Cowboy Life Simulator news & patch notes

Howdy Partners - the New Roadmap is here!

It took us a moment, but here it is! The Roadmap!

We're heading back to our Wild West roots. Just two roadmap items this time, but both are big, beefy, and frankly some of the most exciting stuff we've ever built. We can't wait to show you what they are.

If you've got questions, drop them in the comments. Thanks for hanging in there with us, partners. You're the best community in the West.

If you've got questions, drop them in the comments. Thanks for sticking with us, partners.

Want to be part of the Cowboy Community? Find us on our Discord server!

Howdy Partners!

The new update is here. It's called "Whispers in the Woods", and it's the final chapter in the mystical side of Cowboy Life Simulator. Ghosts, altars, midnight fern flowers, and a strange old peddler living across the river. After this one, we’re leaving the magical thingies behind and going back to the Wild West classics: horses and farming.

This is THE major update we've been working toward since The Late Shift, so there's a lot to dig into.

A new questline!

The day after you blow up the dam with Ruff, Reverend Boswell writes to you. He's been corresponding with an old friend across the river and wants you to go check on him.

That friend turns out to be Percival Templeton, a peddler with some unusual hobbies. Five quests follow. They take you across the river, through a stone circle, and eventually into the spirit-catching business.

Ghost catching!

Yes. Templeton hands you a lamp and a pouch of pearls and sends you to hunt ghosts.

Pearls find the ghost. The lamp reveals it, but only in a limited range. Once it's visible, you can shout at it to herd it toward the catcher. Shout too little and it slips away. Shout too much and it gets offended and disappears. Get it just right, and you collect ectoplasm.

A new crafting station!

Ectoplasm fuels the altar. The altar lives by the stone circle in the new area and crafts strong sera and tonics that go far beyond your herbalist table.

A little tip: visit it around 6:30 in the morning. The sun lines up with its eye!

A whole new area!

A new piece of the map opens up as you progress. You'll find Templeton's camp, the altar, and fern flowers. And a buyable plot of your own near the altar for chests, a cabin, and whatever else you need.

Oh deer!

Deer now roam the new area. They're skittish, so sneak or come prepared. They drop meat, hides, bones, fat, and sometimes antler, which you can grind into powder at the Quern.

New potions!

Four new potions, all with quality-scaling effects:

• Pour one on a field to boost the quality of everything you harvest there.

• Drink one to soak up less damage from falls, bandits, animals, and bleeding.

• Drink another and your hammer might finish half a building in one swing.

• Drink the last to heal statuses and top off hunger, thirst, energy, and HP.

The better the ingredients, the stronger the effect. Brewing well pays off.

Watermelon, level cap, and a few extras

Watermelon is a new crop. It unlocks in Amelia's shop at Frontier Level 13 and goes into one of the new potions.

The level cap goes up to 14. There are new challenges..

Unreal Engine 5.7

We've finally finished moving the game over to Unreal Engine 5.7. This is the big lift behind a lot of the stability and performance work, and it underpins everything we're planning next.

We also added a save backup system. If the game spots a corrupted save, it falls back to your previous working save automatically. Hopefully far fewer lost runs from here on. 

Unfortunately, this will not fix the corrupted saves you may already have. So if after update you are still stuck on the loading screen, the only thing you can do is delete the saves and start a new playthrough. Sorry about that, we couldn’t figure out how to fix that :(

A word on the bumpy ride

The engine move was rough on some of you, and we know it. Freezes and performance issues are still surfacing, mostly tied to how buildings spawn and unload. We're actively reworking that.

Thanks for sticking with us. We promised we'd land 5.7 and we have, and now we're focused on making the most of it.

That's it for now. Join the Discord, drop us a comment, and if you're enjoying the game, please leave a review. They help us more than anything.

