- Devlog #23 - Financing games is hard. - 23 September 2026
Hel... Hello? Oh, this is so dusty. *cough* Well. It's been - checks the date - almost A YEAR since the last time I wrote here. What happened? Lots. Not so much for Highway to Heal though. Let's travel through time, it will explain everything. 2022 I'm alone at Manufacture 43. The company has some money in the bank from previous contract works. I prototyped quite a few games but the one standing out is one with a top down vehicle. It started as some kind of Micro Machines revival but quickly diverted to something more old school GTA. Physics are not great but it's funny. Two paths unveil before me: make the game more systemic or more narrative. I do my first ever marketing research and it looks like the narrative way would be the best. It would be expensive, but everyone around me says bank load easily these days. I also do my first ever real financial estimates and it sounds feasible,…
- Devlog #22 New trailer! - 17 November 2025
Oh, hai! 22 devlogs in and I still struggle to find the words to start them. As usual since last month, we fixed bugs, we did some optimizations (easy 60FPS on steam deck now 😎) and we read feedback. We know now one thing for sure: this game will stay top-down! The chase view was a nice experiment but it posed more challenges than fixed problems with the top-down view. So we will continue to improve the inputs of that one. I recently had the idea of having automatic J-turns, I wonder when I will be able to get around implementing that! New Trailer Making a game is important, but people have to know about its existence too! That's why we spent a couple of weeks working on our best trailer yet! If you could share it with your friends, communities and on your socials, it would be super nice! 🙏 Norm EN 1789 Have you ever heard of the EU norm EN 1789? A few years back, I would have guessed…
- Devlog #21 - What have we been up to? - 6 October 2025
Hello everyone, Since the last big demo update (which got a small update so you can save progress), you might be wondering if we spent our time sleeping. Well, you wouldn't be too wrong about that, as we both took some well deserved time off! About two-three weeks for each of us. So you can guess that, the rest of the time, we worked a lot! There has been a lot of bugfixing, but also new features. Let me show you some of them. New district Tom has been banging on triangles and blasting textures to create a new style of building that you will see in an upcoming district of the city. Like all of our districts so far, it doesn't really have a name yet so we just call it Future. Neons all over you think? This is not Sci-Fi Singapore! Welcome to Le Mascaret, where trees are very heavily guarded by firepeople, well taken care of and sometimes used to build buildings without the high pollution…
- A minor update with a BIG CHANGE! - 19 September 2025
Hey everyone! With the ongoing contest on playquest, we wanted to address a small issue that will be a big quality of life improvement there: saving! While the code was half there already, we didn't have any plans on releasing a demo that could save its progress. It's rather short after all. But since we can now replay missions and try to better scores, it's quite nice to be able to start the game without having to replay it from the start. So here it is, an update that has no new content but progress being saved. Oh, and we also fixed the sound of the engine of the ambulance that was missing. Sorry, my bad... As always, do not hesitate to tell us if you have a problem or what you think of the game. We are all ears! Come to our discord for the quickest replies! Good luck & have fun :)
- Devlog #20 - Big Demo Update! - 20 August 2025
Hello everyone! We have been talking about it for two months, it's finally here! This is a big update with numerous changes that, we hope, greatly improve the game. With these changes it's more comfort and more fun that are coming to Highway to Heal! Changelog 🏎 More fun driving : a slight straight line assistance and drifting! Be careful when it's raining 😜 🗺 Holowatch disppeared! Missions are now started automatically and the map is semi-automated 💉 You can now start treatments by yourself while driving! 💬 Dialogs while driving have been completely revamped 🚑 First missions have been simplified 🥇 New end of mission screen 🎁 More explicit display of rewards 🚸 The tutorial is now directly integrated into the adventure 🌳 Many shortcuts to discover 🚑 Collisions have been improved: it's now easier to slip through! 💥 Re-balanced damages 🚧 Roadworks are now automatically added t…
- Devlog Hebdo #19 - Design & Interface - 31 July 2025
