Tidewrack Demo Patched: Menu Ghost, Co-op Breaks, and Darkness Fixed

Developer Kiro published a substantial demo update on 31 August, crediting two weeks of player forum reports and co-op test evenings as the direct source of nearly every fix.

What changed

Startup stutter — On first launch, inventory icons were generated in the background, causing roughly eight seconds of stuttering before the menu appeared. That generation now completes before the menu loads.

Invisible menu overlay — A ghost copy of the main menu could persist over a running game on the very first launch, swallowing mouse clicks and making the game appear frozen. The same overlay showed save slots as permanently empty, leading players to believe saves were lost. They were not. The bug was tied to the one-time language prompt and disappeared after a restart; it is now resolved at the source.

Darkness — Night and dusk were widely flagged as unplayable. The darkest period turned out to be sunset — the window after the sun sets and before the moon is fully up, which coincides with when players are typically building their first lamp. Unlit surfaces now have a light floor. Daytime is unchanged, and night remains dark. A brightness slider has been added under Options → Display.

Co-op session handling — Multiple co-op flows were broken in ways only visible to a second player: "Back to main menu" did not actually leave the session, starting a new game dropped the host back into the old one, and the guest received no notification, continuing to build in a world that no longer existed.

The source text ends mid-sentence on the co-op section, so the full scope of multiplayer fixes is not entirely captured here. Taken together, the patch addresses the worst first-impression moments the demo was making.