Hydroneer news & patch notes

TL;DR at the bottom!

As some of you may know after we finished Hydroneer in April 2024 we've been hard at work on our next game, Die Trying. Since we're a tiny team, even whilst working on Hydroneer we didn't have enough man-power to simultaneously work on the console port ourselves, and with how busy we are on the next game, we definitely don't have time right now! This has led us to partnering up with PlayEveryWare, console development pros that have worked with the teams behind "Among Us", "Fall Guys", "Valorant for Consoles", "Dispatch", and many other successful quality games on consoles. We chose them because they're the best of the best.

Whilst the console version (Xbox Series X|S + PlayStation 5) is going to be an almost exact copy of what PC players enjoy, their expert engineers have revealed some opportunities for more optimisation on Hydroneer. We've decided it would be a really nice to bring some of these optimisations to the original PC version!

Both Hydroneer and the Journey to Volcalidus (DLC) are set to launch on Xbox Series X|S and PS5 on May 8th, 2026, as well as the optimisation patch for PC! (Which is actually Hydroneer's SIXTH birthday!)

We also believe in keeping things fair, so the price on consoles will stay the same as it is on Steam: Hydroneer: $15 Journey to Volcalidus (DLC): $10

TL;DR

- Hydroneer coming to Xbox Series X|S & PS5 on May 8th 2026.

- PC players will benefit from a new optimisation patch.

- Priced the same as on Steam.

Xbox Store Playstation Store *We are aware of an issue on the Xbox store which lists the game as Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S. The game will only be available on Series X and S.

You can Wishlist our next title 'Die Trying' here:

We've always been interested in helping indie games, giving up-and-coming titles advice and support throughout their development, so when we learnt about GhostJam Games (Creators of 'Backseat Drivers') were looking for funding to help them over the finish line, it was a no-brainer for us to start up....

In short, we're aiming to help developers avoid predatory publishers and give indies incredibly fair deals to help them over the finish line. We do this by: - Giving developers a big chunk of money, and only requesting money back in return; so no predatory revenue-sharing models! - Only offering money and advice; to keep us focused on our current developments, and so these indies can develop their games their way. Read more about our developer fund here: https://www.foulballhangover.com/developer-fund.html If you haven't already got this incredibly fun game on your wishlist yet (or played the demo!), here's a handy link to their storepage:

Thank you for ONE MILLION HYDRONEERS!

From the bottom of my heart, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you!

When I started developing Hydroneer as a solo developer back in 2019, I never imagined this project would grow to such a wide audience. I could never imagine five years later I'd be sat here looking at our player numbers hit 1,000,000, let alone grow my one-man-band into a team of developers I'm lucky enough to also call friends, or be apart of an incredible community that has come together over the enjoyment of digging virtual holes and selling virtual shiny rocks. And it's all because of you, the players!

Cheers! Max

Oh, and we recently announced our next title!

Die Trying is a light-hearted co-op multiplayer sandbox shooter set in a fictional 90s/00s America. It's packed with lots of progression, interesting enemies, a huge and very detailed world, and unique game mechanics. It's a totally different genre to Hydroneer, but if you've enjoyed our unique approach to game design, you might also be interested in this! If you're interested to find out more, add it to your wishlist!

Add Die Trying to your Steam wishlist!

Watch our announcement video here

Purchase the DLC here!

A quick recap on a few of the many new features in the DLC

The Patch Notes

The Patch Notes

More quality of life additions to come!

Video Contents

Intro

Quality of Life Changes

• Moving around with a pan full of thousands of resources will no longer lag. Yep! We've done it. After some careful engineering we've found a way to remove the lag when carrying around thousands of resources. *There may still be a tiny hitch when picking up the pan, and a larger hitch when pouring it out.
• Moving around with a truck full of thousands of items will no longer lag. Just like with the pan, if you're hauling an entire base worth of items, the game will no longer drop FPS while moving these in a truck.
• Crucible no longer destroys ore of one type when melting a different type. This one is a little tricky to word correctly, but picture this... If you've got a crucible full of melted gold and you pour iron ore in to it, instead of that iron ore being deleted, now the iron ore will just fall into the crucible and not delete. No more expensive mistakes!
• Magnets no longer pull items that are stored in a pan/bucket. If you're trying to clear up some mess with the Magnet-on-a-stick, when you're depositing items into a pan, they'll stick to that pan and not be attracted back to the magnet.
• Freeplacing improvements! Holding down the pickup/drop button while carrying an item (E by default), the item goes into freeplacing mode. We've improved this feature for this update with some un-janking. If you've ever placed a Shard bar into a vertical Pressure Tank, you'll struggle due to the collisions. This new improvement solves that problem! In addition to this, you can now use your mouse scroll wheel to move the item closer/further to you.
• Vehicle Handling Improvements We've reworked the handling for all vehicles in the game to improve their mobility. Less likely to roll over and easier to drive!
• Dynamic Truck Exiting When you're exiting a truck, you're now able to dynamically decide which way to exit. If you're looking to the right, you'll exit on the right, if you look to the left, you guessed it... You'll exit on the left! Not only this, but if you're looking to the rear of the truck, you'll exit in the truck bed.
• Lots more! Be sure to check out the patch notes when the DLC launches on April 5th, there's a ton more quality of life and fixes we're adding to the base game!

