Update #4: Soak & Destroy — Water Gun, Third-Person Camera and More

Hello Chaos lovers!

With **Update #3** we hit the beach, and you promptly built sandcastles and knocked each other's down. Every report and every "why did that just happen?!" message landed on our desk. This time the Leafian Games team went through everything — from the camera to jumping, from the lobby to the results screen. And on top of all that... we added a water gun. Yes, a water gun.

Here are the details for Update #4:

## Brand New Features

**Third-Person Camera:** You can finally see your character! The game now starts with an over-the-shoulder camera by default; if you miss first-person, press **V** to switch instantly and the game will remember your choice. Characters now lean their bodies when they look up or down, and your legs keep running while you punch on the move — no more gliding across the map like you're on an ice rink. While invisible you can still see yourself; your rivals can't.

**Water Gun (Summer map):** At minutes 5, 10 and 15, a beam of light rises on the map and a water gun slowly floats down from the sky. Nobody can grab it until it lands — so everybody gathers, and the brawl begins. The gun has 3 charges:

- **Soak (1 charge):** Aim at a rival and pull the trigger. The soaked player takes damage, is slowed for 10 seconds, drops whatever they're carrying and can't pick anything up until they dry off. Their screen shows a blue splash effect and a countdown.

- **Floor Destruction (3 charges):** Aim at a rival building and hold for 3 seconds. The floor comes straight down. It doesn't work on fortified buildings and doesn't count toward a sabotage victory — so you can't win a match with it, but you can absolutely ruin someone's day.

- The **purple gun** that drops at minute 23 only soaks, so the match can't be flipped in a single move during the final minutes.

- If the carrier dies, the gun drops to the ground. You can also put it down with **E** to get back to building.

**Map Events:** Mid-match, the maps start doing their own thing. Every event is announced with a banner at the top of the screen 3 seconds in advance, so it never feels like "I did nothing and still got punished":

- **Raging River (Summer map):** The river goes wild for a few seconds; the current speeds up dramatically and flips direction at regular intervals. Ride it and you'll reach the far side of the map in seconds — but where you land is up to the current. The river will never throw anyone off the map, promise.

- **Malfunctioning Portals (classic map):** 3 of the 8 portals break for 30 seconds and fling anyone who enters to a random exit. The broken ones are easy to spot from afar thanks to their flickering lights: do you hunt for a safe one, or take the gamble?

**Play Again:** Match over? Keep the team together! The **PLAY AGAIN** button on the results screen takes everyone back to the same lobby with the same number of bots. No need to re-invite anyone; just pick your map, character and ability again and jump right back in. When the host presses it, a short countdown starts — and if everyone's ready, the wait drops to almost nothing.

**Final Duel Rebuilt:** The end-of-match arena now opens with a proper ceremony: title, rules and 3-2-1-FIGHT! Even while the camera sweeps around cinematically, **W** always moves you in the same direction, the camera always keeps you in frame, and everyone has a name above their head — with a big **YOU** above yours. Nobody asks "wait, which one was me?" anymore.

**Winner & Loser Screens:** The winner banner now tells you **how** the match was won (by finishing the tower, by having the most points when time ran out, or by wrecking everything). Last place gets a carefully chosen roast that changes every match. The cement is ready.

**Death Loot:** A killed player may drop a dynamite (often) or a hammer (rarely) from their inventory. The player who dropped it can't grab it back for a few seconds, and the loot disappears after a while. Hunting now pays off.

**Sabotage Status Indicator:** Rival buildings now have a small indicator floating above them: a countdown if the building is protected, "next hit brings a floor down" if it's damaged, and a green check if it's ready to be attacked. Decide which building to run to before you even set off.

**Match Briefing:** Every match now opens with a three-slide illustrated briefing tailored to the map: how to win, and what makes this map different. It closes the moment you start moving — readers read, runners run.

**Living Main Menu:** The main menu now has a live scene behind it: a building rises floor by floor, a saboteur shows up and tears it all down, and then it starts over. Waiting in the menu has never been this stressful.

**Tutorial Rebuilt:** The tutorial now takes place on an open-air, summer-themed beach promenade and is noticeably shorter. New steps teach you to sprint and jump over obstacles and to use the river current; building recipes are actually taught now, and if you get stuck, the game gives you a hint.

**Summer Cast Refreshed:** Almost all of the beach characters have been replaced with brand new models. On top of that, characters are now bigger on the summer map — and so those bigger bodies don't feel sluggish, everyone runs faster on this map too.

## Gameplay & Balance Changes

**Building Floors Actually Gives Points Now:** This one's hard to admit: for quite a while, building a floor gave you **zero** points. When time ran out, the saboteurs decided the winner. Fixed — building a floor is now worth 60 points.

