles. Thank you everyone for your interest in Broken Roads and your support in getting us here. It's taken us more than 5 years to reach this point We're always happy to hear from our community, so should you experience any bugs or have feedback for the team, please let us know over on Discord! WISHLIST NOW: That's all for today, ‘ol cobber! Follow Broken Roads to stay updated and don't forget, your choices are the key. SOCIAL: DISCORD | TWITTER | YOUTUBE | WIKI - The Drop Bear Bytes team |
| Triple-i Initiative is here! 🔥 | 2024-03-28 | Oi, mate! Broken Roads is part of the Triple-i Initiative Join us on April 10th, at 10 am PT for 45 minutes of reveals, announcements & trailers 🔥 Check out Triple-i Initiative below: https://iii-initiative.com/ https://twitter.com/iii_initiative https://www.twitch.tv/iii_initiative https://www.youtube.com/@iii_initiative https://space.bilibili.com/3546638813497663 WISHLIST NOW: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1403440/Broken_Roads/ That's all for today, ‘ol cobber! Follow Broken Roads to stay updated and don't forget, your choices are the key. SOCIAL: DISCORD | TWITTER | YOUTUBE | WIKI - The Drop Bear Bytes team |
| Origin Story Trailer - Surveyor 🔎 | 2024-03-28 | "You love the thrill of discovering places that fell off the maps or finding the towns that have sprung up since the fall. It’s almost as good as getting paid when you tell some new client what you’ve found." The wide-open places call to you. They always have. You spent nights under the stars as a child, your parents teaching you about constellations, the plants, the animals. The first time you learned how to use a compass, you were hooked. You took off from home young to explore the trackless wastes. It was only a happy accident that you discovered you could make some serious coin by telling people what you found. The world is a treasure wai |
| 🔥 NEW REVEAL - RELEASE DATE! 🔥 | 2024-03-21 | We're happy to announce the release date of Broken Roads! It's the moment you've all been waiting for! It's been a long journey for Broken Roads but we will finally be releasing across all platforms - PC, PS5 | PS4 & Xbox One | Series X & S. With Nintendo Switch coming later on. Survive, form bonds, and make tough choices in Broken Roads across the post-apocalyptic Australian outback. Begin your unforgettable journey on April 10th, 2024. Watch the trailer here: WISHLIST NOW https://store.steampowered.com/app/1403440/Broken_Roads/ That's all for today, ‘ol cobber! Follow Broken Roads to stay updated and don't forget, your choices are the key. |
| Origin Story Trailer - Barter Crew 💰 | 2024-03-14 | "You learned to haggle with the best of them when you were knee-high to a quokka, and by the time you were a teen, you decided that maybe it was time to make your way." You spent your earliest years riding the back of a barter crew's wagon, travelling all across Western Australia, from Boddington to Bonnie Rock. You've seen thousands of deals go down. You've got a head for numbers, an eye for trade, and a tongue keen for speech. Nothing makes you happier than driving a hard bargain. It's been a hell of a ride. You get your way, you'll hunt down every opportunity in Australia. Attribute bonuses: Charisma +1, Resolve +1 Starting skills: Leaders |
| Origin Story Trailer - Jackaroo 🦘 | 2024-02-29 | Introducing the Jackaroo Origin Story "You’ve been on the go since, looking for a new place to settle down. You thought you might have found it in Brookton. Maybe you could see out your days there." You were a lost pup. Your parents ditched you at a remote station when you were an infant. The manager brought you in, the station hands took to you, and you became a kind of mascot to them. You grew up with tools, and can fix most simple machines. You learned how to read an animal, care for its injuries, and put it to work. They taught you to hunt, giving you the skills to survive just about anywhere. Attribute bonuses: Resolve +1, Strength +1 St |
| Your Moral Compass... | 2024-02-01 | Hey everyone! Today we're taking a closer look into our Moral Compass feature. The Moral Compass is Broken Roads’ unique take on morality and alignment. It allows the characters’ morality to shift based on the player’s actions and decisions gradually. Before starting your post-apocalyptic adventure you will be asked a series of questions about different scenarios you might encounter while on your journey in the land down under. Now answer them honestly because once you do, you'll notice 4 different traits. These are the four distinct moral philosophies in Broken Roads... Humanist - "Each person’s dignity matters most" I choose all meaning and |
