Hey everyone!

Just sharing that you'll see some refreshed Steam Artwork in all places the next time you restart Steam.

Test Branch is getting closer to being ready for Main, give us a few more weeks!

Also, feel free to follow our refreshed socials, where you'll see some new shorts and a long form video on the way.

Instagram[www.instagram.com]

Tiktok[www.tiktok.com]

Youtube

Facebook[www.facebook.com]

Discord[discord.gg]

Improved 'Camera Up' and 'Camera Down' Feel

-Adjustments to these camera modes to make them more comfortable to play

-Camera moves up and down, and doesn't jerk left and right as much.

Loading Screen Improvements

-Loading screen reflects the mode you're going into

-Shows different concept art on screen to change up the look

Controller Glyph Adjustments

-Glyphs adjust correctly to Playstation and Nintendo controllers.

-Players can choose the glyphs they want in Settings.

Controller Re-Mapping

-Re-map any action to any controller input. Save to a profile. Load that profile on any player.

Settings Menu from Anywhere

-We're re-working the Settings menu to make it accessible anywhere. No more leaving matches to change one value!

Less Jerky AI & More Difficulty Levels

-Fixed scenarios where the AI moved around in a jerky or twitchy way in matches

-Better positional awareness

-Less crowding together, AI make use of space to get open.

-Difficulty levels 1-9 for more precise control

Music Control from Pause Screen

-Full access to the music player from the pause screen.

Character Customization Returns

-Bringing back the Character Customization menu, where you can build your own character, save it, and play with it in any mode.

Up to 12 players locally

-Increase number of players in a match to 12, with HUD options to make following your character less chaotic.

Team Supers

-Have a bar that fills, and when activated provides different buffs for your teams for a brief period.

Night Matches

-Option to play matches at night for a different feel.

Return of Online Play

-Room based and fill based online play between other players.

Season Mode

-Play a 30 game season in a league and earn points to make the playoffs.

-After making the playoffs, compete in 4 rounds of best of 7 matches to win the championship.

• It's a fun mashup of platformer and sports game we've been wanting to try for ages

• Make your way through platforming challenges

• Find the ball in the level

• Bring it to the blue goal on the other side

• Beat the team defending it to destroy their base, opening up access to the next level.

• Score on the net to destroy the base and move on!

• We've pushed code in recent builds that should handle Steam Cloud saves for everyone, we just want to give it a little more testing and confirm it's merging playtimes of multiple devices correctly each time!

  //We think cloud syncs are working correctly, but we want to do some further tests before we announce it to everyone!

• The first woman playable character is mostly ready to go out!

• After we're confident with her model, we'll release more variants, until we've got 8 total women characters (or template characters)

• Again we're building the system to be modular, so eyes, hair, noses, mouths, clothing and accessories can be swapped in and out and create some nice variety.

• With Cloud Saves confirmed to be working, we'll next start applying basic player levels to your account based on games played, goals scored, and achievements unlocked in-game.

• It's meant to be a foundation for progression as you play the game.

• By default, not everything will be unlocked, but you'll unlock more as you play.

• Maps, characters, and cosmetics would be unlocked from playing the game.

• More unique stage hazards will come with the new toys we've been experimenting with in Free Roam:

• Switches, Levers, Cannons, and Collectibles

• Grab-able Hazards: Want to reposition a hazard or take it with you? Go ahead and play around.

  //We'll be experimenting with what level of freedom makes the most sense, and what players like. Do you want complete freedom of any hazard in-game? Or does it make sense to limit to hazards on your side?

• Adjust Hazard Refresh Time: Make hazards rotate on a set interval you choose, or set to random for absolute chaos.

• We're continuing to flesh out the tutorial in Free Roam to teach the basics of the game controls in a simple way. Expect little challenges and tests that teach you how each of the main actions work in-game.

  //Some improvements are in, some more hints and cues and nudges are there, but we've got more coming

• The music player will soon take into account what songs have been played previously and aim to play new songs, vs playing a random new song every time.

