Perks used to be a Story thing. From this update they are played against real opponents too.
Perks in online matches
Perks leave Story and enter online play: Freeze, which holds a piece for two turns, Revive, Rewind and Havoc.
Before the match there is a pick phase: one perk each, drawn from a shared deck. And perks are now a dimension of matchmaking, so if you look for a match with perks you find someone looking for the same thing.
You can also run the Laboratory operations without leaving the board: Evolution, Fusion, Cloning. Story gets a new perk, Splitting, which takes a fused piece back to its ingredients.
If you would rather try them on your own, matches against the computer can have perks too: the checkbox is in Play.
Weekly objectives
Every Monday brings three new objectives, the same for everyone, shown in the Story hub with their progress bar. Close all three and you get the Perfect week badge, which you can earn again every week, and an achievement the first time. The same objectives show up on the website dashboard.
Story: numbers and collections
Statistics panels sit on both sides of the hubs: runs, battles, highest level, best time. Completable collections are at the top, the achievements bar in between. Story leaderboards get two new boards: Endless and win rate.
Better matches with a controller or a keyboard
Controller triggers work during a match too: cursor to the next piece, focus, replay skip, and they turn carousels and cards in the menus. Button glyphs follow the controller you actually have plugged in.
With the keyboard you reach the interface, perks and menus through Tab, P and M, and focus is no longer lost when the screen changes.
One account, two sign-ins
If your Steam sign-in and your Google sign-in ended up on two different accounts, they can now be merged into one (already available in the web app).
And then
Two new achievements, more sounds, in game announcements (including the maintenance heads-up) and a long list of fixes.
A favour
If you are enjoying the game, a review on Steam helps us more than it looks: we are a small team, and reviews are how other players find us. A couple of lines are enough.
If something looks broken instead, tell us in the discussions. We are reading you.