Hey budding Mancalero players! This pre-launch (and post October's SNF) update brings the demo up to date with everything planned and unplanned since v1.02: new effects for scoring, over-scoring storms and the Ancient Serpent, pits that hold any number of marbles, a new end-of-run summary, the full DX soundtrack (by MeloEclipse), prices that follow rarity, and a long list of fixes. Most affect the demo as well, but the majority are intended for the main game which launches on November 4th.
A new score popup. The card each scoring sow ends on has been redrawn to match the rest of the game, in the same spot as before. What the sow earned (Score!, EXTRA TURN, a capture and so on) sits on a tab across its top: gold on a critical, purple in the overkill storm. The base and multiplier sit on green and red chips like THIS MOVE's. The card stamps down, its total counts up, then the total flies down into POINTS, which lights up as it lands. Its size follows how much of the Score Target the sow took: a small sow gets a smaller card, and a big one gets a bigger card that bursts with pixel shards and rays. It used to be the same size for every sow and vanished all at once. With reduced motion turned on, it just shows.
The scoring storm lights up as you score. It used to play only after a sow had scored 2.5x what was left of the Score Target, the same size every time, while the score popup was already up. Now the score strip catches fire the moment your sow breaks the bar, while it's still scoring: purple pixel flames rise behind THIS MOVE, purple bolts spark up through them, and every box in the strip turns purple. The bigger the overkill, the taller the flames and the more bolts, and past about 4x they spread along the whole strip. It burns until the score popup goes, then dies down. With reduced motion turned on, the strip still turns purple but nothing burns or shakes. Skip Animations keeps just the thunder.
Every score visibly hits the opponent. When you score, the piece of the opponent's bar you knocked off lights up gold before it drains, and the amount pops off the bar. It adds up over the whole sow, so it ends on the same total as the score popup.
A clearer score bar. The POINTS / COMBO / STREAK / THIS MOVE strip now sits centred under the board, with each box's number centred under its label. A box with nothing to show yet fades its text instead of turning into a dark block. THIS MOVE shows the sow's sum in bigger type: the base on a green chip, the multiplier on a red chip and the total in gold. STREAK now starts each match empty instead of showing the last match's final streak, and the hit count under COMBO only appears from the second hit. The combined bar is now always on: its Settings toggle is gone.
Your Mancala shows its scoring callouts. The "+1" for each marble banked mid-sow, Golden Pit's bonus, Archer's Bow crits and the other bonuses that pop at your Mancala were never drawn there. They show now, one under another, so a sow's burst of bonuses doesn't print on one spot.
The score popup doesn't repeat a callout. When a sow earns an EXTRA TURN, a capture, a Skip or an Elemental Trio, the score popup is titled with it, and the matching callout that floated up underneath now gives way to the popup instead of poking out beside it.
A new look for the Ancient Serpent's bite. Its jaws are now pixel art: green scales, interlocking teeth and two long fangs on each jaw. They drop onto your Mancala from above, snap shut, chomp a second time, then pull back toward the Serpent and fade, with the same square pulse on the snap. They scale with the board, so they fit smaller screens too.
Bombs now explode. A detonating Bomb throws a pixel explosion out of its pit: fiery chunks, rolling dust clouds and a shockwave ring, on top of the existing flash and shake. The marbles it destroys are flung out of the pit instead of just disappearing.
You can see Fire burn marbles. When Fire burns marbles (from a sow or a Flood surge), pixel flames rise out of the pit and each burned marble flashes orange, chars black and crumbles to ash. A Bomb that Fire sets off explodes right after the burn.
Ignite makes Fire burn hotter. When Ignite fires, the burn turns white-hot: more and taller flames, a heat ring and sparks thrown up out of the pit.
Glass marbles now visibly break. When a Glass marble shatters (on its 5th sowing, or on its first under the Fragile Pact curse), it bursts into glass shards in the pit where it lands. Before, it just vanished, and only the SHATTER! text showed it had broken.
Huge pits work. A player kept doubling one pit with Multiply until it held over 7 million marbles. The game ran out of memory during the opponent's turn, and the window went blank. Pits now keep a count of each kind of marble instead of storing every marble on its own, so a pit of a trillion marbles costs no more than a pit of ten. Nothing caps a pit any more: keep doubling and its count climbs until it reads ∞, the biggest number the game can hold (Multiply then says MARBLE LIMIT!). Scores have no cap either, and a score of ∞ empties any Score Target.