**Sabotage Scoring Rebalanced:** Damaging a building now gives fewer points (10), and fully destroying a floor gives more (50). Finish the job, get the reward.

**Sabotage Victory Within Reach:** The number of floor destructions needed for a sabotage victory dropped from 15 to 10.

**Guaranteed Floor Rewards:** Every time you complete a floor you now get two rewards: an attack item (dynamite or hammer) and a refill (health or stamina). It used to be a single random reward, and sometimes you'd never get an attack item at all.

**Shorter Wait After Respawn:** After respawning you had to wait 10 seconds before you could sabotage or repair. Now it's just 1 second.

**Kinetic Wave Is Finally a Wave:** Much wider reach, much stronger push. Players caught in it are briefly slowed and — most importantly — a rival sabotaging your building gets interrupted. It's now a real defensive ability.

**Jumping Rewritten:** Higher, snappier and far more responsive. Hold the button to jump higher, tap it for a short hop. You can still jump for a split second after running off a ledge, and a press made just before landing isn't forgotten. The "sometimes it just doesn't jump" issue is gone, and jumping costs less stamina.

**Combat Feels Heavier and Fairer:** Punches now react the instant you press; even on a slower connection your hit feels immediate, and punches aimed at moving rivals no longer whiff for no reason. Knockback is almost doubled. The target freezes for a split second on impact, and your camera kicks slightly with every punch. While sprinting you throw punches instead of kicks, so nobody slides across the floor mid-kick anymore.

**Bots Toned Down a Bit:** Bots now deal less damage than humans, attack less often, react more slowly when you circle around them and miss more. They're still dangerous — just beatable now.

**Summer Map Tweaks:** More boosters can be on the map at once, and new booster spots have been added. The health booster on this map is now a cocktail. The river's regular current is half as strong, drags items around much less, and now flips direction every 60 seconds.

## Interface (UI) & Experience Polish

**Refreshed HUD:** The health bar is alive now: it flashes and shakes when you get hit, glows green when you heal, and pulses when you're in critical condition. The stamina bar dims when you're too tired to sprint and flashes when it's ready again. The ability card was redesigned with the ability's name, your actual key binding and a frame that pulses when it's ready. Ability icons got some color, too.

**Booster Pickup Feedback:** You'll never miss which booster you grabbed: the screen pulses in its color and a small "+1" badge pops up. Hammers and dynamite used to just silently tick up your counter. The booster counter in the top right has been slimmed down too — no big empty box for things you aren't carrying.

**Sabotage and Repair Finally Feel Rewarding:** Finishing a sabotage now shows the points you earned on screen, and destroying a floor feels much bigger and louder than just damaging one. Hold the key for 7 seconds to repair and you now get a proper "repair complete" confirmation.

**Sabotage Alert Overhauled:** That orange blob pulsing right in the middle of your screen, on top of your crosshair, is gone. The warning badge is easier to read, and your own actions show in a different color. When one of your floors is destroyed, the warning now stays on screen longer, and the second-stage countdown shows the real time remaining.

**Event Feed Refreshed:** In the event feed at the top right, names now appear in player colors — yours in gold. Events involving you glow, and repeated events show "x2" instead of stacking new lines. Text no longer shrinks to an unreadable size or runs off the screen.

**A More Exciting Match Timer:** With 5 minutes left the timer turns yellow and a warning pops up; in the final minute it turns orange, and in the last 10 seconds it turns red and shakes. The final-seconds ticking sound no longer overlaps itself.

**The Loading Screen Talks Now:** Instead of just "Loading...", it tells you what's happening: joining the lobby, connecting to the host, loading the map... If things take longer than usual, it lets you know it hasn't frozen. The curtain also no longer lifts before the map has fully loaded, so you don't have to watch the map assemble itself piece by piece.

**New Pop-ups:** All pop-up windows have been redesigned with smooth animations, ESC to close, and a cursor that's always visible. If two pop-ups arrive at once, they queue up — neither one gets lost.

**Name Tags:** Tags now carry the player's color and stay readable from far away. A waist-high crate no longer hides a name, and tags no longer flicker between poles.

**Player Colors Retuned:** Colors that used to blend together, like red and orange, are now distinguishable at a glance.

**Needed Items Stand Out More:** The item your zone needs now glows while cycling between two colors, and stays clearly outlined even from a distance.

**Items Sit in Your Hands:** Carried items no longer sink into your hands, float in mid-air, or get carried at their giant on-the-ground size.

