After two years of hard work, Go Wayback! is officially live in Early Access. This is a huge milestone for our team, and we’re thrilled to finally put the game in your hands. Now the real adventure begins: building alongside the community, expanding the world, and pushing the experience beyond our original vision. We’d love for you to join us on the journey.

Custom Games: Increase the Challenge

Image captured by PLAYERUNKNOWN

We decided early on to balance the core game to one single difficulty before exploring other options. This worked for a while, players in our playtest and on Discord found the game challenging, but as they learned how the game worked and found strategies to survive, that challenge dipped.

Luckily we have a small group of dedicated players called ‘Pathfinders’ who get access to the development version of the game, which comes with full debug access. What we noticed was that players who had mastered the game, would make their lives harder by purposely changing the weather to be harsher more often, or trying to finish a seed without picking up any items.

So the idea of custom game settings was born. We took all the control over the world we have and packaged it up into a section inside the dev menu. Now players can control anything from the exact number of cabins that spawn in the world, to which weathers you will encounter. As well as being able to make the game harder, you can also make it easier for those who just want to explore and enjoy the world.

New Game Modes : New Win Conditions

Image captured by PLAYERUNKNOWN

While the custom game settings allow you to change the challenge of the world, the Weather Tower win condition is still fixed. So with this in mind, we have begun adding new win conditions.

Objective: Survive
In this mode, there are no cabins, only shelters like outhouses, shacks, and caravans. Your objective is to survive as long as possible.

Free Roam
In this mode, you are free to explore without needing to survive, though fall damage is still active.

These and other modes we plan to add will be exposed in the custom game settings menu so players can play with the difficulty within each. And while in Early Access, suggestions for new game modes are highly appreciated.

Saving: A World That Remembers

Image captured by Outsiders member timmi-t

For players, saving in Go Wayback! is simple: when you stop playing, the world remembers where you were and what you were doing. When you return, you pick up exactly where you left off. No save slots. No rewinding. Just the one continuous thread of your story.

Behind the scenes, though, saving isn’t simple at all.

In a hand-built game world, much of the saving logic is already handled by the engine. But Go Wayback! is different. Our landscapes, forests, rivers, and weather systems are generated on the fly. That means we have to decide what to store, how to reconstruct it, and in what order.

It’s a bit like packing up an entire campsite, right down to the position of every stone and stick, and then being able to unpack it later so everything is exactly where it belongs. If you get the order wrong, for example if you set up the tent before laying the groundsheet, the whole thing collapses.

So while players only see a seamless continuation of their story, under the hood there’s a lot of engineering effort making sure the world rebuilds itself correctly. That effort is what allows saving in Go Wayback! to feel invisible, natural, and trustworthy, so you can focus on surviving the moment rather than worrying whether the world will still be there tomorrow. There are still bugs, it’s a complex structure and we have a ridiculously high number of possible worlds, but we are focused on getting it perfect for everyone.

Throughout Early Access, we’ll continue adding new game modes, improving the world around you, and introducing deeper gameplay and survival systems. We hope you enjoy your play.

As always, please don’t hesitate to share your feedback on our Discord.