Hello everyone, No, this news won't be about announcing the update of the demo... But we are approaching something that works and oh boy, so many new things there is. I wrote this first in french and I'm now translating it to english, maybe it will more interesting this way? Let's check this out. As teased previously, we revamped quite a bit of the interface and design of the game. The holowatch is over, the bottom right corner now always displays the minimap. To start a new mission, just go to the patient. We also modified how ambulance integrity points work. We now have a more classe bar in the bottom left corner, indicating the number of points left before getting towed to the nearest garage for repairs. On both sides, we have what we call affectionately "the ears": they display how much siren time we have used and how long to wait before starting a new treatment on our patient. In b…
- Weekly Devlog #18 - Drifting & More! - 18 July 2025
Hey hey! I hope you're healthy! Third Person View Progress Or should I call this "Behind view"? The top down view is third person too, after all. It feels quite different a game, right? Don't ask for both, the final game shall only have one! The 3D is designed for being viewed from above. As such, the models have some deformations that are not very elegant when seen from a more common perspective. That's the reason the game won't feature both views: we will have to remove all those deformations, if we make the change. Which one do you like the most? Or, better, which one looks more fun? (If only steam allowed for better image file formats, we wouldn't be posting 7FPS stamp sized animations... Come to our discord if you want a smooth video!) Drifting Finally! It's back! Back you say? In January, Daniel completely rewrote the physics of the vehicles starting from code published on Github…
- Weekly Devlog #17 - Big changes coming! - 4 July 2025
I'm not sure if we can call this weekly since the last one was almost a month ago, haha! But we're going to try to keep this weekly (or biweekly) again. Anyway, Hello everyone! A Successful Crowdfunding We're very glad to be out of this one. Crowdfunding campaigns are super stressful. Ours concluded with a success but a mere hours before the end! It was to be expected, especially with a small platform like Ulule. Even with our half way start due to our Game Cup prize, it was tough. https://media.ulule.com/presales/3/8/7/0/0/2/200783/untitled.ghDI2DQGJg.png But it's very nice that we got not just our 5000€ prize but double that! A massive thank you to all our supporters, we won't thank you enough. This money will surely help us get through the year! Also... It's still active! We left it open until the end of the year so people can still pledge. If you want to name a street of the game, t…
- Highway to Heal Crowdfunding - 13 June 2025
Hi everyone, Two months ago we released the demo of our upcoming game, Highway to Heal. It's a solarpunk adventure game where you drive an ambulance to reach out to patients and provide them first care in the beautiful city of Le Mascaret, a utopian city thriving in the middle of the difficulties of a very unstable climate. https://store.steampowered.com/gfxproxy/betagfx/apps/2213710/extras/Conduite02.gif?t=1749629414 Feedback so far is pretty good! We already updated it twice to add show new features, improve the game, the interface, fix bugs, etc. We plan on regularly updating it as a our development goes so that you're always able to play the best version of it. We think it's also interesting as a speedrunning challenge! https://store.steampowered.com/gfxproxy/betagfx/apps/2213710/extras/desinfect.gif?t=1749629414 As you might know, we then started a crowdfunding campaign on Ulule an…
- Weekly Devlog #16 - Demo update! - 9 June 2025
Hello to our wanabee paramedics! A weekly devlog on a monday?! Yes, we worked a lot to deliver the update of the demo and it delayed the news a bit... As promised last week, we updated the demo of Highway to Heal! This update takes into account some of your feedback (others need more time) and let's you discover new areas of the game. It might(?) not seem much, but a lot of work went into this update. There is a lot of things that happens behind the curtains and doesn't necessarily show explicitly, but it's necessary work for the development of a video game. We tried a lot of things to improve the minimap and it's still not perfect yet. We do believe it's better though and we have a few things up our sleeves that might finally make it just right. If you need a copilot to read it, bring in a friend, it's fun! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2899360/Highway_to_Heal_Demo/ Changelog 🚑 M…
- Speedrunning & New Missions - 29 May 2025
