Everyone must update
The network version went 29 → 31. An out-of-date client cannot join. This one matters more than usual: a mismatched player's lowered body would be treated as standing by the server while they believed they were hidden, so shots would land where neither player expected. Restart Steam and update.
⌨️ Crouch is gone, and prone has changed hands
We shipped crouch two days ago. It is now removed, deliberately.
Having two lowered stances just asked you to pick between "a bit hidden" and "hidden", and prone won every time it mattered — while the crawl was too slow to be worth using. So there is one lowered stance now, and it is faster.
- Prone is hunters-only, from the role reveal to the end of the hunt. Hiders no longer go prone at all — you have poses for that.
- It is on Ctrl (either one) or R3 on a pad, and it is a toggle — press once to go down, press again to get up. No more holding a key for two seconds.
- Crawling is more than twice as fast as it was, now half your walking speed.
- While you are prone the camera closes in over your shoulder to frame your gun — going down is committing to a shot, so it reads like one.
- C is now free.
Two knock-on changes worth knowing: there is no crouch-jump any more, and the whistle no longer stands anyone up.
Hunters: the weapon forge opens facing you now
Picking a weapon opened the build editor pointed at a dark corner, with you and your rune slab shoved into the bottom-left, and it stayed there until you dragged it back by hand. The camera was being placed 1.59 m from your own hand, tilted down at it, seen through the 22%-transparent body the forge opens with — which just read as scenery. It now frames your grip.
And a long list of forge fixes from last week's session
- Cubes built on your gun stopped you shooting entirely. Every placed block carries a collider, and the weapon was hitting your own blocks.
- Painting your own body did nothing — silently — whenever the forge was pointed at the weapon, while every part of the interface said it would work.
- Cubes on your right arm and hand refused paint while every other limb was fine.
- The Modify handles were drawn 1.4× too big on a hunter but the grab test was not, so you could aim straight at a handle and grab nothing.
- Switching to body-building now has the placement tool ready immediately, instead of needing a click to wake up.
- One stretch of the draw tool could produce a single 1792-cube, ten-metre-long block.
Hunters in the lobby: platforms, and privacy only while you build
Hunters now wait on spaced-out spawn platforms, one lit per assigned hunter. The privacy rule has been narrowed since the last build: other hunters are hidden from you only while you are actually in the build editor. Step out of it and you see everyone again — and the guns they are building, live. Previously the whole hide phase was curtained, which meant you could not watch anyone's work.
The scoreboard knows who the host is, and everybody's ping
Both are now facts the server hands out, so every player sees the same host badge and the same numbers rather than each guessing locally. They are also frozen into the end-of-match results, so a player who leaves can never end up wearing someone else's ping on the final board.
Loading screens
- A new screen for going from the menu into the lobby, with a voxel animation instead of a tour of a map. The old one showed you around whichever map happened to be the default — a map nobody had picked.
- Loading screens now stay up for at least five seconds. A fast load used to flash the screen for barely an instant, which read as a glitch.
- Starting a match on the map the lobby is already in now shows a loading screen at all. Nothing actually loads in that case, so you previously went straight from the lobby into the round with no transition.
The end-of-match show
The creation gallery now plays as a timed showcase before the interactive final board, so the creations get their moment before everyone starts clicking around the scoreboard. The scoreboard itself has been cleaned up.
Climbing
You can now see your cling range before you attach, so grabbing a wall stops being a guess.
Fits on your monitor now
The pause menu, the Custom Match popup, the Choose Body Shape popup and the climb prompt strip have each been fitted to every supported resolution. If one of these was cut off or spilling off the edge for you, it should not be any more.
Sound
- Placing and removing a clone now makes a sound, at the decoy itself.
- The countdown alternates its tick every second and pulses through the final ten.
- Painting has its own sound.
Also in this build
- The version number now tells us exactly which build you are on — including the Steam branch and the build ID. If you send a screenshot, that line identifies the binary, which saves us guessing.
- Report Issue points at the live form again.
- The round-start reveal no longer tells hiders they are hunting.
- A frame-rate limit option.
- New weather in progress behind the scenes — rain and lightning.
Known issues — please don't file these
- There are no new maps in this build. You may hear about Battlefield, Pirate Cove and the Zoo lobby — they are art still being built and are not playable. The map list is Cactus Courtyard, Candy and Plaster Gallery.
- The new host badge and ping readout have never been tested across a real internet connection — only locally. Tell us if the numbers look wrong.
- Prone, the forge camera and the loading screens are all new this build and have not been through a full playtest.
What we most want to know
- Hunters: does prone feel worth using now? It is twice as fast and one press. Does the over-the-shoulder camera help you shoot from it, or get in the way?
- Hiders: do you miss crouch? This is a deliberate removal and we want to hear if it left a hole.
- Open the weapon forge. Does it face you? Build cubes on your gun and then try to shoot. Paint your own body while the forge is on the weapon.
- Build on your right hand and paint it.
- Check the ping and host badge on the scoreboard against what you would expect — especially if someone is far away.
- Watch the loading screens. Menu to lobby, lobby to a different map, and starting a match on the map you are already in — all three should show something sensible.
- Look at the pause menu and the popups on your monitor. Anything cut off?
If something looks wrong, press F12 the moment it happens — it marks that exact instant in your log — then run Collect-Logs.bat and send us the folder. The version line in the corner now names your exact build; include it in any screenshot.