  //I think this has mostly been corrected, but we'll be adding some caching to make sure this works every time

• Wanna use your weight to slam down on a trampoline, then shrink small when going up to get super big air? Small interactions like that are on the way.\\

  //These are built (trampolines that give you more air based on how hard you fall down onto them). //We haven't gotten the math and the numbers feeling right just yet, so we haven't turned this on yet.

• Weighted pressure plates, pipes and gaps only small size can fit through, breakable objects only large can smash, to give an idea.

• Giving another pass to our player animations. They're responsive (aka they hit the key poses at around the right times to make player feedback feel like they're working), but they are a little twitchy due to the way we initially made them and sped them up.

• So we'll be doing a pass to lock in those key frames, normalizing their speed and cutting out in-betweens that look a little twitchy on higher frame rates.

• Characters will blink again and have various facial expressions based on what's happening in scene, giving them some more personality and aliveness.

• Gliding will get unique animations, with a unique pose and character tilting in the direction you're leaning in.

• Unique animations for player jumps in the 'up' and 'down' state of the jump.

• Hazards are getting updated to have more visual feedback when interacted with, and we're taking this even further.

• Things like 'dash effects' when receiving the effects of a dash panel, or unique audio when inside a fan are all little details we're putting in to make feedback feel even more clear and 'finished' when using.

• Materials will react differently depending on the object they're interacting with

  //Think how the ball has unique interactions with snow, grass, dirt, sand and more--we want to apply that to the player and more unique interactions between objects.

• A tournament mode where you can play against a set of teams to win a championship.

• Create a team with a team logo and player roster, and compete in a league against other teams.

  //Part of us expanding ways to play Arena Matches. With more character model variety in-game, we can make tournaments between teams and eventually build up to seasons with playoffs.

• Movement in Free Roam feels good, but we want to take it a step further.

• 'Momentum' (to us) is where players gain and lose speed slightly based on running up or down sloped surfaces or terrain. So running up or down surfaces have a feeling of weight, and you can do fun things like shoot yourself off a curved surface for big air! 🦔🦔

  //Adjusting player movement for slopes is about 50% done, we've got the basics down, we just need to make sure it triggers where we want it to in all cases

• Why choose the Lightning characters over the Fire characters?

• We want to add small gameplay reasons for having different elemental characters on your team.

• We'll be experimenting with the best implementation, but we have lots of ideas!

  //Think supers/ultimates, elemental affinities, strengths/weaknesses, team chemistry.

• Marsh, Jungle, Forest, and Beach Biomes will roll out once we've build environments for them that we're happy with and can keep the file size reasonable.

-Dave

How to opt into the free test branch to test new features early:

https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/276C-85A0-C531-AFA3

-Fixed a bug that was causing CPU players to group up too much on the middle of the arena

-Improved performance in many areas

-Fixed a lighting bug causing the map to be blown out by lights at times

-Properly lit and set dressed, improved skybox, added foliage, feels more lived in.

Performance improvements across the board

-The Wins Tracker sometimes doesn't go away after returning home

//Will be patched this week!

• We've been doing tests to check if we can ship out test features to the main branch yet

• We noticed some performance problems in Versus mode on lower end hardware that we're not happy shipping.

• It's a fun mashup of platformer and sports game we've been wanting to try for ages

• Make your way through platforming challenges

• Find the ball in the level

• Bring it to the blue goal on the other side

• Beat the team defending it to destroy their base, opening up access to the next level.

• Score on the net to destroy the base and move on!

• We've pushed code in recent builds that should handle Steam Cloud saves for everyone, we just want to give it a little more testing and confirm it's merging playtimes of multiple devices correctly each time!

  //We think cloud syncs are working correctly, but we want to do some further tests before we announce it to everyone!

• The first woman playable character is mostly ready to go out!

• After we're confident with her model, we'll release more variants, until we've got 8 total women characters (or template characters)

• Again we're building the system to be modular, so eyes, hair, noses, mouths, clothing and accessories can be swapped in and out and create some nice variety.