Happy trails,

Przemysław Stański Studio Head | Odd Qubit

New content added

• Mysticism questline with five quests, featuring Reverend Boswell and a new character, Percival Templeton

• Ghost-catching mechanic, including pearls, the Liminal Engine, and ectoplasm

• New area across the river, including Templeton's camp and a buyable plot of land

• New mystical crafting station (the altar) for strong sera and tonics

• Four new strong potions: max crop quality, damage resistance, fast building, heal all statuses

• Deer as a new level animal

• Watermelon, a new crop unlocked at Frontier Level 13 in Amelia's shop

• Level cap raised to 13

• New challenges

• Map (M) expanded with the new area

New mechanics and fixes

• Unreal Engine 5.7.4 migration

• Save backup system: corrupted saves now auto-revert to the previous working save  (wont work with already corrupted saves)

• Search zones added for quests that require finding something in an area

• Updated Drop Chest UI

• Improved key tooltip display

• Honey is lighter

• Potion recipes updated, high-quality ingredients are now more rewarding

• Deer, and fixes to deer behavior

• Failed animal breeding prompt now states which animals were involved

• Fixed incorrect quest markers above animals after a roundup

• Fixed horse durability not being consumed properly

• Fixed bandits appearing near Aunt Amelia's house

• Fixed Seeder blueprint item

• Fixed sound class issues that caused some sounds to ignore volume settings

• Fixed Mail Lookup / Escape inventory bug

• Herbalist table, weaponsmith, blocked drag-and-drop, and white inventory slot fixes

• Dragonfly wings rendering pipeline fix

• Environment fixes: sinkhole, Templeton lake, torch in a rock, and more

• Deconstruction fix

• Fix for duplicated fields caused by hoeing or potions

• Fix for automatic workstations when resources are in slots other than 1 or 2

• More shader compilation fixes

• Removed some debug lines

Guys, we are very sorry for the delay with the newest update :/ Our QA is coming back with more and more bugs to fix so it takes more and more days to track them down and then confirm they're gone...

We are targeting next week (11 - 15th of May) for the release, hopefully Monday or Tuesday. Again, sorry for the delay, I hope you have some patience left

We'll get there eventually!

We owe you an update, so here's a big one.

It's been a while since we released a patch and engaged with you in any meaningful way. The reason for that is simple: we've been heads-down analysing the survey results and replanning Cowboy's entire release schedule.

Over 1,150 of you filled out the Great Roadmap Survey. Wow! That's a lot of opinions, a lot of bug reports, and at least one person who just wrote "Fu&ing horse." We hear you.

Here's what you want most, in your own words: more world to explore, more to build, more story, fishing, and a proper ranching loop with horse breeding. You also want a female protagonist, controller support, and someone to finally fix the inventory. Noted!

The other thing that kept us quiet is the weight of our own roadmap. Monthly updates sound great on paper, but in practice they ate our development time whole. Constant bugfixes and polish passes left almost no room for the bigger mechanics you actually care about. So we're changing that.

Next week we're releasing the last update from the old roadmap. It's called Brewed After Dark, and it's got some properly funky stuff in it. After that, we're going back to the Western roots you all have been asking for.

We will release a major content update in late July, and then, by the end of the year: 1.0!

Two solid drops with the things we know you've been waiting for, and the second one will be Cowboy Life Simulator in its final form: juicy, polished, optimised, full of wild west content!

So what's coming?

• Female protagonist

• Farm automation with workers

• Fishing

• Horse breeding and reworked horse riding system

• Controller support and better inventory UX

• The other side of the river with new quests and exploration

• New quests, items, buildings, and new lands to buy

We are very happy with the list above, and we hope you will enjoy it too!

We'll be revealing the full roadmap next week alongside the update. Stay tuned.

Happy trails! The Odd Qubit Team

Howdy Partners!

The new update is here! It’s called “The Late Shift”, and as we head towards April’s major update, we are starting to roll out some new stuff to do in Cowboy Life Simulator.

Potions!

Our vision of the Wild West is pretty laid back. We prefer fun and engaging mechanics rather than staying within historical constraints. So, we are adding some fun potion consumables and a herbalist crafting table!

New forage!

To craft the potions, we added some new forage, like mushrooms or a legendary fern flower. Some of them will appear only in the morning or at midnight, so you’ll have to be a little more deliberate when exploring.

Also, we completely reworked how forage (including iron and flint) works, so it will respawn more reliably. That said, for now it won’t be easy to learn where and when to find some of the new forage, so we’ll post a guide on Steam and work on a more systemic solution for April’s update.

Insects! (bugs?)