Even more coming to the DLC!

• Feedback From Testing For the past few weeks we've been hosting a closed beta for the DLC. We've been using this opportunity to get feedback on balancing, what we could change, and what else to add to the DLC. We've had really good feedback so far with all our testers enjoying themselves. The main feedback take away is that 'It feels like the same game but in a totally new flavor'. We've made changes and additions based on the feedback we got from listening to our players.
• Hauler Crane Needed Some Improvements Testers found that the Lava Hauler (the very large vehicle which has a crane) needed to be buffed, so we made the crane able to extend very low to be able to place the huge heavy mining equipment at the bottom of dig sites.
• Speaking of dig sites... Feedback from players indicated that one more dig site would make the world feel more complete. We have to be careful about how many and how large these dig sites can be, as there's some pretty harsh technical limitations that we have to stick to with the technical side of terrain digging. From our research we have found that players tend to only use a maximum of 3 dig sites, so we feel that 6 is enough! We also didn't want to make dig sites for the sake of making dig sites - each one currently has their own personality, quirks, and benefits. If we were to add more we may lose sight of that. These dig sites are: - Dawn Rest: The starter claim, think of this as your Ember Cradle of Volcalidus. - Scoria Chamber: Like Mildews Aquifer. Dig down to get to lava! - Cinder Footing: Sits proudly at the bottom of the volcano. - Shattered Breach: Right next to Shattered Outpost, this is very close to the logic store and has a lava-duct running through it! - Waterside: That's right... it's by the water! (not that you can use water in Volcalidus!), this is my personal favorite dig site as its situated in the middle of a few towns. - Lumberton Bluff: The latest dig-site to be added to the DLC, this one sits right next to a town and has great views!
• Another Goal! Testers really wanted an expensive item to work towards when they've finished the main quests, steam achievements, and built up their dig sites! The Volcalidus Trophy is perfect for this, selling for a pricey 99,999 Scout Guild Tokens.
• THE LAVA THAW! Did you click on this post because of the cool concept art of the latest lava powered vehicle?! Well here it is, the Lava Thaw! It's a flamethrower wielding vehicle that is used to dig terrain! It has slots on the back for upgrade modules that allow it to dig deeper!
• Snowball Fights. We couldn't make a DLC set in a snowy land without snowballs! Find small piles of snowballs around the world to throw. You can even start snowball fights with NPCs!

Clarification on our recent announcement

Changes and Fixes Coming to the Base Game:

• New build-snapping while placing build items. Building items can be pretty annoying in Hydroneer, which is why we have implemented a new snapping system. Whilst placing an item, if you look at another placed item, it’ll offset what you’re placing to the corresponding side.
• Lighting is reworked. Shadows are now brighter, making it easier to see in the dark. Shadows in Hydroneer are quite dark and make it difficult to see when inside caves or at night. We’ve changed the way shadows/shade works in Hydroneer, which was a technical challenge to work flawlessly with the Day/Night cycle, and to not affect daytime brightness.
• Water pipe and logic cable optimizations. We’ve made some optimizations on water and logic cables. We’ve found some edge cases which hindered performance, as well as increased the baseline performance of these objects.
• Coins/Tokens combine stack whilst stored. Previously you were un-able to combine coins/tokens when they were stored in a truck/pan/bucket. This was due to them not having collision and thus not able to hit each other to combine.
• Skip save and return to menu. You guys asked for it, we’re adding it - a button on the ‘esc’ menu which allows you to return to the main menu without saving.
• Tooltips dynamically change size depending on its contents to prevent them from going off screen. Players using translations sometimes find that due to languages with longer words, sometimes names/descriptions trail off screen (We’re looking at you, Germany). This fix dynamically scales the box to fit all the text.
• Improved outline highlight when looking at items. The highlighting effect when looking at items has been reworked and looks crispier.
• Keybind tips now appear when entering vehicles. Some vehicles have multiple actions, these keybind tips appear in the corner of the screen and help players understand what actions require which key inputs.
• Shard model reworked. Shard models are sometimes problematic on conveyor belts. We updated the ‘hitbox’ of the shard to combat this, and figured we’d also remodel the shard.
• New signposts. We've reworked the signposts on the original island (Bastion). These sign posts are larger and easier to read, making traversal around the map a lot easier.
• Screenshot camera can now move faster. When capturing footage for the trailer, we noticed the Screenshot Camera was a bit slow, it can now move faster.
• Gamepad controller improvements. Firstly we calibrated the sensitivity with the controller, thumbsticks will feel better. We also reworked vehicle controller input, you drive using left/right triggers for acceleration and the thumbstick to turn now, which feels a lot better than before.
• Logic fixes. We noticed there were a few issues with logic, mainly the game not believing that 000000000 is the same as 0 when performing logic operations. We’ve fixed that.

Watch the Announcement Trailer / Dev Vlog here:

Wishlist Now!

Video Summary

Closed Beta

Corestone