I want to start by thanking everyone for their support so far. 🐝💜 We are incredibly lucky to have such a wonderful community and we appreciate all of you. Over the last couple of days we have received reports from players about issues preventing progression and other little bugs and we wanted to make sure to take some time to address them. We put out a small patch to fix the most pressing one.
Changelog
Tracks of Thought_RELEASE_v17.1.5.12
The door to the Diner car (car #2) no longer opens before intended, which caused a myriad of other issues like:
Missing interaction popups
Dialogue not loading in or dialogue trying to run all at once
Dialogue boxes appearing small and far into the distance
Players can now only access it once they have a personality and rival assigned by finishing the Starry Night car (car #1) storyline. This sadly does require starting a new save file if you've slipped past the first door.
Added a Foreground hide function in the Starry Night car to avoid blocking the view of Patricia during dialogue
Dialogue boxes now show special characters during battles
Adjusted triggerbox for the Window Interactable in the Diner car, so it doesn't intervene with Rory's triggerbox
Lowered dialogue notification position for Baby Bean and Jacob in the Diner car so it doesn’t appear off-screen
Adjusted build name tag from ALPHA to RELEASE
Fixed spelling error (straight instead of stiaght) in the Card scanner's 'Passengers' tab
Fixed wrong species information in the Card scanner's 'Passengers' tab
Known Issues
There are a few major bugs 🐛 that we have flagged as high priority issues since they affect or prevent progression in the game. Being a small team, we are working as fast as we can towards a patch to address as many as we can. We are aiming to get a patch released within the next couple of weeks to fix the high-priority issues at a minimum and hopefully most if not all of the other issues as well. We appreciate your patience and understanding as we work through the rest of this list!
High Priority:
Saving the game while near Deborah in the Starry Night car (car #1) will cause the Player to get stuck. This corrupts your save file and sadly requires deletion in order to progress the game.
HP bars not updating properly during Battles
If log files are present from a previous Demo playthrough it doesn't load the full game correctly.
To quickly fix this you can delete the files in the AppData folder before starting a new save file ➜ C:\Users\username\AppData\LocalLow\TidbitsPlay\TracksOfThought
Other:
Misaligned interaction when trying to talk to Maple the shopkeeper
Some conversation triggers being out of reach or difficult to trigger
Some conversations not triggering under the right conditions
The 'Passengers' tab does not update > Missing a Tutorial for the Card Scanner.
───── ✦•🐞•✦ ───── If you find any other bugs (that isn’t one of the characters, haha), please hop on over to our Discord server to report it so we can add it to the list of issues to get patched as soon as possible!
And of course, be sure to stay on top of all things Tracks by following us on Twitter and YouTube and joining our Discord server. Thank you for everything!
- Esmeé and the Tidbits Play team
Tracks of Thought is Available Now!
TRACKS OF THOUGHT IS OUT!!!
Hi everyone! The wait is over, the train has finally reached its destination!!🐞🎉🎉
Right now we’ve got a launch discount of 20% off for the next week so be sure to grab that before it’s gone!
We’re most excited for you to see:
The narrative, which is unique to your very own personality type
The card battles, where you have to work together with your opponent to reach a consensus
The beautiful art and attention to visual detail throughout the game!
Thank you all SO MUCH for supporting us during development. Our road to release has been quite rocky, and it means the world to see all the people that are excited for this game to come out - through showcases in person and offline, through fan art, through excited tweets - all of it has lifted our spirits when times were hard. So, from the bottom of our hearts, thank you.
❤️🐞❤️We’ve done our very best to make a game we can be proud of, and we hope that you’ll love it just as much as we do.
If you find a bug (that isn’t one of the characters, ha ha) then please hop on over to our Discord server to report it. We’ll do our best to stay on top of them and patch them when we can.
🐞And if you’re looking for any way to support us,🐞
Please consider leaving us on honest review, it helps us a lot in Steam’s algorithms and helps other players decide whether they’d like to try out our little bug game.
And of course, be sure to stay on top of all things Tracks by following us on Twitter and YouTube and joining our Discord server. Thank you sincerely for everything, and enjoy!
Esmeé and the Tidbits Play team xxx
Tracks of Thought is part of Steam Deckbuilders Fest!
Hi everyone!