Some of the ingredients will require insects, so we added a bug-catching mechanic. Nothing fancy, just a little break from the regular farming grind :D

Bus/sell shortcut keys!

We implemented Shift-clicking and Ctrl-clicking in the vendor panel. It has no rebinding or tooltips yet, so it’s a little rough, but we wanted to include it as fast as possible, as it was a highly requested feature. 

You'll find the complete changelist at the bottom of the post. Huge thanks to all the unstable branch players who caught some real bugs and provided us with feedback! 

We are opening the new feedback pinned post - please let us know what you think!

The Great Roadmap Survey!

When we first published the roadmap, we saw some comments criticizing the order of updates, and some of the concerns hit the spot. 

So this is the moment to speak up and let us know what direction we take! The survey is available here:

https://forms.gle/WBKSNJgQmUkiVjoY9

Some of those elements will be difficult to implement (like multiplayer), but we decided to iclude those options as well, so just speak your mind and we’ll see what we can do!

There’s the Odd Qubit newsletter form in there too, sign up to receive occasional updates about our projects :) 

Game not working issues…

Some of you are having trouble playing the game: saving crashes the game, black screens etc. We are trying to fix them all, but in some cases, it’s nearly impossible. We were not experienced enough when we were designing the game, and now it’s a problem for you... It feels bad, but we want to make it all work again.

We are moving the game to the new version of Unreal Engine, reworking the save system, and some of the backend stuff. It will take some time, but in the end, we hope this will solve most of the issues, boost the performance, prevent new problems from appearing, and allow us to implement features like gamepad control.

So please bear with us, we’re doing our best!

New Content Added:

• New resources that only appear at night or other times.

• Catching insects with a bug net.

• Craftable potions.

• Herbalist station.

• Ability to Shift-click and Ctrl-click to buy and sell items more easily.

• New settings:

  • Autosave options

  • Players commentaries frequency

• Totem (guess our inspiration!)

New mechanics and fixes:

• Added Fence snap point for grand gate.

• Progression and quest starting fixes

• Some performance fixes

• Animals UI crash fix

• Out-of-order pumping station investigation fix

• Sleeping skips days sometimes fix

• Spooky mine sound effects audible everywhere fix

• Small crafting stations (Composter, Bee Hive etc.) are now movable like furniture

• Blocking bug when early access completed prompt breaks dialogue fix

• Dynamite and detonator out of order placement fix

• Holdable tools rework and upgrade

• Too much animal crap items fix

• Mailbox notification when no new letters

• Fix Shader for small props with RVT.

• Fix Rework for holdables.

• Some items were not compostable - now they are

• Some fixes to animals navigation in reference of buildings

• Fixed infinite loop in one of game managers

• More items count as half products now

• Adjusted Z kill distance

• Removed or adjusted some textures and meshes from the project to save memory

OK let’s wrap it up, it’s been a long post already. 

Join our Discord, comment on the update and review the game if you haven’t yet!

Happy trails!

Przemysław Stański

Studio Head | Odd Qubit 

Howdy cowboys and cowgirls!

It’s (hopefully) the last hotfix for the February update of Cowboy Life Simulator! It’s been live on the unstable branch for a week now, and we’re rolling it out to everyone.

List of fixes:

Fix Animal droppings will de-spawn after a period of time, animals will not produce droppings if there are already 30 droppings present.

Fix Incorrect “Clay Pit” names on deposits that don’t contain clay. Standard deposits are now called “Dirt Piles.”

Fix Challenge XP related to building should now be granted correctly.

Fix Auto-leveling for players who already had enough XP to level up before this patch.

Fix Incorrect / broken player comments.

Fix Empty emails should no longer be shown to the player.

Fix Various fixes to building synergies.

Fix Navmesh in the Medium Animal House.

Fix Updated the Animal UI breeding-readiness visualization.

Fix for Doors in the Medium Player House.

Fix Chests that don’t support synergies now display info that they can’t be connected to crafting stations.

Fix Issues related to save files and burned buildings on the player’s farm.

Fix Switching a fence ↔ gate should now correctly manage animal navigation.

Fix Adjusted Abraham’s behavior to make him easier to find.

Fix Most Holler Zones have been enlarged to make it easier to call NPCs.

