The world of Go Wayback! keeps moving forward. Rivers now flow more naturally across the map, changing the way you travel and how the world connects. Foraging has been rebuilt from the ground up, with edible plants now spawning where they’d naturally grow. And as night falls, light becomes an important tool, with new flashlights that each have their own strengths and weaknesses.
Together, these updates make exploring feel more real, survival more grounded, and the world more alive.
Rivers: Run Through It
Image captured by Robin
Rivers have been one of the hardest natural systems to get right. Water flowing through the world might seem simple but making them feel natural, dynamic, and truly part of the landscape has taken a lot of work behind the scenes.
With this update, rivers are finally coming into their own. You’ll start to see more of them winding through the terrain, some wider, some smaller creeks cutting through valleys, shaping routes, and adding moments that feel alive. You can swim, you’ll get wet, and you’ll notice a smoother sense of flow when moving through the water.
We’ve also rebalanced traversal around them. With fewer rocks to clamber over, the challenge has shifted a little, and in the thinnest stretches they can look more like creeks. That’s something we plan to refine further in future passes.
Rivers touch nearly every system in the game terrain generation, traversal, physics, and visuals so this marks a big step in integrating them fully into the world rather than layering them on top of it.
Foraging: From Hand-Placed Mushrooms to Living Landscapes
Image captured by Thijs
In the earliest versions of Go Wayback!, foraging wasn’t really a system, it was an artist’s full-time chore. Every mushroom, berry, and root you could discover had to be hand-placed on every world tile. If we wanted to adjust how much food was out there, it meant hours of painstaking work adding or culling instances one by one.
It's very tedious and time consuming placing all those foraging items by hand across more than 40 tiles. I ended up writing a script to automate the process of placing and removing items in each tile, but it’s still not ideal and produces a number of errors.
So we built a new approach.
Our foraging system now runs automatically, with three key elements:
Automatic spawn points
The game now identifies suitable gaps and spaces across each hex tile where foragables can appear, no more hand-placement is needed.Terrain classification
The world is divided into regions with distinct food sets. You’ll find carrots and strawberries in the grasslands, while you'll need to go deeper into the forest to find mushrooms.Abundance mapping
Each terrain type is linked to an abundance factor that sets the probability of food actually spawning. Some areas will be rich, while others will be sparse.
These changes make foraging a more dynamic part of survival. For us as developers, it also means we can finally experiment with how many calories are available in different parts of the world without overworking our artists. What you’ll feel as a player is simple: a world where food grows where it should.
Shelters: Settling In
Image captured by Will
We’ve been working on how cabins, fences, and small outbuildings meet the natural world, specifically how they blend into the terrain around them. Until now, they sometimes felt like they were placed on top of the environment instead of being part of it. This update begins to change that.
Cabins now sit more naturally within the landscape; grass and ground textures blend into the foundations, fences connect better with the terrain, and props like rocks and vegetation help visually “ground” each scene. These small changes make a big difference, transforming isolated models into believable locations that feel like they belong to the world rather than floating within it.
It’s still a work in progress, but it brings us closer to the grounded, lived-in feel we want every structure in Go Wayback! to have.
Light: The Way
Image captured by Scott
Expanding a single tool into a set of distinct items is one of the ways we build more texture into the world. By moving from a basic flashlight to several different ones, we encourage players to make small but meaningful choices that shape how they explore.
It’s no longer just about having light, it’s about what kind of light you carry and how it affects your safety, visibility, and movement. These kinds of changes add layers of decision-making and personality, helping the world feel more real, and giving the tools you find a deeper purpose.
Utility Flashlight
Image captured by Hakan
This light allows you to change the beam from a wide, short beam to a narrow, far one using the right mouse button.
Flood Light
Image captured by Hakan
The brightest of all the flashlights, with the widest beam.
Hand-Cranked Flashlight
Image captured by Hakan
This light is recharged by the player using a hand-crank mechanism. When the charge runs out, the light fades out.
Police Flashlight
Image captured by Hakan
This is the basic flashlight that has been in the game for the majority of development.
We hope these changes make your experience feel more authentic and realistic. Try the latest version of Go Wayback! and share your thoughts with us on Discord!