Hey you! Fancy some adrenaline? I got a few things that might be to your taste. New missions! As I've hinted last week, you won't be able to help Basile after the next update of the demo... Because you'll meet two new characters with quite a few surprises! First you'll help Celeste, firefighter, who is feeling really well. Nothing to do then? Except distributing oxygen bottles over town while a sandstorm is ongoing! After that, you'll meet Jawara, a meteorologist, and... a surprise passenger! 🙀 Speedrunning! It was grayed out, it will be available in the upcoming update: from the ambulance center, you'll now be able to open the list of past missions to check out how you did exactly in each of them. Unsatisfied of your care? You'll be able to immediately replay any mission and try to do better! We can't wait to check out your speedruns! With patients at maximum health, obviously! Minima…
- Weekly Devlog #14 - A Game Made in France! - 22 May 2025
HHHHHHEEEEEEEELLLLLLLLLLLLOOOOOOOOO! It's THIS LOUD that MisterMV introduced Highway to Heal on stream last Sunday. No-one was ready! That surprise was amazing. As was the rest of the stream! If you speak french and want to go watch it now, go ahead, I'll be here waiting for you to come back and tell you more! Games Made in France Day 4 on MisterMV's Twitch Games Made in France The team of Games Made in France was super nice, as were MisterMV and Trinity who did an amazing job presenting the game and interviewing us for about 50 minutes - 10 more than planned, ahah. Special mention to the copiloting session at the end, it was very fun. It was hard for us to read the chat on stage... But friends gave us some amazing quotes which made us re-watch the stream to read the chat. People were suuuuuuper nice there too! It looks like everyone enjoyed the game and we had quite a laugh reading the…
- Weekly Devlog #13 - Demo Update & Crowdfunding Campaign! - 16 May 2025
Heallo! (bit of a stretch on that one, right?) It's time for the weekly devlog again! Demo Update Today, we are releasing a small update to our demo. While the last two weeks were very small to us, as France as many days off in May, and even if we were super busy with the crowdfunding campaign, we managed to squeeze in quite a few improvements! https://store.steampowered.com/app/2899360/Highway_to_Heal_Demo/ Most notable is a big audio improvement pass on the Super Stretcher, the caring games (almost playable just by ear!), etc. We also added audio to the main menu and it made a bit more playful in the process. I won't say more, I'll just let you discover that in our free demo. Also, it looks like I lied last week. While the vehicle AI is still needs a lot of work, we managed to make a small bugfix that should help a lot! Overall list of updates 📢 Sound Design upgrade 🌧️ Lit windows w…
- Weekly Devlog #12 - Demo Feedback & Upcoming Crowdfunding! - 9 May 2025
Oh, hey you! Want to read good news about Highway to Heal? You came to the right place! Demo feedback https://store.steampowered.com/app/2899360/Highway_to_Heal_Demo/ Many of you have played the demo already and we've heard mostly good things! It's so nice to have so many people freely playing the game now, instead of just waiting for events where we manually show it. Feedback is much more genuine this way! Thanks to everyone who answered our demo survey. It's pretty clear that everyone loves the music of the game! That's one thing we couldn't know if you'd like it from showing you screenshots, haha! But your feedbacks already started shifting our priorities in the development of the game. For example, we noticed many of you thought the game was quite hard and the problem seems to often come from the AI of the vehicles. We released the demo thinking the vehicle AI was "good enough" for…
- Weekly Devlog #11 - Demo release! - 2 May 2025
HEY! Finally! After intense months of work, the demo as landed! Stop reading this and just go play it! Also, fill in the feedback form as there's a chance to win a free copy of the game 👀 https://store.steampowered.com/app/2899360/Highway_to_Heal_Demo/ Still reading? M'okay, you're a curious one. Or maybe you played the demo already? In both cases, nice! Because I can tell you a few things you might find interesting or funny. Last minute tweaks and fixes Of course it didn't take us a full week to just a press a green "release" button. We were busy fixing bugs and improving things. A good one that made the cut was a blue silhouette that shows up whenever there is something in front of the ambulance, like the corner of a building or a tree, so that you never lose its sight. This one was in the works for a while but we needed to find a workaround of a bug in Unity to pull it out. We also…
- Weekly Devlog #10 - Final touches - 25 April 2025