Long sows speed up. A sow plays its first 250 marbles as usual, then sweeps through the rest in about two and a half seconds, speeding up as it goes, and its last marble lands as normal. At one marble a frame, a 100,000-marble sow would have taken half an hour, and a trillion-marble sow over 500 years. However big it is, a sow now plays out in about 15 seconds at most.
Big numbers stay short. Past 99,999 a pit's count reads 123K, 4.5M, 1.2T and so on, up to ∞. Hover the pit for the full number.
The Crane lists a big pit's marble types, with how many of each, instead of one button per marble.
Fixed: with Skip Animations on, the opponent could replay its previous move instead of playing from the board in front of it.
Saved runs: a run you saved before this update carries on as normal. Once this version has saved it, an older version of the demo can't continue it.
Multiply's copies come out shuffled. When Multiply doubles a pit, the copies are added in a random order, so sowing that pit doesn't repeat the same run of marbles twice. This applies to the Crane's doublings and a Black Hole's too.
The card a run ends on now shows the whole journey:
The track: a track of the tables with every boss you beat, YOU FELL HERE where the run ended, and NEW BEST! when it's your furthest yet.
How it ended: who beat you, how much of their Score Target you drained, the final marble count, and a tip for next time.
The run: final score, best sow, matches won, your Archetypes (each with its own badge), Blessings, pouch and capsule levels.
Unlocks: what you unlocked this run.
Buttons: RETRY SEED to replay the same seed, plus your seed with a COPY button. The Wishlist on Steam button is still there.
Names: hovering a Blessing or set shows its name, and so does landing on one with a controller.
Smaller screens: below 1080p (a Steam Deck, most laptops, phones) the summary is one scrolling column with the buttons always on screen, and its text is scaled up to stay readable.
Languages: updated in all 11.
The full DX soundtrack. Every theme (menu and match, table select, the Bazaar, bosses and the special bosses) is replaced by the composer's new DX version, along with its intro. Each loop now runs before repeating and they still crossfade seamlessly between screens.
No more gaps in the music. It used to drop out for a moment each time a track looped back to its start, and on some computers as the opening intro handed over to the main theme. It now plays straight through.
Prices follow rarity. Every marble now costs its rarity's price: Common $2, Uncommon $5, Rare $8, Epic $12, Legendary $14. Skip and Ice used to be priced a tier below their rarity. Blessings cost Common $4, Uncommon $7, Rare $8, Epic $9 and Legendary $11. Selling a marble still returns half its price.
The sweep bonus tops out at $50. The bonus for a winning move that also empties a row, with your Mancala ahead, grew with the opponent's Score Target. It ended up paying far more than anything else you earn, and now pays at most $50.
Table 3 is a little harder. Its Score Targets go up 12%: Wraith 950, Ironclad 1,250, The Skeleton King 1,750. Endless starts from the Skeleton King's target, so it scales from the new number too.
Huge sows score with diminishing returns. A sow of more than 26 marbles (two laps of the board) scores less for its size: 50 marbles keep about 61% of their score, 100 about 36%. A BIG SOW callout shows the factor. Normal pits are unaffected.
Starting pits are as even as your pouch allows. Your plain marbles are still dealt 4 to a pit. A pouch with fewer than 24 now takes one from several pits instead of emptying the last one: with 22, two pits start with 3, not one pit with 2. Which pits come up short changes every match. Plain marbles beyond 24 also go to random pits, and special marbles still start in random pits. Minimalist's Hands still takes one from each pit, but never a pit's only marble.
Gold pays only on your side. A Gold marble earns $1 when it lands in one of your pits or your Mancala (plus the extra $1 when it's the last marble into your Mancala), as its description says. It no longer pays when it lands on the opponent's side.
A Black Hole that lands in your Mancala now swallows the two pits beside it: your own pit next to the Mancala and the opponent's, the same way it swallows the pits on either side of any other pit. It used to take the opponent's pits at both ends of their row and never yours. The opponent's Black Hole does the same when it lands in their Mancala.
The opponent no longer benefits from your Echo Stone. When the opponent sowed one of your Multiply marbles as its last marble, your Echo Stone and Echo Comet made it double 2 or 3 times for them. It now doubles once.