We're excited to share that Tracks of Thought is part of the Steam Deckbuilders Fest on Steam that celebrates card games where you can build and manage your deck of "cards" even if those cards aren't your typical playing cards from March 25th until April 1st!
Don't forget to wishlist the game to keep up to date on any updates and announcements from the team!
It’s been a while since we’ve updated y’all on what we’ve been up to! We promise we’re still here and still doing our best. Some of our team members have been struggling with physical health issues, but we’re all okay and health(ier) now!
These months have been filled with so many new things - especially for us developers! We've been working hard on our bug puns, polishing the train cars with fun trinkets and adding some pep in the step of our characters.
🎁 collectibles 🛍️
We added over 50 items in the game to collect, snack on or use in quests. What do you think these are for?
Let us know in the comments 👀
🐕 battle barks 🐩
We updated the Battle Barks in the card battles. This is flavor dialogue where the characters "bark" at you after each turn.
Before these lines were only determined by which card type the opponent HATES or LOVES, but players like you told us this could be a little confusing sometimes. You could technically play a card a bug would HATE but it lets you fill the bar resulting in a battle win.
You would reach "CONSENSUS" but since they hate the card you played, they would still say something like "OH NO :("
This is why we made some big improvements to this system and wrote a lot of custom dialogue. Here you see a few actions the characters can respond to in the card battles.
Now the conversation feels a lot more natural and responsive!
🧸say hello! 🧸
We’ve also added dialogue with more NPCs!
Make sure to say hello to our lil caterpillar friend, baby Bean!
Here’s what a conversation with baby Bean might look like 😉
───── ✦•🐞•✦ ─────
Thanks so much for your support! If there's anything specific you'd like to see us cover in our dev updates, like characters, mechanics, etc, let us know in the comments! You can also join our Discord, and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok for more updates. Cya next time :)
Bug out!
The Tracks of Thought Team
February Update + Backerkit!
DEAR PASSENGERS 🐞📣
It’s been a while since we’ve updated y’all on what we’ve been up to, so let’s dive right in.
These months have been filled with so many new things - especially for us developers! We’ve been working on a lot of back-end things that sometimes don’t always come across visually, like bug fixes, troubleshooting, and this!
🔟 controller support 🔢
We’ve been working on controller support! We want everyone to be able to play, regardless of what you’re comfortable with. Xbox and Playstation controllers are now compatible!
You can find all these settings and more in the Settings menu in the final game.
🖼️ accessibility updates 🖼️
Right now, we’re working on some extra accessibility features. Just like with controller support, we want everyone to be able to play, so we’ve added some things like disabling certain visual effects and adding a dyslexia-friendly font as an option!
Here’s our dyslexic-friendly font in action!
🧁 heal system 🧁
We’ve also added a healing system to make sure you maintain your HP! Not only are yummy snacks involved, but so are special cards too! Keep an eye out and let us know which one is your favorite.
📣 Backerkit launch 📣
The best announcement is always saved for last > Our crowdfunding campaign ends in two weeks! Thank you so much to BackerKit for having us as their first featured video game! 💜 Make sure to check us out to help us get our little bug RPG to the finish line.
To celebrate, we’re holding a giveaway! Check it out here.
Thanks so much for your support! If there's anything specific you'd like to see us cover in our dev updates, like characters, mechanics, etc, let us know in the comments! You can also join our Discord, and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok for more updates. Cya next time :)
Bug out! - The Tracks of Thought Team
New Year? New Updates + Backerkit!
DEAR PASSENGERS 🐞📣
It’s been a while since we’ve updated y’all on what we’ve been up to, so let’s dive right in.
These months have been filled with so many new things - especially for us developers! We’ve been working on a lot of back-end things that sometimes don’t always come across visually, like bug fixes, troubleshooting, and this!
🔟 spreadsheet shenanigans 🔢
This is a spreadsheet integration we’ve been working on! The integration automatically updates the cards’ text and dialogue. This allows our writer to make quick edits without touching the game engine, making importing assets very easy.
Now on to things that you as the player can see!
🖼️ GUI updates 🖼️ We’ve updated some of our menus and buttons. Check out our new save select screen! Each card is a different player profile and also keeps track of which personality you were assigned.
We’ve added a Journal and Quest log to help you keep track of information! This will also provide a quest overview. These quests can be as simple as retrieving an item or locating a friend, and some will be a little more complex. Solving quests will help the passengers remember their destination, and will get you one step closer to reaching the final train car!
