CITY UPDATE! Trading, Animation, Bonus Dungeon and more!
major updateBeastieball · build 24821231 · published
On SteamNotes only · this build shipped before we watched the app
This is Milestone 6 out of 9! Check out our Road to 1.0 post for info on planned updates and schedule!
🖼️ Beastie Art Updates
- Demolipede: Animation COMPLETE!
- Magpike: Poses added!
- Calcroach: Animation COMPLETE!
- Debugly: Animation COMPLETE!
- Beelb: Animation COMPLETE!
- Froofulks: Poses cleaned up!
- Bindiva: Poses + animation added!
- Gremlur: Animation COMPLETE!
- Opposur: Animation COMPLETE!
The number of Beasties marked as complete has gone from 71 to 77. A lot of other progress was made on Beastie animation behind the scenes that wasn't quite enough to manifest into an in-game update... yet!
⭐New Stuff
This is probably the largest single addition of content we'll make to the game for all of Early Access. This update includes a significant new area, an entire new set of Hangouts, plus some major headline features we thought we'd save for 1.0.
- NEW FEATURE: Trading!
- You can now trade Beasties on SportNet!
- Traded Beasties retain their history, and remember their original coach and old friends if returned.
✨Major changes and improvements
- New Player Customisation Options
- Added olive skin tone options to the character creator
- Added 2 new headscarves + 1 new hairstyle available by default, and 1 new outfit available in Geo City
🌱 Grassroots League!
For players who want more chances to face tough opponents, check out the ongoing Grassroots League! Players regularly organize competitive events that anyone can join, and players who perform well can claim physical prizes from us including a special pin! Check out our League page for more details!
🌕 Upcoming Bash
BIGMOON BASH: DOWNTOWN THROWDOWN!
- A Bigmoon Bash is coming this weekend! Bring your favorite city Beastie and take on other players from around the world!
🔧 Balance Changes
- This follows the trend set by the previous Milestone, featuring a minimal set of changes meant to address only a few key standout points. Still, each change is one we've considered carefully and there are some fun new toys here... I hope players enjoy them!
- (NEW) Enchanter: Net-boosted attacks make the target 1 SHOOK.
- 🔄Given to Conjarr in place of Precise
Precise was an imperfect fit for Conjarr, and wasn't used much by players, especially after sources of redirection were reduced in the previous Milestone. We decided to give Conjarr something brand-new and custom tailored to them. This trait synergizes nicely with Conjarr's numerous net plays and attack options, giving them a way to control the opponent's tempo. - (NEW?) Fearless: Immune to NERVOUS. Doesn't experience negative effects from their own attacks.
- 🔼Given to Daredillo in place of Self-Assured
Daredillo has been one of the most-used Beasties since we finished their animation in December, and their popularity spiked particularly after we gave them Dodge Roll in the previous Milestone. Daredillo's ability to gracefully hit and run with Dodge Roll combined with their Acrobat trait has made for a very fun playstyle, but it made their already-strong offense feel a little too difficult for opponents to manage. We're tweaking some things in Daredillo's kit to mitigate the power of Acrobat, and changing Self-Assured to something which enables their offense just a bit more effectively to compensate.
⚙️ General Mechanics Changes
💧 WEEPY
A Beastie overcome with WEEPY now loses 50 STAMINA (down from 100).
We've been overall really happy with Weepy's impact on the game, giving some teams a way to slow down offense and pressure tagouts. Weepy's 100 damage has been very punishing, though, and it can make the afflicted player feel many lines are closed off to them and their agency is reduced to an unfun level. The reduced damage here keeps Weepy as a big potential threat, but afflicted players have a bit more optionality in whether they choose to tank the damage and continue their offense VS. pivoting out to conserve their bench health later on.
👨👨👧👧 Rally
RALLY now boosts the damage of only one team at a time. After attacking, any RALLY crowd on the attacker's side will move to the opposing side.
This small change means that in practice, RALLY is almost identical to before; but, after scoring a point with a RALLY-boosted attack, your subsequent serve can't be boosted by RALLY, which reduces the ability of this field effect to snowball damage for a team already in advantage.
