Over the past few weeks, we’ve been hard at work behind the scenes, making Castle of Blackwater a smoother, more intuitive, and more stable experience for everyone, especially for first-time players stepping into the castle for the very first time.

From quality-of-life improvements and bug fixes to polish passes and UX upgrades, this update is all about boosting clarity and stability without compromising on the charm and chaos you know and love. We’ve also focused on continuing to improve the experience for our returning players with a mix of requested tweaks, fixes, and behind-the-scenes tuning. :flip:

Chatting with so many of you in Discord has been awesome. Your feedback, bug reports, and spicy hot takes have been a huge help. We hope you spot your suggestions and ideas in this update, and if not, don’t worry; there’s more coming.

Without further ado, here’s what’s new in Build 1.1.0 🏰👇

• Upgraded Unity Engine – We’ve upgraded our Unity version to improve overall stability and reduce random crashes. This also unlocks exciting new tech we’re looking forward to experimenting with soon.
  
• Upgraded Photon Networking – Our new Photon version comes with better networking performance and lays the groundwork for potential reconnect features in the future.
  
• Refactored Sound System – We overhauled our sound system for better consistency, performance, and creative flexibility in future sound design.
  
• Temporary Character Size Increase – Characters are now 20% larger, making it easier to traverse the map and show off your latest cosmetic drip.
  
• Safe Zone Minigame Fix – The Safe Zone pop-up no longer interrupts active minigames.
  
• Visible In-Game Lobbies – Players can now see lobbies that are currently in progress to decide whether to wait or search for another.
  
• Body Report Sound – A new global bell sound plays when a body is reported, slightly buffing the Sheriff and turning up the tension.
  
• Player Audio Settings – New settings UI allows players to individually mute or adjust the volume of other players.
  
• Ghost Projectile Diminishing Returns – Getting hit by multiple ghost daggers now has diminishing effects, reducing the chance of spam kills.
  
• Werewolf Sound Fix – Players in the Safe Zone will no longer hear the werewolf howl when a transformation occurs.
  
• Push-to-Talk Added – Now available in the settings for those who prefer more controlled voice chat.
  
• Musical Flames Rework – Slightly simplified and sped up: one fewer step and faster timing.
  
• Voting Round Duration Increased – Discussion time increased from 45s → 60s and defense time from 10s → 12s.
  
• Ghost Soul Economy Rebalancing – Reduced ghost soul spawn rate and increased prices for some ghost powerups to tighten the late-game loop.

• Vigilante Blood Effect – Vigilantes now get blood on their hands after a successful kill.
  
• Ability Use Bugs Fixed – Fixed several bugs where player abilities couldn’t be used in specific areas.
  
• Sound Glitches Resolved – A broad sweep of sound-related bugs has been resolved for cleaner, more immersive audio.
  
• Tutorial Stability Pass – Fixed multiple issues that could cause the tutorial to break or leave players stuck.
  
• Ghost Dagger Debuff Timing – Fixed a bug where the confusion effect lingered too long after being hit by ghost daggers.
  
• Room Names on Mini-map – Fixed display issues where room names weren’t appearing on the mini-map.
  
• Disconnected Bodies Reporting – Dead bodies from disconnected players can now be reported correctly.
  
• Book of Tasks Exploit – Patched an exploit allowing players to open the Book of Tasks just before teleporting after a vote.
  
• Psychic Ability Safe Zone Bug – Psychic ability now properly renders the correct map, even when used in the safe zone.
  
• Localization Fixes – Numerous language/localization issues across different UIs have been corrected.
  
• Record Keeper Note Bug – Fixed an issue where the death note would appear multiple times.
  
• Outfit Save Issue – Fixed a bug that prevented players from saving new outfits in the lobby inventory screen.
  
• Rematch Lobby Fix – Public games now correctly stay public after a rematch.
  
• Dead Ghost UI Bug – Ghosts can now properly interact with all components in the player list UI.