The Bazaar always offers a Blessing. Every visit's Blessings & Capsules row now has at least one Blessing while any are left to buy. A leftover from an older Bazaar layout was also quietly holding back two Blessings every visit. Early on, once you'd bought a few, the row could show nothing but capsules. The Crane and Echo Stone guarantee, which brings each one back after four visits without it, now works too.
Shop patches work right away. Cosmic Loom's extra marble and Silver Kalah, and Stellar Loom's extra Blessings & Capsules slot, appear as soon as the patch is stitched, next to what's already on offer. Cosmic Loom used to reroll the marbles you were looking at, and Stellar Loom's slot waited for the next visit.
Gas Giant capsules let you keep two upgrades. A Gas Giant now shows all five upgrade cards, and after your first pick the other four come back for a second one.
Solar System capsules always offer an upgrade you can use: one of its three cards is always for a marble rarity already in your pouch.
Buying shows where it goes. A bought Marble pops off its card and follows one smooth arc into your POUCH button, which bounces with a "+1". A bought Blessing lifts off its card in its rarity frame and shrinks into the SHIFTERS button, landing with a burst and its name. Each landing plays a short chime.
Cleansing and banishing a curse are now ceremonies. Like stitching a patch, the screen dims, the music softens and the curse's card flies to the centre. CLEANSE burns it away from the bottom up: a glowing burn line, rising embers and falling pixel ash. BAN FOREVER opens a black hole beneath it that pulls it in, with debris spiralling after it, then collapses with a burst. Their "CURSE CLEANSED" and "BANISHED FOREVER" callouts also show now: they were only ever drawn during matches, so the Bazaar never displayed them.
Bazaar ceremonies can be skipped. Click anywhere on the dimmed screen, or press Escape or controller B, to skip the patch stitching, curse cleanse or Ban Forever ceremony. It ends straight away with its result shown. The purchase or curse removal has already happened, so skipping never changes the outcome.
VIEW TABLE in the Bazaar shows the real table. It now draws the same table mat as the table screen, with each table's own pattern and colours, instead of a plain card. The current opponent's glow is also a little softer, there and on the table screen.
Kalah Boxes are clearer. The button reads TAKE SELECTED instead of repeating the "Choose 1 of 3" line as PICK 1 MORE, and taking marbles shows "<MARBLE> ACQUIRED" for each kind you keep, with the same burst as picking a boss reward.
Opening the pouch feels livelier. The pouch icon gives a little bounce and glow as it opens, and your marbles pop in one after another (all within about a third of a second, and you can click them straight away). The pouch and board info cards in a match and in the Bazaar now pop open with a sound like every other menu, instead of appearing silently. Instant mode and reduced-motion settings skip the animation.
One name for the opponent's bar: Score Target. The bar, the tutorial, How to Play and every description now call it the Score Target. It used to be "Score Needed to Beat", "Point Threshold" and "score target" depending on where you looked. In all 11 languages.
Simple or detailed descriptions. A new Settings option, DESCRIPTIONS, sets how marbles, Blessings, Curses and Sets are explained. SIMPLE, the default, says what each one does in plain words. DETAILED shows the full text with the exact numbers, as before. The Kalah Box preview always uses the short line, and the Compendium's cards always show both. In all 11 languages.
Endless says ROUND. The Endless box at the top of the match reads ROUND 3 instead of R3, as do the end-of-run card and the leaderboard, and the Bazaar shows "Endless · Round 3". In all 11 languages.
The Blessing and Set strips never cover the board. Both side strips now fit themselves into the space beside the board, below the opponent's banner and above your score bar, at any window size. When there isn't room for every tile, the last one becomes a "+N" tile, and it and the count tab on top both open the Shifters view with everything listed. On a very narrow window just the count tab shows.
Every Blessing that works during a match now shows on the left-hand Blessing strip, not just the scoring ones: Warrior's Sword, Claymore, Guardian's Shield, Crane, Midas, Ignite, Echo Stone, Echo Comet, Hoarder's Bag and Minimalist join it. Each one ticks when it does something, so you can see it working: Sword, Hoarder and Minimalist as the match starts, Claymore on each strike, Shield when it blocks a capture, Crane when you use it, and Echo whenever it repeats an effect. Shield, Crane and Midas dim once they're used up for the match (Shield is also dimmed against bosses, where it doesn't work). With many Blessings the strip switches to smaller tiles so it stays at the edge of the screen.