🍄 Traits
This reverts a change we applied in Milestone 4 in March. The goal at the time was to normalize the power level of the 3 starters by increasing the value of the damage boost for weaker hitters like Bandicraft while reducing its value on Kasaleet. Having now collected analytics and observations across a couple Milestone seasons, we found this change did not have the intended effect. Kasaleet was as dominant as ever, and Hopra/Bandicraft both struggled to succeed with more aggressive gameplans even more than they had before. With that in mind, we're rolling this change back and addressing the slight imbalance in other ways.
Supilero has generally seen good success with their other trait, Scavenger, and recently gained some traction using High Five in tandem with Confident to efficiently pass boosts to an ally. That combo was deemed a little too strong by some players, but outside of it Supilero wasn't getting much use with Confident... so we're taking High Five away from them and making them more competent with Confident, to better distinguish their two traits' playstyles.
This reverts a change we applied all the way back in Milestone 1 in June 2025. Since that change, Gremlur has found some success and popularity with their secondary trait, Adaptation, but has struggled to be as effective with their original Slippery gameplan. Below we've noted a few other changes to Gremlur that we hope will make them fun and fair with a full-power Slippery returned to them.
Blitzwift has always been near the bottom of usage stats, owing in part to their high-skill niche. We figured it was about time we gave them another way to play that might help them fit onto more teams.
This came in as a player suggestion and after considering some other ideas we found we liked this one. Galaxy Brain is a very, very old trait from development day 1 which we never really gave a second thought to. This small change makes it much more relevant. We're a bit nervous about giving more offensive tools to a Beastie as explosive as Psylusc, but we also recognize it's challenging to keep a Psylusc healthy on the field long enough to get the benefit of this trait, so its gameplay ought to be interesting.
🏃 Plays
- (NEW) Kick: BODY Attack, 70 POW. Always targets back row. Can use without volleying.
- Via level up
- 🔼 Kasaleet, Garood, Opposur
This is a new semi-generic midgame body play that can have some fun use cases, but mostly is here to fill what we saw as a gap in flavor.
Of the 3 starter Beasties, Kasaleet has been the most lacking in playstyle that sets them apart from other Beasties, and that's been reflected by their lack of a signature play. Flying Kick is our answer to that, and it gives Kasaleet a completely unique way to attack that still feels very uniquely "Kasaleet." Because this always moves Kasaleet to its ally's row, this play is inherently weak to sideways offense pressure, but when used in tandem with other attacks it means Kasaleet can just about always get a strong hit no matter where they are or who receives the attack. There are a lot of fun synergies and combos here - I can't begin to list them all, but I hope players enjoy discovering the new options this gives to Kasaleet.
We've renamed Burnout to Explosive Spirit, and created a new iteration of Burnout that is better matched to Daredillo's particular kit, as well as fitting with a couple other less-appreciated Spirit attackers.
This strange new play and effect has a surprising diversity of use cases that we want to see players mess with. It can function as a soft heal, ticking down bad FEELINGs from allies. But it can also function as an insidious passive aggression tool, juicing more damage out of SWEATY opponents or pushing stacks of WEEPY.
This is a similar addition to Kick in that it feels like a sort of obvious basic support action which fits with many Beasties. We see it as a corollary with Flex which sacrifices ramping over time for a more Body-thematic self care.
This is a flavorful new tool meant to help slightly redirect Bindiva's gameplay without taking away its most fun elements. We've got more thoughts on Bindiva in the section below.
This is a very small and un-flashy change, but it means Tracker has additional utility to reduce opponent action economy and force them to volley. With BLOCK being so common, we thought there ought to be some more ways to mitigate it for teams that want to slow the game down.
Another light touch to a rarely-used low-power play. This is a subtle extra utility that might make this play a bit more attractive on slower teams.
We want this play to keep pace with Shield as far as the ability to loop TOUGH over consecutive turns/attacks. It's not a fun interaction to play into and we don't want it to be a defining strength of Servace over other attackers.
