Boss Battles Evolved
Permanent shield breaks, new level start countdown, and full 10-language localization support
Gameplay
Boss shield system reworked: Destroyed boss shields now stay broken permanently for the boss's lifetime. Bosses teleport after every surviving hit. Multiple broken sides persist across hits and snapshots. Enhanced VFX for shield breaks, relay, and teleport animations.
Boss weak-side hits: Hitting a boss on its exposed weak side no longer deals damage — the boss teleports to a new position and recalculates its patrol path. Unsafe hits break the shield on the hit side. Visuals changed from marking the safe side to rendering shields on all dangerous sides.
Soul Anchor grace extended: Revive invincibility increased from 1.5s to 2.5s. Damage is now properly blocked during invincibility across move results, enemy contact, and hazard systems.
Score/currency routing centralized: Consistent reward routing for enemy contact, bounty rewards, and item collection — improves correctness of objective, class-style, bounty, and achievement tracking.
Director food corruption: Now syncs lifecycle state and records Codex discovery.
Slide followup: Counts individual food collections and routes replacements through GreedPhaseSystem.
Objective hints: Added support for generic "defeat any enemy" objectives.
Burn tick timing fix: Corrected burn tick timing and damage system typing.
Food spawn safety: Added reachable fallback spawn logic.
Hazard system enhancement: Grid Lock and Board Wipe hazards can now spawn under snake segments while preserving visible occupancy, enabling more interesting spatial hazard mechanics.
Balance
Level start countdown: Duration expanded to 6-12s (was 1-5s). New "auto-start" toggle — countdown auto-runs or waits for any key press. Added level start panel for quick in-game adjustments.
Content
Risk chamber exit assets updated with objective banner hover reveal.
Codex fact descriptions updated to explain permanent shield breaks and teleport behavior.
UI / UX
Options menu: Added beginner-friendly ELI5 tooltips for all unclear settings across General, Audio, Video, Controls, and Gameplay tabs. Central tooltip registry for consistency. Tooltips support localization across all 10 supported languages.
Menu hover effects: Main menu buttons now tween their slot art (modulate and scale) on hover/focus.
Queued turn intent feedback: Snake shows immediate visual cue (squash/stretch on head) when player queues a direction input before the next movement tick.
Level start focus handoff: Improved focus handoff and board reveal during countdown.
Achievement tracker: New pinnable achievement tracker in HUD (max 3 pinned). Achievement cards are now fully controller-focusable and clickable.
Keyboard layout presets: QWERTY/AZERTY support with first-run prompt. Options menu exposes keyboard layout setting with tooltip.
Contraband shop row: Combined contraband payment and status into a single compact row.
Score-to-currency tooltip: Now explicitly explains the conversion rate (every 100 final score = +1 coin after Gridbreak multiplier).
Patch reward modal: Blocks input while paused, requires explicit continue action, defers cursed mutation countdown until modal closes.
Game over coins display: Split into label + value + bonus for better readability.
SnakeTooltip enhancement: RichTextLabel title, adaptive placement/width.
Dropdown styling: Added SnakeOptionButtonStyler and OptionButton/PopupMenu/CheckBox theme entries.
Audio / Visuals
Voice settings reworked: Renamed gridmaster_voice_mode to global voiceover_mode for all story speakers. Added voice play counting to limit repetition in story-only mode and cap dynamic taunts.
Boss weak-side marker replaced with sprite-based shield rendering.
UI audio cleanup: Removed redundant Gridmaster UI glitch audio asset and references.
Localization
Full localization push across all 10 supported languages:
Curse mutation names and descriptions
Player-facing content names (items, synergies, mutations, mod templates)
Workshop tags and color-blind options
Feedback messages
Class style labels (Balanced, Adaptability) and onboarding text
Russian multiplier notation fixes
Gridbreak level mutator names
Defense, recovery, economy, and fire tag body translations
Achievement track/untrack tooltips
Keyboard layout modal and options strings
Steam / Workshop
Demo-unlock profile support: SaveManager + MainMenu integration for demo unlocks and notice.
Bug fixes
Fixed UI focus, input handling, and settings reset logic.
Fixed burn tick timing and damage system typing.
Fixed food spawn safety with reachable fallback.
Fixed Patch reward modal input blocking during pause.
Fixed class style, Balanced, and Adaptability translation wording across multiple languages.
Fixed back-button scene transition race conditions with exit_requested guard and deferred transitions.