Right now, the journal is a work in progress, so definitely let us know what you’d like to see in it in the future.
🧁 shop system 🧁
We’ve also added a shop and currency system. These yummy snacks can heal you or give you boosts during card battles.
📣 Backerkit launch 📣
The best announcement is always saved for last > Our crowdfunding pre-launch page is live RIGHT NOW! Thank you so much to BackerKit for having us as their first featured video game!💜Make sure to check us out and pre-save our page to help us get our little bug RPG to the finish line.
───── ✦•🐞•✦ ─────
Thx so much for your support! If there's anything specific you'd like to see us cover in our dev updates, like characters, mechanics, etc, let us know in the comments! You can also join our Discord, and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok for more updates. Cya next time :)
Bug out! - The Tracks of Thought Team
Tracks of Thought in Wholesome Direct + DEMO
🎵DEAR PASSENGERS🎵
It's almost time for the Wholesome Direct Showcase today and Tracks of Thought is gonna be there with a shiny new trailer. We can't wait to show you what we've been working on!
if y'all could screem BUG in chat when we're on that would be appreciated 🐞💜
When > June 11 2022 - 12:30pm ET | 6:30pm CET Where >Youtube & Twitch
⭐DEMO DROP⭐
Ready to confront yourself? We're bringing back our DEMO this week, which got a bit of a glow-up compared to last year! Explore the first train car and discover which bug will be your mortal enemy unlikely ally in the full game 👀
if you have any thoughts, feedbacks or bugs (the wrong kind) feel free to call us out in this form or say hi in our Discord server!
Dev Update #1 - Exciting events and Social things!
Hi everyone! 😃 For our developer update, we've had so much awesome stuff happen/about to happen to share with you all. We hope you’re just as excited as we are!
For starters, this month, we’re participating in the Wholesome Direct showcase on June 11th - click that link to see their official tweet about it and to learn more.
In other exciting events, we were a part of Paperverse Direct:
We also hosted Turn-based Thursday on Twitter. If you aren’t familiar with it, essentially we hosted a thread for other turn-based games to join in and showcase their game! We love getting to meet and network with other devs in our genre. If you are a turn-based fan, like us, check out the thread and maybe you’ll find some other awesome games to look forward to or even play that are already out!
While our animator was away on vacation, we ended up having our first viral TikTok. Thank you to everyone who helped call our animator home from vacation - we needed her desperately 😅
We worked on a Dialogue choice overhaul and picked option 2! We love consulting with our community to make these types of choices - if you’d like to have a say, let us know by following our Twitter and joining our Discord!
Last but not least, we have a ton of new animations and new concept art! Here's a small snippet of it to get you all excited 👀 (Don’t worry, our animator came back for this!)
Thanks so much for your support! If there's ever anything in particular you'd like to see us cover in our dev updates, like characters, mechanics, etc, let us know in the comments for this update! Thanks again everyone, and we’ll see you next time! 😃
With love, The Tidbits Team
Publisher Announce + Discord launch!!
Hi everyone 😃 🎉We have some very exciting news to share with you all today! 🎉 First up, we are happy to announce today that we have officially signed with Freedom Games ( https://www.freedom.gg/ ) as our publisher!
For those of you who may not know, a game publisher helps take care of a lot of the business and marketing side of releasing a game. That includes managing our store page, marketing and advertising the game, helping showcase the game at both digital and live events, PR, and a lot more. It really lets us totally focus on working to make the game the best it can be, and provides us with the resources to do so.
Our second exciting announcement for the day is that we have officially launched our Discord server! If you had joined previously, you may have noticed we were still under construction. Well, thanks to the help of our publisher, we have finally finished all of that construction and have a wonderful new community for you all to join and hang out in!
Before you head over there, make sure to wishlist Tracks of Thoughts here on Steam, and follow us on Twitter to stay up to date with development!
Demo launch
[previewyoutube="caW2QyhUFCU;full"] *update! We've extended the availability of our demo since we had some issues with the download button. So you can still play over the weekend.
We're very excited to announce the first public demo of Tracks of Thought! You can play it from June 12-20. We've worked very hard on this build so we hope you'll enjoy it. Here's a little preview which debuted during the Wholesome Direct earlier today.