It's hard to say hello in a different way every single time... But then again, I'm a programmer. So if 10 is an overflow of 9, this means I can restart. Right? Hello! As in many parts of Europe, last Monday was a holiday. I tried to work but I'm so tired that I quickly stopped because of how many silly mistakes I was doing. So, in short, this was a smaller week for us. Not to say that it wasn't busy though. Our Demo Steam Page was validated! You can even wishlist our demo now, haha. I didn't even know such a thing was possible. https://store.steampowered.com/app/2899360/Highway_to_Heal_Demo The build of the game is still in Steam's review queue. Hopefully we will release the demo next week. If you want to play early, come ask us a steam key on Discord! (Yes, there are steam keys for demos too. I had no clue either) New team member as entered the ring! With great joy, moving on, we will…
- Weekly Devlog #9 - The List and a Demo Coming Soon - 18 April 2025
Bien le bonjour à tous ! Which is french to say "hi everyone" in a quite fine manner. Yes, we're french, if you didn't notice already. Things are FINALLY shaping up for a release of the demo! The list of small things to fix or tweak before the release is finally slimming down to the point it's acceptable. We can't wait to have you all playing the game and telling us everything you hate or love about it. We know already that we have much work to do on the minimap, you can skip that one, haha. Because, yes, if you think you've found a bug in a game that a developer doesn't know about, they probably know about it. Why didn't they fix it then? Because they were busy fixing all the other bugs that were WAY worse. (That's not a bug btw, that's just an ambulance needing a few repairs) Anyway, let's talk about Highway to Heal! The list! As I said, there's tons of small fixes that we have to do…
- Weekly Devlog #8 - Happy People and Small Details - 11 April 2025
Welcome! Welcome! Welcome! It has been a busy week! ... Wait, wrong show. Hello everyone, so much happened since last friday. I don't know where to start! Spawn Festival As stated in the previous devlog, we had a table at the Spawn Festival in Angoulême, France. Thank you if you joined us, we had a blast! With two computers on premises, people didn't have to wait much to play. From what we could gather, players greatly enjoyed the driving, the funny vehicles, caring for their patients. Overall, they were pretty impressed by the refreshing proposition that is Highway to Heal. Demo Progress When you think of making a video game, you think of game feel, level design, visual effects, great music... What you don't necessarily think of, while being very important, is... menus! Well, unless your making a management game of course. Which we don't, by the way. Look at this ambulance. It can't wa…
- Weekly Devlog #7 - Two Big Weeks & Spawn! Festival - 4 April 2025
Hi there! As you might have noticed, our weekly devlog skipped a beat! Indeed, last week, as announced on our social networks, there was no news because we were too tired from a very busy week. What happened? Well, mostly we got on TURBO mode to ship a playable build with everything we really wanted people to try at a "playtest" evening gathering at our coworking space. A beautiful space shared with our friends from Nova-box, Ctrl Freak and Zaka Services. After having a couple of friends try the game the day before, we already had plenty of notes on our whiteboards. We fixed and tweaked the game to almost all of their feedback, before the evening. But we were sure people will bring up a lot of stuff to our attention. Playtesting is a very important part of game development as development is often a big tunnel that you enter with great ideas and get out with no idea if they actually work…
- Weekly Devlog #6 - Disinfection & Visuals - 21 March 2025
How do you do? The demo is nearing completion! There's still a few things to do and a lot of polish before releasing it, but you can expect to play the game in the coming weeks! Disinfection mini-game The third mini-game of the demo has been implemented and is now just waiting for the final visual touches. The story of this one is a bit weird as we ended up mixing two games that were previously designed on paper. This was supposed to be an evaluation game, to assess the situation of the patient. But we want our games to be more involved in the patient's health. And while taking the vitals of someone might be nice on their mood (or not!) it was not active enough in our taste. So we took the idea of a disinfection game and applied it over the existing gameplay and graphics and it works quite nicely! We will probably rethink the visuals though, by changing the tools to be more representati…