Fix Improved furniture placement near fields — items can now be placed closer together.

Fix Sprinklers now work at night as well.

Fix removed bushes and foliage should no longer regrow so quickly (it will take several days now).

Fix Minor level fixes ( a few incorrectly placed lights).

Fix to the train schedule and train de-spawning.

Fix Issues with item removal/consumption by crafting stations.

Fix Voiceovers.

Fix Missing string in animal entry.

We are now working on delivering the next update, coming up late march.

If you have any issues with the game, plese let us know here on Steam or join us on our Discord server, as we are more active there: https://discord.gg/ZKmyKgD7EY

Have a great weekend!

Odd Qubit team

EDIT:

We have just updated the game one more time, as we have found the update broke permanent buffs in some cases and made temporary bugs like Overloaded "flicker". This is now fixed, and the lost buffs should be back.

Also, we fixed a performance issue with lots of hungry animals on the farm.

Howdy Cowboys! We have a hotfix for you on the default branch.

• Fix level stuck at 11 and not progressing if player has too much exp

• Fix Fixed chickens stuck under the coop

• Fix Landscape at farm - reverted lowering of the landscape

• Fix Rabbit cage description

• Fix Removed duplicated foliage around church and sheriffs office

• Fix Manure composter

• Fix Removed scattered light in hades

• Fix Fixed description of strange sculpture quest task typo Myor->Mayor

• Fix Swamp PP location changed to not overlapping with serpents path

• Fix Manure composter, composter and beehive can now be moved

• Fix Changed collision in MANY buildings - should fix some issues with furniture clipping walls

• Fix Fixed a bug with disappearing items when deconstructing a building. Now all should pop into lootbag

• Fixed the bug deleting quickslot items when doubleclicking items at crafting stations

As we all know there will be some bugs as this is still work in progress, we ask you as the community to please be patient and report any bugs found on our Discord or her in the forums.

We figured this workflow that we post an update on Thursday so we have time on Friday to work on the hotfixes on bugs we failed to catch, so you can have a better experience on the weekend. We may move it to Wednesday though... There were some nasty bugs, so we may need more time with the next update.

Happy gaming cowboys!

Howdy Partners!

Now, to the new Content:

Howdy Partners!

The Roadmap is here!

Howdy, Partners!

HO-HO-Howdy Partners!

Sorry to keep you waiting. We went quiet for a bit while figuring out what went wrong with the last patch and reworking parts of the code. Our first instinct was to hotfix and push ASAP, but since we already had a holiday patch planned, we decided to merge both into one bigger update! That’s why it took a little longer.

Some of you have already been playing the updated build on the unstable branch. We use it as test ground for players who don’t mind a higher bug density and want to help us test new features early. That branch is here to stay, and we’ll post a proper how-to when we update it. For now, everything rolls into the default branch.

I also want to apologize to anyone who felt like we disappeared or stopped responding in the forums. After the release, we were honestly a bit overwhelmed by the sudden workload. Community communication on Discord and Steam, fixing and testing builds, and setting up a proper update structure all hit us at once.

To be absolutely clear: we are not quitting the game. 😉

Today we agreed on the scope of upcoming updates with our publisher, RockGame, and we’ll be sharing a roadmap in the coming weeks! Yes, sprinklers are coming. Early February.

We’ll do our best to stay in closer contact with you, including here on the Steam forums. Thank you for your patience. This is our first game, we’re learning as we go, and yeah, we’ll make mistakes. Hopefully fewer with each update.

Alright, enough with the gloom. We’ve got a Christmas update for you! 🎄🤠

Have a chill holiday!

Przemysław Stański Head of Studio at Odd Qubit

P.S. and I’d like to introduce this fine horse fellow:

John Horse is here and has great news for y'all! The Christmas Update is here!

But most importantly…

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL THE COWBOYS! 

Thank you for being with us! We hope that your Christmas will be filled with love, a great time with family and friends and after all the celebration… time for playing the new update!

Soon you will be able to get some amazing stuff to decorate your farm and prepare it for Santa! Look for him in the sky, he will be there any moment!

And as always, the list of fixes and additions for those who like to read! 

