New Features
Tetrédex gains two new sections: Heroes and Status Effects. Heroes start blacked out until unlocked, then show a full mechanic writeup and their three Boss Upgrade options with the real numbers. Status Effects work the same way, revealing an icon and description the first time you're hit by or enter that effect in battle.
New "Test Controls" button on Options → Gameplay opens a small practice board so you can feel out DAS, ARR, soft-drop speed, the rotation system, and lock delay without starting a real battle.
Changes
Gold Gem reworked: its in-combat payout is now a fixed amount per clear size (single/double/triple/tetris) instead of scaling off damage dealt, which used to produce absurd gold totals on high-damage builds. The "deal half damage" drawback is unchanged.
The Difficulty-select screen's locked-tier hint now names the actual tier you need to beat and the one it unlocks.
The DAS/ARR options on Options → Gameplay have been reworded for clarity (no behavior change), and the section header now shows "ARR" for players looking for that term.
The Options menu now opens with focus on the category tabs instead of the first setting, for keyboard/controller players.
The "Got It!" tutorial button and two-choice tutorial buttons now use the game's standard corner-bracket focus highlight, and two-choice tutorial prompts now also respond to Up/Down, not just Left/Right.
Cloud-save protection: your shards, upgrade tree, achievements, statistics, Tetrédex, and unlocked difficulty/hero tiers are now protected by a local backup that's reconciled against your cloud save on boot, so a bad Steam Cloud sync can no longer silently wipe real progress.
The Tetrédex Status Effects section no longer separately lists Zoro's Rage or the Gravity Gem's effect — both are already fully explained under their own dedicated Hero and Gem entries.
Corrected the "Decisive Victory" metaprogression upgrade's description, which still described the old pre-Heroes boss-reward system with the wrong numbers.
Multiplayer
Corrected the Attacker's "Cursed Piece" ability description — it drops a locked cursed piece directly onto the Defender's board, not into their queue.
Fixed the Attacker's difficulty name overflowing its arrow buttons on long tier names during ability select.
The second player's roaming slime cursor now works on the Boss Reward and Portal Reward screens in local co-op.
Fixed the boss's hover-highlight box and effect-stack badges on the Attacker's "Prepare the Enemy" upgrade screen, which didn't match the boss's larger size and could hide purchased effect stacks entirely. All three bosses (Minotaur, Demon Slime, Undead Executioner) also had their stance and hover box corrected to properly read as standing on the wall/bridge.
Fixes
Fixed a real crash: a Mirror Gem combining two Gravity Gem neighbors could crash the game on the line-clear it fired on.
Cursed Gem's self-inflicted garbage now stops compounding after a few Gravity-chained generations instead of potentially cascading indefinitely (the combo still chains a few times, just can't run away forever).
Fixed holding Soft Drop on keyboard occasionally slamming a piece straight to the bottom like a Hard Drop, at seemingly random moments.
Fixed the focused row's highlight fading out and disappearing near the bottom of the Options → Controls keybind list as it pulsed.
Fixed the danger border rendering in front of attacking enemies instead of behind them.
Fixed a Linux-specific stutter: the game could hitch every few seconds while Discord Rich Presence was unable to connect (e.g. Discord not running). This never affected Windows.