| Versus Evil Winter Sale Going on Now! | 2023-12-21 | The Versus Evil Winter Sale is now live on Steam! Get up to 90% off! As we head into 2024, let's have a bit of a retrospective, shall we? 2023 marks 10 years since Versus Evil was founded, and we've built quite the portfolio over the last decade. We look back on early titles such as Yaga, Cardpocalypse, and Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire; we look back on recent notable titles such as First Class Trouble, Eville, and UnMetal; and now, we look forward to our upcoming slate of new releases such as Lil' Guardsman, Tamarak Trail, and Broken Roads. Whether you've been playing our games the day we started or are now just joining the fun, thank you |
| Versus Evil Autumn Sale Going on Now! | 2023-11-21 | The Versus Evil Autumn Sale is now live on Steam! Get up to 90% off! While you're browsing our catalog, why not check out our slate of upcoming titles if you haven't already: Broken Roads is a narrative-driven RPG that brings exploration, strategic turn-based combat and meaningful philosophical choices to an all-new Australian post-apocalyptic setting. In Lil' Guardsman, imagine you're a 12-year-old, suddenly in charge of the guard shed at the castle gate, where you decide if elves, goblins and 100+ other characters should be admitted. It's a wonderful combination of deduction, narrative and puzzle games. Tamarak Trail is a deck-building rogu |
| Broken Roads Delayed Until Early 2024 | 2023-11-08 | https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1093285565564203108/1171967326111940656/BrokenRoads_Nov2023_message.png?ex=655e9aa0&is=654c25a0&hm=d8832528518507cba1f2d1b85b5f60bcf41035af55045c14bb369064f76d6443&=&width=810&height=872 |
| Hired Gun Origin Story | 2023-11-01 | We're kicking off a new mini-series of trailers for the playable origin stories, starting with Hired Gun! Broken Roads features four origin stories each with their own unique attributes, starting skills, and reputation around the world which changes how certain characters interact with you. Check out our first Origin Story trailer here: Expect more trailers coming soon! And if you’re wondering ‘hey Drop Bear Bytes, where’s your October update?', we’ve been non-stop busy making the game, adding polish, fixing bugs, closing out quests, wrapping up loose ends, recording videos, conducting media interviews, playtesting the game, and so on. There’ |
| Environment Design Process: Ardath Hotel Devblog | 2023-09-26 | https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5d1d8ed6d078a20001148edc/8c6a7cc1-b156-4265-a151-1a9e511888be/EDPheader1920x1080.jpg?format=2500w The Ardath Pub is a characterful establishment where a motley crew of artists, thieves, and thugs congregate to drink, play darts and get up to mayhem. To bring this place to life, Sara Laubscher, Lead Environment Concept Artist, worked closely with our Narrative Director, Leanne Taylor-Giles, in order to maintain an authentic ‘Aussie vibe’. Through pokie machines and a pool-table-turned-impromptu music stage around the back, we aimed to demonstrate the rowdy charm of the Ardath way of life. https://i |
| Join us for our MIGW Livestreams! | 2023-09-22 | Hey folks, we're doing a couple livestreams next week for Melbourne International Games Week and would love it if you joined us! Meet the dev team, the art team, ask us questions, and more! Our first livestream will be the dev teams live AMA on Wednesday, September 27th at 9am AEST! After that, our art team will be doing a live stream at 5pm AEST the same day! For our North American friends, those dates are: Live AMA: September 26th, 4pm PDT Art Stream: September 27th, Midnight PDT https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F6kO2vIX0AA90B_?format=jpg&name=large |
| Melbourne International Games Week Starts Now! | 2023-09-21 | We're excited to announce that we're taking part in MIGW again this year! MIGW is hosting its third annual Steam festival to highlight the broad range of video games developed in Victoria, Australia! Join us for a celebration of videogames and the people who make them from September 21 - 28, here on steam: https://store.steampowered.com/sale/migw2023 The event will be featuring demos, sales & live streams so be sure to check it out! The Broken Roads team will be hosting their own live stream next week for the event, details coming soon! https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F6kO2vIX0AA90B_?format=jpg&name=large |
| Release Date Announcement | 2023-09-12 | We’re excited to announce that Broken Roads is coming to PC, Xbox One & Series X/S on November 14, 2023! Embark on an unforgettable journey across a post-apocalyptic Australia full of danger and tough decisions. Stay tuned for release date information on other platforms coming soon! https://store.steampowered.com/app/1403440/Broken_Roads/ |