Yours horsefully,

John Horse

Christmas additions:

• During the 23th-30th of December there is a chance to spot Santa in the sky!

• On the 24th of December you will get a letter in the mailbox with some Christmas decorations! Don’t worry, it will wait for you there until you finish your celebrations, but only until the 1st of January.

Most important fixes:

• Fixed crash related to a corrupted save file

• Fixed disappearing buildings

• Fixed foliage respawning after loading the game

• Fixed the building spawn critical bug

Other fixes and changes:

• Added a combat start cooldown functionality

• Added an easter egg with the statue of The Greatest Sausage Eater

• Added a crafting recipe for a chest and mailbox

• Added a new quest: “Gone, But Not Forgotten”

• Fixed the “Sign Where the "X" Is” quest, now it properly closes

• Fixed Walter bank and cheque disappearing

• Fixed the “Kill animals” challenge

• Fixed reward items from jobs

• Fixed missing various quest items

• Fixed detailed inventory regeneration (buggy, unusable tools and weapons)

• Fixed craftable items, no more duplication

• Fixed the hoe crafting recipe

• Fixed the water tower, forge, workshop building material costs

• Fixed the strange sculpture building material cost

• Fixed the quest markers 

• Fixed the animals freezing after loading

• Fixed animal requests giving 0 hours

• Fixed the Big Mean Boar quest fight – no more random despawns

• Fixed the crafting queue - working on items in crafting queue

• Added Train, Hand crafting and UFO sounds

• Multiple localization fixes

• Horse calling at the Dreamers’ Falls is no longer possible

• Fixed the train car in the sky

• Added more herbs spawning points

• Fixed the Spooky Mine lightning issues

• Fixed the rocks and detonator collisions on the Dreamer’s Cliffs

• Fixed the glass material on the lamp

• Fixed the Dreamers’ Falls investigation Fancy Hat blocker

We’re reverting the latest patch.

Howdy Partners!

The most important things are:

CRITICAL FIXES:

GAMEPLAY FIXES:

INVENTORY & ITEMS:

QUESTS & NARRATIVE:

ANIMALS & FARMING:

AUDIO:

UI/UX:

TECHNICAL:

ART & LEVEL:

Howdy Partners!

We have another hotfix for you!

Howdy Partners!

This was truly a wonderful year for us. Cowboy Life Simulator is something that definitely defined 2025 (and the last three years ;D) for our studio. Not only did we release it, but we gained a massive, wonderful community! We know we are thanking you guys a lot, but you are truly amazing! And what is a better way to celebrate the release of Cowboy Life Simulator than with a nomination to a Steam Award?

Please, nominate us in the Story Rich category! Thank you a lot and see you in the next update!

If you want to be a part of the Cowboy Community, check out our socials: X, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and join our Discord server!

Howdy, cowboys. ⚙️🔧

We bring to you our first hotfix! In this little patch, we:

• fixed the dialogue line skipping feature

• removed the ominous black blob in the sky

• introduced some minor tweaks to HLODs

And that’s hotfix 0.5.222-5 for ya.

Cheers!

Howdy, friends!

If you haven't already, make sure to check out our Discord server at the link below! https://discord.gg/W9qws7w5Sr

The team at Odd Qubit

Howdy Partners!

We did it! Cowboy Life Simulator is live on Steam!

Howdy Partners!

We recently passed the threshold of 100K wishlists!

Howdy Cowboys!

COWBOY LIFE SIMULATOR IS RELEASING ON 26TH OF NOVEMBER!

Wishlist “Cowboy Life Simulator” today!

Howdy, partners!

We’ve just wrapped up the playtest for Cowboy Life Simulator and we want to say a huge THANK YOU to everyone who participated. Your time, feedback, and bug reports are incredibly valuable to us.

From cozy ranch building to epic Wild West adventures, we’ve seen players dive deep into the world we’re creating – and your insights are already shaping the next steps of development.

🛠️ What’s next?

We’re now hard at work implementing improvements based on what you’ve told us – from performance tweaks to gameplay balance, quality-of-life fixes, and new features you’ve suggested.

💬 We read every comment and survey – and we’re prioritizing the changes that matter most to you.