👹 Beasties
- Kichik, Ostrisigh, Kasaleet
- 🔼 Plays Added: Tough Front
- 🔻 Plays Removed: Launch, Shake Off, Flex
Launch on this Beastie has been a constant fixation among top-level players for a while, with it serving as a high benchmark for offensive power and utility. We love the power of this play and don't see it looking too overtuned on other Beasties as much as it has been on Kasaleet, so we're trying out giving Kasaleet a more unique and technical SHIFT attack in Flying Kick. With the addition of Flying Kick, Kasaleet has newfound flexibility in leveraging their Support actions. This prompted us to take a closer look at those and make some additional edits to their kit. We want Kasaleet to hit a healthy sweet spot where they get incredible burst power and efficiency but without the ability to ramp themselves as far and high as other attackers over longer matches.
They can Kick now
High Five is removed from this line, corresponding with the Confident buff noted above. With the Forager trait, Supilero's strength becomes supporting their team through tagging and defense, whereas Confident now makes them better at holding ground on the field and even working as a secondary attacker.
Wottle is still not seeing too much use, so we've decided to clean out some of the lesser-used plays from their kit and gift them some more new toys. Net Rush and Fall Back let them take more advantage of their unique positioning trait to get more bulk or offense as needed, with Hum giving them a way to power themselves up while they camp the net and eventually become a second offensive threat.
We feel Tortanchor lost something essential with this play cut in the previous patch. Although they already have plenty of top-tier support plays, we figured they deserve to have this one back too. This helps diversify the Beasties that work together on Spirit-focused teams. Although we generally enjoy Daring Pass being on frail, high-risk Beasties, adding it back to Tortanchor also means they get a unique role as the sole bulky Daring Passer.
We're interested in making Slippery's gameplay effective and fun in a way it hasn't been since its nerf last year. Its greatest advantage is how it enables Gremlur to use extra support actions, so their support action pool has to be carefully curated... and Nettle is one of the best in the game, so it follows that it feels oppressive on Gremlur. We're trying out what Gremlur is like without Nettle, but with new plays that can fill similar gaps or expand Gremlur's options in other directions. We've also adjusted their stats in a few key ways; their Mind POW is lower, but their damage is still higher than it was with Slippery previously. To compensate for the stat adjustment, we've made them overall more bulky. We also changed how their defenses are allocated such that Mind is their best defense and Body their worst. 4+ years ago, we created Gremlur with a Mind weakness to exacerbate their weakness into Sideways offense. With the many shifts and changes since then, this matchup theory proved to be mostly irrelevant. We think it makes more sense for the "smartest Beastie" who is bullied by Opposur to excel in Mind and be fragile in Body.
Bindiva (with Thief) has always been intentionally designed around easily getting the net and hitting Dumps, making them a frail but scary point-scorer. Over the last couple milestones, more players have turned their attention to Bindiva and we've seen them optimized more, often positioned to get a quick and surprising checkmate that's very hard to react to. We want Bindiva to still succeed with this linear and aggressive style, but we're tweaking their kit so that they have to respect their opponents in more scenarios, as any glass cannon should. Net Rush + Thief is a combo that gave Bindiva too much versatility, and Spitball is one of the underappreciated best disruption plays in the game; together both let Bindiva shut down many opponent lines and mitigate a lot of their risk. The new additions of Heartbreaker and Catwalk introduce some fun new synergies in their place.
They can Stretch now.
🚧Other Fixes and Changes
- For Mac players: We've moved Mac builds to an OLDER version of GameMaker Studio for this Milestone.
- In Milestone 4 in March, we shipped an update with a new GameMaker version which promised to increase performance and stability; in practice this did resolve some issues and improve performance on PC, but on Mac it introduced very common engine-level crashes.
- We've been applying fixes over the last few months expecting to have fixed the issues each time, but haven't been successful thus far...
- Since we know Mac builds were stable on the engine version we used in Milestone 3, we're keeping the project there for now on Mac.