The branch and password needed to access all the new content is:

Branch name: ModdersDelight
Branch Password: ModPizzaParty

Oh Yeaah!!! The massive Cave Story Steam update today, adds a ton of new features and upgrades including 2-player mode, mod support, enhanced visuals, and much more!

This update finally brings all of the later console-version additions to the Steam version of the game, including 2-player co-op mode. Venture back into the caves – but this time, bring a friend!

You’ll see many visual elements have been overhauled with this update, with the addition of animated dialogue portraits for all characters, enhanced dynamic lighting and water effects, improved environment shading, widescreen support, and more.

There’s plenty of love for the sound in here along with the visuals, with a total of four different versions of the game’s iconic soundtrack to choose from, as well as a new Jukebox feature to help you enjoy them all in one convenient place.

As for gameplay, you’ll find a number of helpful tweaks and gameplay improvements have been made. A few spots have had their difficulty minorly tuned or streamlined (like stacking puppies!) plus a Sand Pit Challenge level has been added to the game’s bonus challenge mode.

Even if you think you’ve already seen all that Cave Story has to offer, with this update, the game now supports player-created mods for custom graphics packs, challenges, soundtracks and more.

And that’s not even everything. Check the patch notes below for the complete list of changes – and happy exploring!

Good job, Fred. I’m proud of you

- CS+ Switch on PC

  - 2-player mode

  - Famitracks soundtrack

  - Ridiculon soundtrack

  - Sand Pit Challenge

  - Jukebox

  - Widescreen

  - Animated and flipped dialogue portraits

  - Lighting system

  - Physical water

  - Water backgrounds

  - Map shading

  - Strafing

  - Skipping dialogue

  - Difficulty tweaks

    - Jelly stacking

    - Puppy stacking

    - Escape Booster's pit

    - Easier Waterway cabin jump

    - Iron Bond acquirement tweak

  - Altered warehouse scene

- Modding support

  - Stackable mods

  - Lua API

    - Converted code

      - Arms

      - Bosses

      - Bullets

      - Carets

      - NPCs

      - Player

    - Unused code

      - NPCs 58 and 79

      - Various commented-out lines of code

  - Mods can add custom...

    - Graphics packs

    - Seasonal themes

    - Soundtracks

    - Sounds

    - Challenges

    - Fonts

    - Screen filters

  - Settings

    - Allow dialogue portrait flipping

    - Enable lighting system

    - Enable physical water

    - Adjust internal resolution

    - Change default player costume

  - Conversion of data blobs to JSON

    - Starting stage and event

    - Tables

      - Arms

      - Bullet

      - Caret

      - Music

      - NPC

      - Stage

    - Dialogue portrait animations

  - Custom bitmaps can now overlay (instead of replace) vanilla bitmaps

  - Per-room custom water backgrounds

  - 4x resolution textures

  - WAV sounds (instead of PixTone)

  - Unified shaded and unshaded map data

  - Merged challenge map tiles into main map tiles

  - Booster's Lab fork

    - CS+ TSC commands

    - 2x sprite resolution

    - New PXM file format

    - Reads and writes JSON map metadata files

  - Debug mode

    - FPS counter (default)

    - NPC list (default)

    - Unlocked challenges (default)

    - Unlocked jukebox (default)

    - Holiday selection (options)

    - NPC hitbox viewer (swap-left and pause)

    - NPC code viewer (F8)

    - Invincibility & infinite booster code (swap-right and pause)

    - One-hit kill (jump and pause)

    - Credits cheat code (up, left, down, right, up, left, down, right, L1)

    - Costume unlock cheat code (up, down, up, down, left, right, left, right, L1)

    - Fast-forward (swap-left and swap-right)

    - Swap controllers in 2P mode (F12)

  - New TSC commands

    - XX2

      - Similar to TSC+'s IMG

    - OUT

      - Changes the player's 'outfit', allowing mods to switch between playable characters

  - Raised NPC limit from 512 to 1024

  - Raised maximum number of tiles per stage from 256 to 65536

    - PXM file format has been expanded to allow this

  - Raised flag limit from 8000 to 10000

- Curly Story difficulty levels

- DSiWare Sanctuary Time Attack

  - Snake, Super Missile Launcher, and Life Pot

  - Alternate music in starting room

  - Bonus image upon completion

- Extra 2-player costumes

  - Easy Mode Curly

  - Hard Mode Curly

  - CS+ Quote (when using Classic graphics)

- Fixes

  - Unobscured dialogue portraits (top and bottom rows are no longer missing)

  - Restored missing features

    - Scrolling damage numbers

    - White circles that replace the '=' character in dialogue

    - Text box scrolling text out of view instead of just disappearing

    - 'THANK YOU' stars easter egg after the credits

  - Centred Heavy Press and G-CLONE boss arenas

  - Missing translation for Balrog's, Misery's, and the Doctor's descriptions in the normal credits

  - Stage name no longer has two drop-shadows

  - Text drop-shadows uses correct colour

  - Level 2 and 3 missile graphics are no longer swapped in CS+ graphics

  - Corrected centring of the '<GIT' graphics.

  - Animated dialogue portraits in Challenges

    - Wind Fortress

    - Sanctuary Time Attack

  - Improved sprite-work

    - Challenges now support seasonal graphics

    - Updated credits illustrations in Classic graphics

    - Boss Attack uses native Classic graphics instead of downscaled Cave Story+ graphics

    - Various NPC sprite improvements, including an overhauled Heavy Press

  - Improved Organya playback

    - Drums use linear-interpolation sampling instead of nearest-neighbour sampling

    - Fixed panning of right channel being inverted

    - Fixed track panning not being initialised (would make notes very loud when panning is not explicitly specified)

  - Improved Remastered soundtrack

    - Last Cave (Hidden) has a unique version of the Last Cave theme

    - Credits use a unique version of Mischievous Robot

    - Corrected song looping

      - Balrog's theme

      - Sand Zone theme

      - Labyrinth theme

      - Last Cave (Hidden)

      - Balcony

      - Mischievous Robot (Credits)

  - Updates from Freeware v1.0.0.4 to v1.0.0.6

    - Behemoth rage effects

    - Gravekeeper sound effects

    - Closed chest flickering sprite and animation speed

  - Modding-related fixes

    - TSC commands

      - CAT now clears auto-turbo mode instead of setting it.

      - MYD supports events above 255.

    - Game no longer corrupts when player has maximum weapons (8) or items (32).

    - Weapons no longer level-up to level 2 prematurely when EXP requirement is lower for level 3 than level 2.

    - NPC 150 can now use direction 10.

    - A line-break is no longer redundantly inserted at the end of a maximum-length line of text.

- Recreated official English sprites from pre-release Cave Story

- Incorporated unused dialogue portrait animations into the game

  - Smiling Balrog, in Malco's room

  - Coughing Toroko, in the warehouse

  - Fist-clenching Itoh, when first talking to him

- CRT screen filter

- HD Japanese font

- Challenge taglines

- Vastly-improved controller support

  - Button icons

  - Key icons

  - Custom controller bindings

    - Bindings for each player

    - Separate bindings for controllers and keyboard

  - All controllers control player 1 in single-player mode

  - Automatic player controller allocation in two-player mode