Haven't played in almost two years, what's new?

[HuskyDynamics]

I picked up Hydroneer in the summer of 2022 and played it for a little bit but then got busy with life and moved on to other games. Steam shows the last time I played the game was in August 2022, which based on the news feed was right about the time the Farming update was announced.

If I recall correctly, I think I had a small automated line in the Ember Cradle (that's the starting location, right?) and a shack built on the other side of the river, but that was about it.

What all have I missed? Has the basic gameplay loop (dig, refine ore, craft stuff, sell it, buy equipment, dig more) changed much? I've been away from this game for quite a while and want to see if it's something that'd be worth jumping back into.

Edit: I also remember that I was having some performance issues (which may actually have been one of the reasons I stopped playing); has performance and optimization improved in the last few years? Scrolling through the news posts I see a few mentions of it.

[foolexia]

The only issue with performance I know of is easily solved through capping the FPS to the refresh rate of your monitor. As for content, I think it was last year 2.0 came out and added some new things including NPCs and quests. There is a DLC on the way that will be an expansion to the game. The core gameplay has expanded with farming and fishing added in as part of things you can sell and quest objectives.

[barbrady123]

Also curious about this, was thinking of giving it another go. My biggest complaint last time was later in the game when you start automating things....automation (belts, etc) were unfortunately, physics based, and therefore machines were unreliable and had to be babysat...wondering if that's still the case.

Also even if you could get "automated" machines working, they still had to be manually fixed/filled by something (maybe it was the pipes, I forget) every so often, so things were never truly automated.

[foolexia]

I don't know what their like as I never get to that point before my new game impulse kicks in.

[Dark Phantom]

Game has a few bugs, seen nothing game breaking. However you may want to wait until after the 5th of next month. New patch coming out as well as a new dlc that looks good from the previews. Said there are some fixes to the current game coming on the 5th.

[roboticaust]

Originally posted by Dark Phantom:

Game has a few bugs, seen nothing game breaking. However you may want to wait until after the 5th of next month. New patch coming out as well as a new dlc that looks good from the previews. Said there are some fixes to the current game coming on the 5th.

"Some" is an understatement.