Stay tuned – we’ll be sharing updates, sneak peeks, and developer insights as we get closer to release. Until then…

Thank you for being part of our journey. The West is in good hands.

– The Cowboy Life Simulator Team

Howdy, Cowboys! We’re getting real close to the release of Cowboy Life Simulator – and before we let you ride off into the Wild West, we’ve got one last chance for you to saddle up and test the game before launch.

That’s right: Final Playtests are live!

This is your last opportunity to:

• Build and manage your ranch from the ground up

• Experience the early chapters of your cowboy journey

• Share feedback – every insight helps us improve the game before release

🎮 How to Join?

Just hit the “Request Access” button on the game’s Steam page:

Thanks for being part of the journey and sharing your thoughts. We can’t wait to see how you build your frontier life.

See you on the ranch, The Cowboy Life Simulator Team

DISCORD

Howdy, partners!

After a few years of development, we are getting closer and closer to release! Therefore, we wanted to share with you our favorite bugs in Cowboy Life Simulator, and how we managed to fix them. Sometimes, bugs are annoying, but at other times they can bring a smile to your face after hours of hard work. Here they are, in no particular order. We brought pics and we brought gifs.

Absolutely Enormous Crops

We were changing the way crops update in size over time – plants’ scale gets updated as they age. Because of the system change, the plant scale was absolutely enormous, so during spawn we were setting the mesh scale to some absurd values. After fixing the scale, crops are no longer so giant (but what a blast it was, for a time).

Bandit Monstrosity

This cursed God-knows-what is connected to combat. Our bandits at one point would just kind of do whatever this is whenever they got shot. Yeah.

You Cannot Sit Here!

That was a recurring problem. Let’s be honest, anyone even remotely familiar with making games knows what a pain NPCs and their AIs are.

Slice of Cow

One of us, while testing a quest, decided to see what would happen if they shot a cow not belonging to them. The effect? The cow’s body would get sliced with every shot. The cow? Unphased.

Mr. Hen Head

We got the animal-buying panel and the inventory panel a little mixed up. Peak Wild West fashion though.

Mysterious Explosion

To be honest, we still do not know what happened there. Nobody has seen it either before or again, and the only person who ever was able to capture it was our Project Lead, while filming something completely unrelated. Maybe you will be the one to witness it again?

You Spin Me Right Round, Baby, Right Round…

This character you’re seeing here has a very custom way of moving, as she’s a wheelchair user. We kind of forgot about that when implementing the way NPCs are to move between different actionpoints.

Cow Boogie

We were implementing some new animal animations. During the import a message showed up, saying that the rig bones used on the imported mesh and rig bones on the skeletal mesh linked to it are mismatched. It asked if we wanted to change it, so (obviously) we clicked “yes”.

Well, that was a mistake – nearly every cow animation imploded. Thankfully, during further tweaks, we managed to reset the local rotation of the mesh. Finally, reverting the import and fixing the skeletons outside the engine helped.

Ruff Getting Folded Like Fresh Sheets

This one was connected to combat, and how bandits are to fall when killed. However, we applied this mechanic to every kind of NPC by accident, not only bandits… Yikes. Heatstroke from the Wild West sun?

A Truly Startling Bandit Ambush

I mean, your head can start spinning from a sudden adrenaline rush, but this much…?

So what do you think? Don’t hesitate to reach out, comment, suggest, or share a laugh! Follow us and shoot us a message at our Instagram – @odd.qubit. We’d also love to have you over on our growing Discord server – here’s the \. Happy trails, friend.

Wishlist “Cowboy Life Simulator” today!

Howdy, partners!

Farewell, Nanite

Draw Calls, LODs, and Distant Tree Drama

Lighting on a Leash

CPU: Simpler Collisions, Smarter Code

Data Loads and Animal AI

Howdy, partners!

Daily Routine

Neighbors & Quests

The World

Back to the Axe

That’s the loop!

Wishlist “Cowboy Life Simulator” today!

Howdy, partners!

1. Shaping a concept

2. How our NPCs affect (and are affected by) gameplay

3. Writing realistic dialogue

4. Implementation

The community

Wishlist “Cowboy Life Simulator” today!

Howdy, partners!

Wishlist “Cowboy Life Simulator” today!