• With Cloud Saves confirmed to be working, we'll next start applying basic player levels to your account based on games played, goals scored, and achievements unlocked in-game.

• It's meant to be a foundation for progression as you play the game.

• By default, not everything will be unlocked, but you'll unlock more as you play.

• Maps, characters, and cosmetics would be unlocked from playing the game.

• More unique stage hazards will come with the new toys we've been experimenting with in Free Roam:

• Switches, Levers, Cannons, and Collectibles

• Grab-able Hazards: Want to reposition a hazard or take it with you? Go ahead and play around.

  //We'll be experimenting with what level of freedom makes the most sense, and what players like. Do you want complete freedom of any hazard in-game? Or does it make sense to limit to hazards on your side?

• Adjust Hazard Refresh Time: Make hazards rotate on a set interval you choose, or set to random for absolute chaos.

• We're continuing to flesh out the tutorial in Free Roam to teach the basics of the game controls in a simple way. Expect little challenges and tests that teach you how each of the main actions work in-game.

  //Some improvements are in, some more hints and cues and nudges are there, but we've got more coming

• The music player will soon take into account what songs have been played previously and aim to play new songs, vs playing a random new song every time.

  //I think this has mostly been corrected, but we'll be adding some caching to make sure this works every time

• Wanna use your weight to slam down on a trampoline, then shrink small when going up to get super big air? Small interactions like that are on the way.\\

  //These are built (trampolines that give you more air based on how hard you fall down onto them). //We haven't gotten the math and the numbers feeling right just yet, so we haven't turned this on yet.

• Weighted pressure plates, pipes and gaps only small size can fit through, breakable objects only large can smash, to give an idea.

• Collectibles (like coins, fruits, stars) will come to free roam, as we build more tools for making custom platformer-style levels for the single player experience.

• Giving another pass to our player animations. They're responsive (aka they hit the key poses at around the right times to make player feedback feel like they're working), but they are a little twitchy due to the way we initially made them and sped them up.

• So we'll be doing a pass to lock in those key frames, normalizing their speed and cutting out in-betweens that look a little twitchy on higher frame rates.

• Characters will blink again and have various facial expressions based on what's happening in scene, giving them some more personality and aliveness.

• Gliding will get unique animations, with a unique pose and character tilting in the direction you're leaning in.

• Unique animations for player jumps in the 'up' and 'down' state of the jump.

• Hazards are getting updated to have more visual feedback when interacted with, and we're taking this even further.

• Things like 'dash effects' when receiving the effects of a dash panel, or unique audio when inside a fan are all little details we're putting in to make feedback feel even more clear and 'finished' when using.

• Materials will react differently depending on the object they're interacting with

  //Think how the ball has unique interactions with snow, grass, dirt, sand and more--we want to apply that to the player and more unique interactions between objects.

• A tournament mode where you can play against a set of teams to win a championship.

• Create a team with a team logo and player roster, and compete in a league against other teams.

  //Part of us expanding ways to play Arena Matches. With more character model variety in-game, we can make tournaments between teams and eventually build up to seasons with playoffs.

• Movement in Free Roam feels good, but we want to take it a step further.

• 'Momentum' (to us) is where players gain and lose speed slightly based on running up or down sloped surfaces or terrain. So running up or down surfaces have a feeling of weight, and you can do fun things like shoot yourself off a curved surface for big air! 🦔🦔

  //Adjusting player movement for slopes is about 50% done, we've got the basics down, we just need to make sure it triggers where we want it to in all cases

• Along with momentum, 'coyote time' is that brief period you've walked off a surface but can still jump. It's common in platformers, and we've been looking forward to implementing it here too!

• Why choose the Lightning characters over the Fire characters?

• We want to add small gameplay reasons for having different elemental characters on your team.

• We'll be experimenting with the best implementation, but we have lots of ideas!

  //Think supers/ultimates, elemental affinities, strengths/weaknesses, team chemistry.

• Marsh, Jungle, Forest, and Beach Biomes will roll out once we've build environments for them that we're happy with and can keep the file size reasonable.

More to come!

-Dave

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