In September the first pre-alpha keys went out and the first player reports came in. Many of the fixes below are based on these reports. The most important changes: a new weapon, lobbies with invitations, match replays, and ball chains that interact with the environment.


The Spaghetti Net takes the complete ball chain of any glider that touches it. The balls stay in the net and drop as loot when the net dissolves. The caught glider is slowed down until then.

The Spaghetti Net with a caught glider and its balls

The other control weapons now cost balls as well. The Shockwave empties every ball chain inside its blast radius, including the chain of the player who fired it. The Inflator makes the target drop its complete chain into the arena. The Gravitator costs one ball at the lowest charge and two balls at full charge.


Ball chains now collide with the arena. A chain scrapes along buildings, rocks and the ground. If a ball gets stuck behind an object, it holds the glider back for a moment, and then the chain tears at this point. A tearing chain has its own sound.

A glider with a long ball chain next to a ruin on Ocean Arena


Two arenas now have a guardian. On Sphinx, Anubis patrols the arena and attacks gliders that come too close. On Ocean Arena, a giant crab walks through the shallow water and fires a water jet that sends gliders tumbling.

Anubis, the guardian of Sphinx

The crab, the guardian of Ocean Arena


There is now a chat during the match. Press ENTER to open the chat, and press ENTER again to send the message and close the chat. The chat shows the avatar and the colour of each player.

LAN games and private games now have a lobby. The host chooses the venue and the mode, the players mark themselves as ready, and the match starts with a countdown. You can invite players through Steam or with a lobby code. Players in the same network are connected directly.

If you lose the connection or leave a match, the start menu offers to bring you back into the match for three minutes. Your score, your colour and your team are kept.


We reworked the collision shapes in all arenas. Objects that look solid now stop the glider, for example rock faces and the trunks of palm trees. Openings that look open can now be flown through. Three openings were blocked by invisible collision shapes before, one of them is the ice arch on Whiteout.

The shipwreck and the sunken temple on Ocean Arena now have more detailed collision shapes. You can fly between the masts of the wreck and between the columns of the temple.

A glider flies between the masts of the shipwreck on Ocean Arena

The scoring ring at the portal is now at the same position the server uses, in every arena and at every graphics setting.


The start menu has new pages: a list of your bug reports with their status, the replays of your last ten matches, and the party page with party code and invitations. All pages of the menu can be used with a gamepad.

The play page of the start menu with glider selection and party list

There is a new graphics preset for slow computers, called "I have a Toaster". A lost connection is now shown as a clear message in the menu.


The game records every match and keeps the last ten. You can watch a replay with a free camera. A bug report can include the replay of the current match. This helps us to find the problem.

You can now follow your bug reports in the game. A list shows every report you sent and its status. We can ask you a question about a report, and you can answer it in the same place.

• Radar: it shows opponents and incoming rockets. It also shows how many balls each opponent carries, and it zooms out at higher speed.
  
• Ballheist is now a team mode, blue against red. Your glider shows the colour of your team.
  
• A match now ends with a podium for the three best players. A voice counts down the last ten seconds of the match.
  
• All gliders are about 15 percent faster, except the Speeder. The Speeder keeps its top speed, carries one gun instead of two, and its smoke weapons do half the damage. Classic mode is not affected, all players fly the same glider there.
  
• First version of joystick support. The barrel roll is now on Q and E and on the shoulder buttons of the gamepad.
  
• Graphics: anti-aliasing is now one setting with four levels. The arena textures need 2.6 GB of graphics memory instead of 8.5 GB.
  
• The weapon guide now explains every weapon with animated drawings.

Thank you for all your reports. Please keep sending them.