Hey folks,

I’ve been quietly chipping away at a little project called When the Mud Came and figured it was about time I posted an update here.

It’s a satisfying, incremental, dad-style power washing game. The setup is simple, and a bit ridiculous: a random mud volcano has appeared and dumped mud absolutely everywhere. Most of the time you’ll just be cleaning, but there’s a bit more going on under the surface if you look closely. As I work towards a full demo, the first area you get to tackle is a roadside services stop with a gas station and motel.

No saving the world. Just pressure washers, grime, the satisfying loop of cleaning, earning, and unlocking upgrades, and seeing the world slowly come back to life as it gets clean.

v0.1 – The raw prototype

The first public build (v0.1) was very much a rough prototype. Hard edges, placeholder visuals, and not much dressing, but it proved the important stuff:

• The cleaning mechanics

• Dirt to clean progression

• The core loop of spray, progress, satisfaction

Not pretty, but it showed the game had legs.

v0.2 – World and atmosphere

With v0.2, the goal was to make the level feel like it actually exists somewhere, not just a playable area with hard edges. I built out the surrounding space, justified the boundaries, and added lighting and atmosphere so it feels like a place that got hit by a mud disaster and then left to rot.

This is also where the tone of the game really started to settle. (ItchIO dev log)

v0.3 – Interaction & Questing Systems (WIP)

I’m currently working on v0.3, which is all about interaction and structure. This update will include:

• A proper, reusable interaction system

• Fully realised quest building framework (with one new "quest")

• A unified notification system

I'll update this thread as soon as v0.3 is out the door!

If that sounds like your kind of thing, feel free to check it out, leave feedback, or just watch mud slowly disappear. More updates soon. Back to spraying.

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PS: If you’re interested in a more in-depth breakdown of how things are built and why certain decisions were made, I write a longer blog post alongside each devlog over on https://www.brazenbraden.com/whenthemudcame/.

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Quick disclaimer: some of the art you’ll see right now is AI-generated. I’m not an artist and this is very much a solo dev prototype phase. If the game gets traction and funding, I’d absolutely want to replace it with proper hand-made art.

I’ve just released version 0.3 of When The Mud Came, and this one is more of a chunky systems update rather than a big content drop.

Up until now, a lot of the game logic was fairly bespoke. Interactions were mostly limited to reading objects, the “quest” flow was basically hard-coded endgame logic, and notifications were handled by a couple of separate one-off systems. It all worked, but it wasn’t something that would scale very well as the game grows.

v0.3 is where I stepped back and reworked those foundations.

The interaction system has been rebuilt so interacting with the world isn’t just about reading text anymore. Interactions can now trigger different effects like toggling lights, playing animations, transitions, particles, and one-shot interactions. These are already live in the demo and help make the world feel more reactive and alive.

Alongside that, there’s now a proper quest system in place. The old hard-coded endgame flow has been replaced with a generic framework built around tasks, conditions, and sequences. Right now it’s driving the main endgame and one small side quest. The map is still pretty small, but the idea is that this gives me a solid base to build proper questlines and side content later without rewriting everything again.

Finally, the notification system has been unified. Instead of having separate popups for secrets, startup messages, and so on, there’s now a single notification system that any interaction, quest, or game event can hook into. It’s more consistent from a player point of view and a lot cleaner under the hood.

So v0.3 is less about “lots of new stuff to do” and more about setting the game up so future updates can add content, story, and interactions without things getting messy. The build, devlog, and video are all live now if you want to check it out.

Download & Play: https://brazenbraden.itch.io/when-the-mud-came

Itch DevLog: https://brazenbraden.itch.io/when-the-mud-came/devlog/1352278/build-03-quest-int...

Full Blog Post: https://www.brazenbraden.com/whenthemudcame/2026/02/09/v0.3-interaction_and_ques...

As always, feedback is very welcome.

P.S Added a couple QoL features too. There is now a new setting to have the power washing always spray regardless if its targeting a valid surface or not, and the crosshair now changes from white to red if not targeting a valid surface.