Wacky Drivers — Devlog #7: Gamifying the Game with Steam Achievements

It is funny how, as you keep developing stuff, you notice how many things are needed in order to have a polished product. This is not a wow moment, I've always known that, but being a solo developer in my spare time adds a new challenge on top of what already is a challenge on its own.

Before digging into my Dev Log, I’m happy to share that I have a Steam page for my game. It would mean a lot for me if you can check it out and add it to your wishlist :)

[embed]Wacky Drivers on Steam Race, drift, and boost your way through chaos in Wacky Drivers! Compete in Grand Prix, Arcade, and Time Attack modes…store.steampowered.com

Lately, I’m spending a lot of time thinking about motivation. Not just how fast the cars go or how tight the turns feel, but what makes players want to keep playing. That’s what led me to start integrating Steam Achievements into Wacky Drivers.

Achievements might look like a small feature from the outside, but once you start implementing them, they touch a surprising amount of the game’s architecture, design philosophy, and even future plans. Right now, this system is actively coming together, and it’s already shaping how I think about progression and challenge.

Building a clean bridge between game logic and Steam

One thing I care a lot about is keeping the core game logic clean. I don’t want my cars, race modes, or UI to know anything about Steam directly. A car shouldn’t care where an achievement lives — it should only care that something meaningful happened.

To solve this, I’m using a simple layered approach. At a high level, there’s an AchievementManager. This is the only place in the game that other systems talk to when they want to unlock something. Under the hood, that manager communicates with a lower-level SteamService, which handles the actual Steam-specific calls.

When a race finishes or a special condition is met, the game just calls something like Unlock("CLEAN_SHEET"). The manager then decides what to do with that request. Right now, it checks the platform — whether I’m running on PC with Steam or somewhere else — which already prepares the codebase for platforms like mobile (where I already have a released version of my game). The important part is that the rest of the game stays blissfully unaware of how achievements are implemented.

This separation pays off immediately. I can change how Steam is integrated, swap libraries, or even disable achievements entirely without touching race logic. The car just says, “I did the thing.” The system figures out the rest.

Why I’m using Heathen Engineering’s Steamworks wrapper

On the Steam side, I’m integrating achievements using Heathen Engineering’s Steamworks wrapper. I’m actively working with it right now, and the biggest advantage is how much boilerplate it removes. Instead of dealing directly with the raw Steamworks C# API, I get a cleaner interface that already handles initialization, callbacks, and edge cases.

For example, checking whether Steam is ready is as simple as verifying SteamSettings.Initialized, instead of manually wiring everything together. That might sound small, but it adds up fast when you’re juggling builds, testing, and constant iteration.

Of course, it’s not all magic. I recently ran into a compilation error caused by a namespace issue after restructuring some files. It wasn’t exciting or glamorous, but fixing it was part of the process. That’s development in real life — sometimes progress looks like solving a very boring problem so everything else can move forward.

Designing achievements that feel good to unlock

From a design perspective, I’m actively balancing two types of achievements: progression-based and skill-based. Progression achievements reward players simply for playing the game, like completing a cup or finishing a specific mode. These help guide new players and give them a sense of forward momentum.

Skill-based achievements are where things get spicy. These are for players who want to master the mechanics — winning a race without hitting walls, going off road, finishing with perfect control, or pulling off something slightly ridiculous. They’re optional, but they add personality and bragging rights.

I’m also having a lot of fun with the presentation. Achievement names and icons are becoming a place to inject humor and style into the game. Some are straightforward, others a bit cheeky.

Making sure it actually works

Testing achievements is its own little adventure. Right now, I’m constantly resetting stats, triggering unlock conditions, and checking everything through the Steam overlay instead of just trusting local builds. Debug logs are my best friend here, especially when I need to confirm that an achievement fires exactly once and under the right conditions.

This is also where a lot of “it works on my machine” assumptions get challenged. Running the game through Steam, with the overlay active, is a very different environment than hitting Play in Unity. Catching issues here saves a lot of pain later (or at least that is my hope).

Why this matters right now

Even though the game isn’t released yet, adding achievements at this stage is already influencing how systems are built and how modes are designed. It’s forcing clarity. What does the game reward? What behaviors do I want to encourage? What moments are actually worth celebrating?

As development continues, achievements aren’t just a checklist item — they’re becoming part of the game’s identity. And honestly, seeing that first achievement unlock through Steam never gets old.

Thanks for reading this devlog. I'm still figuring out what the next adventure will be once I solve this one to make a new devlog entry :)

If you want to follow development more closely or see features like this evolve over time, you can join the free Patreon here:

👉 https://www.patreon.com/c/Jacware

As always, if you want to clap this article, follow me or wishlist my game would mean a lot for me :) See you in the next one!

[embed]Wacky Drivers on Steam Race, drift, and boost your way through chaos in Wacky Drivers! Compete in Grand Prix, Arcade, and Time Attack modes…store.steampowered.com