**Your Own Hat Stays Out of Your Face:** In first-person, your character's hat or hair no longer pokes into the camera.

**Everyone Hears the Fight:** Hit and pain sounds can now be heard by everyone nearby, from the direction they came from, and each hit sounds slightly different. Hitting a rival who's currently immune gives a muffled thud — no more fake "I hit them!" feeling. Audio delay has also been reduced.

**Settings:** Added a key binding row for camera mode. The mouse wheel can now be bound as a key. The key rebinding buttons are now translated into every language. The main menu panels, buttons and the settings screen got a fresh new look.

**Better Bug Reports:** Bug reports sent from inside the game now automatically include a screenshot and technical details, which means we can fix your issues much faster. You can also see on screen whether your report went through.

**Faster Startup:** The engine logo at launch has been removed.

**New Warnings:** Trying to attack while carrying an item, stepping into a portal with no solid ground at the exit, wondering how long until you can sabotage again — the game now tells you.

## Bug Fixes & Optimization

**Lobby & Invites:**

- The invite pop-up sometimes never appeared, or vanished during startup. Fixed.

- From the Steam friends list you could only join the person who created the lobby. You can now join through anyone in the lobby.

- Fixed "join failed" showing up when joining actually succeeded, getting stuck on the loading screen forever, and silently being sent back to the main menu.

- A player who failed to join once couldn't join any lobby ever again. Fixed.

- For remote players, the ability icon and cooldown were missing for the entire match. Fixed.

- The character customization panel in the lobby was hidden behind the map and bot panels. Fixed.

- If one player disconnected while the map was loading, nobody got a character in that match. Fixed.

- The tutorial could get stuck on an endless loading screen. Fixed.

**Match Flow:**

- The match kept going for 15–20 seconds after the timer hit 00:00. It now ends right on time.

- During the winner cinematic, players could still build floors, sabotage and change the scores. Everything now stops when the match ends.

- Remote players could fall under the map at the start of a match and die once. Fixed.

- A player who fell off the map and made it back to safety would still die a few seconds later. Fixed.

- The "Skip" button on the results screen now works for everyone at the same time and stays available until the end.

- Nobody's name was visible during the final duel. Fixed.

**Combat & Abilities:**

- Hitting an immune rival still played the hit marker, blood and knockback even though no damage went through. You now only get the "hit!" confirmation when you actually deal damage (traps included).

- Punches were lost when they brushed a nearby wall or object, even with the crosshair right on the rival. Fixed.

- The hit reaction animation didn't play on most characters, and on the ones where it did, the character briefly sank into the ground. Both fixed, and the animation has been refreshed.

- For remote players the running animation stuttered, making characters look like they were sliding. Fixed.

- Blink and portals could sometimes drop players through the floor. Fixed.

- When sabotaging with dynamite, the progress bar stopped halfway and the defender's countdown showed the wrong time. Fixed.

- When a sabotage was cancelled, the building owner's warning kept counting down to zero anyway. Fixed.

- The sabotage hint could get stuck on screen, or never show up while standing in the middle of a rival zone. Fixed.

- The Clone's fake sabotage alert went to random players and its countdown didn't match the real one, so it was easy to spot. It now goes to the owner of a real building near the clone, with the real timing. Good luck.

**Bots:**

- Bots could hang in mid-air at their spawn point and never move. Fixed.

- On the summer map, bots got stranded on top of built floors. They now rescue themselves.

- The slow trap had no effect on bots. Now it does.

- Bot names sometimes didn't show at all. Fixed.

**Map & Items:**

- Items that fell under the map kept being counted, so after a while no new items would spawn at all. Fixed.

- Some booster spots on the summer map never spawned anything. Fixed.

- A booster that appeared right on top of you couldn't be picked up, while dead players could pick boosters up. Both fixed.

- The direction the river water visibly flowed didn't match the direction it pushed you, and late joiners could be pushed a different way. Visuals and current now match perfectly.

- Some portals never played their approach sound and effect. Fixed.

- Characters' feet sank into the ground on the summer map. Fixed.

- Dead players' health bars and names could stay visible. Fixed.

**Settings & Performance:**

- Choosing "Ultra" graphics actually applied "Medium", and the lower options all fell back to the lowest setting. What you pick is now what you get.

- Resolution and window mode weren't applied at launch and only snapped into place after opening the settings. Fixed, and your setting now survives monitor or driver changes.

- Movement keys showed the wrong key in the settings and rebinding them broke the gamepad binding. Fixed.

- Results screen sounds ignored your volume settings. Fixed.

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Your feedback is, as always, what drives this game forward. Keep it coming — the report button even takes the screenshot for you now!

Stay chaotic (and stay dry)!

**Leafian Games**