After six months of community playtesting and invaluable feedback, we’re excited to open our full in-development version of Prologue: Go Wayback! to everyone through the Open Beta on Steam and the Epic Games Store.

Alongside the launch of the open beta, we’re launching a series of development blogs to share immediate changes, upcoming features, and updates inspired directly by player input.

Whenever possible, you’ll hear from the developers themselves as we keep updating the Open Beta. After all, they’ve put in the hard work, and they deserve to show it off!

Read on below for insights from our dev team on some of the features and systems we have been working on.

Community Requests

Several members of the community asked for an FOV slider in settings so we have added one.

If you’d like to be share your feedback and become a part of our development journey, we would love to see you in our community Discord!

Prompts

Go Wayback has never been about hand-holding. But we realized the entry barrier was too high.
With so many new systems and mechanics, some lightweight guidance was needed. We’ve now added optional UI prompts to help players get their bearings.

Just point your reticule at something, and you’ll see your basic interaction options. It's as simple as that.

We want players to experiment with the game's systems, and for that we need to remove the barrier of the control interface. We don't want players to keep thinking "What's the key for this action?" or "What can I do with this tool?"

- Guillaume

Destruction

Smashing things in games is always satisfying. Especially when loot pops out.

In Go Wayback, we’ve taken it further: break basic wooden furniture in shelters and get useful debris. Burn the pieces for fuel or use them to board up windows.

It’s a step toward a world where everything has value.

Making destruction feel real and useful isn’t easy.

UE can make things shatter beautifully—but those bits aren’t usable. We wanted both, so we built our own system.

It works, but the physics still need polish to feel as punchy as we want.

- Adrien

Wetness

Wetness has been a surprisingly tricky system to get right.
We wanted Lucy’s clothes to soak through—whether from rain, mud, a river slip, or a swim—so she’d get colder faster and risk hypothermia unless she dries off.

So we built a layered clothing system. It tracks which items are on top, which are underneath, and whether water leaks through. Outer layers take the hit first—if they’re saturated, what’s underneath gets wet too.

The way we store different layer groups for wearables allows the wetness system to know what’s on top and what’s underneath.

The layer system is there to help, you don’t have to worry to much about what’s underneath. Clothes get wet from the outside layer first, so having waterproof outer layers should be your priory.

The point in our code where the wetness system decides whether the item is considered underneath or on top.

However, Be careful, the layer system is turned off in rivers or mud because water soaks through everything.. So it’s best to either remove any non-waterproof clothing or store it in a waterproof backpack.

Wetness also affects your ability to make fire.
Wet fuel won’t light, so keeping fire materials dry is key to survival.

Every item now has a Water Retention value, laying the groundwork for deeper wetness mechanics. Rain, mud, rivers: they all matter. Your gear (and your chances) depend on it.

All items now track wetness even when they're in your inventory. We swap full Actors for lightweight instances, so wetness stays consistent no matter what happens.

- Yoan

Lighting

Lighting is easy... when you control everything.
Fixed time of day, perfect weather, handcrafted levels? No problem.

But in Go Wayback, we have a full day-night cycle, dynamic weather from blizzards to fog, and millions of procedurally generated worlds. That makes lighting a whole new challenge.

We’ve built 9 dynamic transitioning weather scenarios, each with its own day/night cycle.
Lighting them all has been a fun (and often unpredictable) challenge.

In our latest update, you’ll notice redesigned clouds, sky, sun, moon, lightning, and a new camera exposure system. Some oddities may slip through, like my personal favorite: glowing ghost cabins.

We’ll be smoothing things out over the coming weeks, and we’d love to see any weird bugs you spot! Make sure to share them in our Discord!

- Alex

The map room

At the top of the Weather Tower sits the Map Room: a 3D miniature of the world you’ve explored, complete with your exact route.
The core tech is now in place, and we’re happy with the feature as it stands. But we see big potential here. Over time, we plan to expand what the Map Room tracks and how it visualizes your journey.

Stay tuned. It’s only going to get deeper.

I’ve been working on the interiors of the Map Room and the Weather Tower’s upper floors.

Lots of layout work, 3D assets, and set dressing—aiming for a “remote, hastily abandoned weather station” feel.

The strange exterior made believable interiors tricky, but great concept art helped bring it all together.

- Will

I built the tech behind the Map Room’s miniature world—visualizing your journey in 3D was a fun challenge. The rainbow path shows where you’ve been (for now), but we’ll be updating it to better fit Prologue’s tone.

Next up: showing stats like hunger and temperature directly on the map.

- Djanco

The edge of the world

Our maps are finite so you always need a solution for the edge of the map. We won’t show or describe it here as you need to see it for yourself.

The game’s soundscape is grounded in realism and minimalism—except at the edge of the world. There, everything flips: surreal audio and visuals kick in to scream “Turn back!”

It reacts to where you look, creating a perfect “What just happened?” moment.

- Miguel

We use a datamosh effect as you approach the edge of the world. Coupled with the audio we feel it has a very unsettling effect and you instinctively want to turn back.

- Dom