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Find The NeedleSteam Demo · factory notes

Demo settings

Change the Demo back to English on Windows

Windows Demo · Captain Cholera reply, October 5, 2026 · build unspecified

The short answer

A player reports that the Windows Demo stores its language in settings.cfg, with English set as locale="en". The reported folder is %APPDATA%\Godot\app_userdata\Haystack Incremental.

Close the game and copy the original settings file before changing that value. This is a community configuration workaround for an unreadable language menu, not a reason to delete your save folder.

On this page

Edit only the language setting

  1. Exit the game. This avoids making a configuration edit while the game is still writing its settings.
  2. Open the reported folder. Paste %APPDATA%\Godot\app_userdata\Haystack Incremental into File Explorer's address bar. %APPDATA% means the current Windows user's Roaming folder.
  3. Find settings.cfg and make a separate copy. Keep that copy outside the game folder so you can restore the old configuration.
  4. Open the original file in a text editor. Find the existing locale entry and change its value to locale="en". Leave other settings and all save files alone. If the locale entry is not present, stop rather than inventing a file section.
  5. Save and relaunch. Check whether the menu now uses English. If it does not, close the game and restore the copied settings file.

Prefer a reversible reset over deletion

The source also says deleting settings.cfg recreates it with defaults and allows choosing a language at startup. To keep a reversible path, you can instead move that one file to your backup location while the game is closed, then relaunch. This move is our cautious adaptation of the reported reset, not a separately tested procedure.

A settings reset can reset other preferences too. Do not move the entire Haystack Incremental folder or remove files whose purpose you do not know.

If the folder or file is missing

Do not create a guessed save path. Check that you are in the Windows user account that ran the Steam Demo. The reply gives no Linux or macOS path, and this guide does not adapt it to those systems.

For a changed build, report your OS, Demo build and whether settings.cfg exists in the original language discussion. Omit personal data when sharing a screenshot or file excerpt.

Sources & version

Community instructions, not our own gameplay test. Version-specific advice may change after a Demo update.

Keep going

Your next useful guide

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