Just a quick heads-up: a few issues remain to be fixed. We didn't want these to prevent us from uploading before the weekend, but keep this in mind and don't worry about reporting these known issues:

• If the host player (the one who started the lobby) disconnects from an active game, the whole game will crash for everyone left in it. (this is a complex networking issue that we'll fix next week)
  
• Sometimes, some players won't see the time in the voting round
  
• The ghostly dagger, although better than yesterday, isn't as smooth as we want it to
  
• The player menu in the settings panel doesn't save your preferences when you close it.

If you find any other issues than the above, please let us know!!

As always, while we’ve squashed a lot of bugs and made big improvements in this patch, we know the work isn’t done. Our next area of focus revolves around making a new smaller map, implementing a cool new system for environmental lighting, and making a lot of improvements to mechanics and abilities to increase their clarity in gameplay. After that's completed, we'll move on to the next phase, which will include host settings, new characters, and more retention systems 🙂

Thanks for being part of the journey and helping us shape Castle of Blackwater into the best version it can be.

We’ll see you in the castle! 👻
[discord.gg]

Dear Villagers of Blackwater,

As we reflect back on a crazy 2 weeks surrounding the launch of Castle of Blackwater, we’ve come out the other end with a clearer vision of our way forward than ever before.

Our goal going into launch was simple; create enough of a buzz to quickly scale the game to a couple hundred CCU, ensuring that any new player can login and find a lobby quickly.

Although we did everything we could think of to force our way into a stable foundation of player liquidity, we have to accept that the road ahead will be slightly more turbulent than we would have liked it to be. Nevertheless, the Castle of Blackwater team remains committed to the ongoing development of our game.

Before we dive into our plans for the next few months, let’s first take a moment to appreciate everyone who came out in support of our launch. From those who have been around for a long time, to those who have just discovered us through following their favourite streamer, Castle of Blackwater welcomes you all.

The amount of positivity we received from our early players has been nothing short of amazing. And though the active player count may not yet be where we wanted it to be, we’ve found a lot of energy from the many favourable comments and reviews we have thus far received.

That being said, watching large groups of inexperienced players play our game for the first time has also been eye-opening! Issues that we thought were easily overlooked became more glaringly problematic, and with an audience of tens of thousands of potential players, every slightest imperfection suddenly seemed like a massively missed opportunity.

Those of you who know us by now will know that we don’t give up easily! So, after some internal strategizing, here’s our game plan for the next few months:

Due to our intense pace of development the past 2 years, we’ve slightly neglected on updating some of our core systems that we use to create Castle of Blackwater. Now that we have some more breathing room, we plan to upgrade our Unity and Networking services, so that we can find more stability and access additional quality of life features.

We’ve already started on designing a new map, that will be smaller and have fewer routes between key areas. We believe this will force more player-to-player interactions and create possibilities for a 5-player game.
 
One of our big goals this year is to port Castle of Blackwater to mobile, as an ad-supported free-to-play game, with cross-play capability. Doing so will allow us to tap into a much bigger player base, with no barrier to entry, to ensure better player liquidity.

Another piece of great feedback that we’ll soon be acting on is allowing lobby hosts to change different settings within their lobby, giving them control over balancing features and allowing them to set their own difficulties. This will solve many balancing issues and ensure that lobbies can play according to their preferred rule sets.

Beyond these major projects, we’ll also continue to push out new characters, minigames, powerups, and feature reworks. At the same time, we’ll also continue to experiment with different marketing initiatives in order to facilitate a steady player growth.

We really appreciate everyone’s support and patience as we enter this next chapter of our release. We promise to keep working hard and listening to your feedback, so that we can continue to evolve the game into the potential we all know it has.

While we do so, we’ll also continue to organise weekly game nights, events, challenges and other initiatives, as well as be around in Discord every day to talk with you all about our future.

Until then, we hope to see you in the Castle!

With love,
Team Blackwater. 🏰
[discord.gg]