A Thank You From Dovetail - And What's Next!

What an incredible launch day, we've had such a good time engaging with everyone in this community around the release of Thomas & Friends™: Wonders of Sodor, and we hope you are all excited to get to explore the Island of Sodor like you've never seen it before!

We want to extend a thank you to everyone who has been involved across our spaces, who has shared feedback, incredible screenshots, or helped players whilst they get downloading. You've made today extra special, and have been a huge help to our team!

Your Feedback
As a note, we've been taking in alot of the feedback from the community, and we wanted to acknowledge some of the top areas that we're aware of, and investigating closely to help improve in future updates. This is not a full list, but some of the most common areas we've seen discussed.

Explore Mode & Signal Issues
We've seen many players jumping into Explore Mode and feeling stuck, or unable to drive the trains they spawn, as passing signals results in the service ending. In order to allow for Explore Mode to work correctly, you'll need to first set a Destination using the map, finding an area of the world you'd like to drive to (specifically clicking on the track), and choosing the 'Set Path' option. This will unlock the signals to allow you to drive onwards.

There is a brilliant guide from TheBritishAce that can talk you through the steps to set this up, which we highly recommend.

How To Use Explore Mode Guide (TheBritishAce)


Music Not Playing In Scenarios/Explore Mode
Many players have mentioned that our original music for Wonders of Sodor isn't available during in-game sessions, and we wanted to acknowledge the feedback whilst our team investigate how we can support this in future. We're very grateful you're loving the score!

3. Skippable Cutscenes
This is another area we've heard from many players who want to re-visit stories without the need to view the cutscenes again, and we appreciate this is a useful quality-of-life change that we can investigate to include in an upcoming update.

4. Completely Hiding the HUD
One aspect we're also aware of is the ability to remove the HUD completely, especially for those who are hoping to create all sorts of content using Thomas and the characters of Wonders of Sodor! We're looking at options we can implement to support this in a future update.

5. Facial Expressions
Finally, we've seen some players access an in-development facial expression menu, which we were planning to fully support in a future upcoming update. We're still working hard on this feature, and the version that we've seen people utilising isn't final, and wasn't intended to be available, however, we're also aware that there are many desires to use this functionality, and so we'd like to gently welcome any players who wish to use this feature.

• On PC, you can access this by using the shortcut 'Ctrl+Shift+S', and it will target nearby characters. You'll need to use your mouse to right click to access the menu.
• On consoles, you will need to make use of an external keyboard plugged into your device in order to use the shortcut.

We don't expect any issues, but please let us know if it causes problems for you. As a reminder, we have a brand-new UI for this expression menu, and better access coming for all players, on PC and console, and we'll share more when it's ready!

What's Next for Wonders of Sodor?
We know many of you are very eager to know more about what the future holds, but we first want to make sure that your experiences on the Island of Sodor are the best they can be before we share any news here, which is why we're prioritising working through your feedback and our first patch for the game, coming to you soon.

We'll share more news on this, and in the meantime we'd welcome your continued discussions, feedback and screenshots in this community!