Greetings, fellow Hijinksters, new and old! We present to you the Weed Removal Update, a major update for Highway Hijinks!

The focus of this release is to remove many of the long-standing annoyances (”weeds”) that have been in the game. We’ve rebalanced the game difficulty, overhauled the UI, improved the visuals, fixed a whole bunch of bugs, and made some significant improvements to the performance. This is a big step towards our planned exit from Early Access later this year.

Check out the trailer for the Weed Removal Update:

Or, have a look at these exciting screenshots:

Here is a full list of what has changed in this update:

• Added a pit stop at the start of each run that lets you choose 1 of 3 random modules

• Added damage resistance system

• Added some energy gain for destroying obstacles

• Adjusted weapon energy consumption scaling with fire rate

• Adjusted decay rate of excess energy when overcharged

• Adjusted size of speed pad hitbox

• Adjusted size of player’s hitbox

• Increased starting speed from 100 km/h to 200 km/h

• Increased minimum speed from 100 km/h to 150 km/h

• Made speed pads give a brief acceleration and total speed boost of 5 km/h

• Fixed player being able to shoot themselves in some cases (gruh)

• Fixed mortar shells not exploding if they miss the road surface

• Fixed pushed objects colliding with debris

• Fixed shield charging while on cooldown when it should not

• Adjusted obstacle health scaling with difficulty

• Adjusted obstacle and turret spawning frequency scaling with difficulty

• Prevented obstacle density from increasing if your speed is below your initial speed

• Adjusted difficulty scaling rate

• Changed race rewards

  • The reward for winning a race is now just one Voucher

  • Some tiers of race reward are Double-Sided Vouchers that let you reroll their offered items once

• Added a 5th heat variant for each race challenge

• Adjusted the Denser Obstacles race challenge to have lower densities overall

• Prevented obstacles from spawning near the start and end of races

• Added the ability to parry race opponents

• Improved collisions between players and race opponents

• Added a new race start screen

• Added a cool new guy at the start of races

• Made the race finish line look cooler

• Fixed players being able to collide with race opponents at the start of a race

• Removed generators for turrets

• Added turret charge VFX

• Improved turret targeting behavior

• Adjusted turret damage and fire rate

• Reduced turret projectile explosion area of effect

• Prevented obstacles from spawning around the first turret in each run

• Fixed turret explosions not disappearing

• Fixed turrets disappearing when entering a pit stop or starting a race

• Reduced the number of abilities offered in the pit stop shop from 2 to 1

• Reworked UI flow for buying items

• Moved scrap/health/energy meters to main screen

• Added mouse interactivity

• Prevented obstacles from spawning near pit stops

• Improved visibility pit stop highway signs

• Added an animated series of arrows that direct the player to each pit stop

• Added turn arrows to pit stop exit lanes

• Added an icon next to selected items in the shop when you have a Gift Card

• Updated sale icon

• Fixed inventory UI overflowing the screen when there are many items

• Fixed text overflowing on item info screen

• Removed the Ability Slot module

• Made health pickups, Portable Repair Kit, and Personal Protective Equipment instantly cool down the shield

• Prevented Quick Exchange and Consumerism from fiving Overtime

• Made Flatten only prevent collisions with obstacles

• Doubled Mortar shell damage

• Adjusted how much energy Energy Harvester gives

• Rebalanced Saw Orbital

• Fixed Saw Orbital blades rotating while paused

• Fixed Saw Orbital rotation speed being framerate-dependent

• Fixed Vehicular Sabotage not doing anything

• Fixed Dentures still healing player after its status effect has expired

• Fixed car being slowed by collisions while Funny Driving Juice is active

• Added new mechanical aspects to attacks called “traits”, which can be one or more of:

  • Critical

  • Flaming

  • Piercing

  • Pushing

• Added a push to objects when another pushed object collides with them

• Added the Pushing trait to explosive attacks

• Added the ability for burning things to inflict burning to other things they collide with

• Adjusted the burning effect to now deal a % of the target’s max health

• Made most attack traits inheritable

• Added checkpoints that the player instantly respawns at when they die

• Increased speed from 75 km/h to 100 km/h

• Adjusted obstacle spacing

• Added audio effects for attack traits

• Added audio for crate debris

• Added audio for Saw Orbital blades

• Made race countdown sound effects non-spatial

• Increased maximum number of concurrent sound effects

• Fixed audio cutting out when entering pit stop or at the start of a race

• Fixed audio breaking when getting a lot of scrap at once

• Fixed spinout sound effect being played too much

• Added damage numbers text to show how much damage was dealt by an attack

• Added a new retro grid shader effect to replace health bars on obstacles, turrets, etc.

• Removed volumetric shadows that had almost no effect

  • This significantly improved performance

• Added new obstacle textures and removed the old ones

• Added new crate and barrel obstacle models and removed the old ones

• Added a warning icon on obstacles that will kill the player if they collide with it

• Added icon to HUD warning you when race opponents are close behind you

• Added a flashing effect while a car is invincible

• Added a flashing effect on Dentures when its status is about to expire

• Added a flash effect when enemies take damage

• Added a “hit stop” shake effect to things when they take damage

• Added new camera effects when using speed pad

• Added a flame effect to the car exhaust when using a speed pad

• Added arrow signs near the end of a race

• Added electricity transmission towers

• Added dithering to car headlight trails

• Removed weapon indication ring from HUD

• Improved appearance of outlines on obstacles and pickups

• Reduced camera shake caused by turret shots and ram

• Made gun fire animation speed scale with fire rate

• Improved nuke visuals

• Made glitch visual effect scroll over the screen to prevent important information from being obscured

• Improved health/shield vignette screen effects

• Improved obstacle destruction effects

• Adjusted how Crossbow arrows stick in cars

• Adjusted camera shake when using the Rifle

• Adjusted projectile trails

• Improved fire VFX

• Adjusted race opponent's lights

• Improved appearance of golden objects

• Adjusted speed lines screen effect

• Adjusted Funny Driving Juice visual effect

• Adjusted energy meter colors for better visibility

• Improved shield visual effect

• Made outline color of targeted obstacles change based on distance from player

• Improved explosion visual effects

• Fixed flickering in energy and health meters

• Added a newly redesigned UI

• Replaced the game logo and app icon

• Added a tutorial button in the main menu

• Added a feedback/bug report button in the main menu

• Added loading screens for smoother scene transitions

• Fixed dropdowns in UI not scrolling when navigating through their items

• Added a newly redesigned input settings screen

• Changed the default controls for keyboards and controllers

• Removed Switch Tab input action

• Added customizable secondary controls for each action

• Added customizable controls for Pause action

• Added positional controller rumble for explosions

• Fixed D-pad buttons on Xbox 360 wireless controllers not working properly on newer Linux kernel versions

• Added a setting to reduce the strength of the Funny Driving Juice visual effect

• Added a setting to skip UI opening and closing animations

• Fixed Render Scale setting not working

• Fixed duplicate resolutions being listed in video settings

• Made a whole bunch of improvements to performance

• Made the game pause automatically when the app loses focus

• Fixed Steam Cloud not working on macOS in some cases

  • The location of your saved game folder on macOS might change

Thank you all for playing our game! We hope you all enjoy the update. There is still a lot more to come!

Want to discuss the game with other Hijinksters or tell us your thoughts? Join our Discord server![odesoftware.com]