The pit tooltip always fits on screen and stays on top. It follows the DESCRIPTIONS setting too, and describes as many of the pit's marble types as fit. With long descriptions, a frozen pit's note or a small window, it used to run off the top of the screen. The row of marble counts at its top still lists every type. The tooltip, the floating callouts and the score popup also draw above the Blessing and Set strips now, instead of being partly hidden behind them.
A pit's marble counts no longer get cut off. When a pit held more than three kinds of special marble, the "+N more" tag wrapped onto a third row of the counts under the pit, and only half of it showed. It now takes the last badge's place, so the counts always fit. On very short screens, full pits also kept squeezing the counts down to one row; they now show fewer marbles and keep the counts whole. Hover a pit to see every marble in it, as before.
Big screens: on a 1440p, 4K or other large window the Steam version now scales the whole game up to fill it, keeping the same layout as on a 1080p screen. Before, the board and HUD stayed at their 1080p size, small in the middle of the screen.
Small screens: on screens such as 1366x768 or a Steam Deck, the match was sized while the board was still sliding in, which left it smaller than it needed to be. It's now sized where the board comes to rest. It's also re-sized when a notice such as the frozen-pit line appears above the board, which could push the board down under your score strip.
Very short windows: at 560px tall or less, the main menu, the seed box and the run setup screen switch to compact layouts instead of scrolling, and other boxes shrink to fit. Matches have a compact layout too: the opponent's name and score bar share one row, the pits are shorter and the match text is bigger, so the board, its marbles and the scores all draw larger. The Bazaar scrolls at a readable size instead of shrinking its text, and the money badge and corner buttons are smaller, so they no longer cover the opponent's score bar. The reward screen puts the boss rewards beside your score instead of below it, table select keeps PLAY on screen, and the SHIFTERS button moves off the board and the Bazaar's cards.
Boss rewards: the three cards are now the same height, so their CHOOSE buttons sit in one line, and two-line marble names no longer touch. On a Steam Deck (1280x800) the CHOOSE buttons sat below the bottom of the screen; the reward screen now scales down to fit, so every card, REROLL, TAKE NONE and CONTINUE stay on screen. On some screens it also flickered up and down while your match earnings counted in; it now settles on one size.
The Stone box shows every Stone up to yours. Click STONE during a match and use the arrows either side of the Stone (or the arrow keys, or LB and RB on a controller) to read the effects of each lower Stone, up to the one you're playing on.
The seed box makes the 6-character rule clear. The prompt now says a seed is 6 characters, a count in the field shows how many you've typed (red until 6/6, then green), and pressing START on a shorter seed shakes the warning instead of doing nothing. In Chinese the 6 is written 六, so it no longer draws at half the height of the text around it.
Pasting a seed works with other text around it. The seed field cut a paste down to 6 characters before cleaning it, so pasting "Seed: UTADA2", or a seed with a space in front, lost part of the seed. It now finds the seed in what you paste. Letters typed in full-width mode, common with Chinese and Japanese keyboards, now count instead of vanishing.
Long names no longer run into their card's border in the Shifters view. Reinforcement and some other Blessing, Curse and Patch names ran past the edge of their card, more of them in German, Italian, Spanish, French, Russian and Portuguese. Cards now sit four to a row with room for longer names, and anything longer wraps inside its card.
Compendium cards fit short windows. A card taller than the window now scrolls, instead of its top and CLOSE button running off the screen.
Description boxes are centered. The text box in the Bazaar's detail popups (marbles, Blessings, Kalah boxes, capsules) and the Compendium's detail cards is now centered like the rest of the card, instead of left-aligned.
Rounded pits are now the default look. New players start with them; you can still switch back to square pits in Settings. If you already picked a style, the game keeps it.
New setting: Pause When Inactive (Steam build, on by default). Turn it off and the game keeps playing when you click to another window, for playing on a second monitor or while streaming. Putting a Steam Deck or laptop to sleep always pauses. With it off, opening the Steam overlay doesn't pause the game either. Translated into all 11 languages.
Clicking away no longer covers the game with a pause screen. Switching to another window, opening the Steam overlay or putting a Steam Deck to sleep still pauses everything (music, sound effects, marbles in flight and the opponent's turn), but instead of a full-screen PAUSED card with a RESUME button, a match now shows a small PAUSED tag in the middle of the board. The menus and the Bazaar just go quiet. Clicking back into the game resumes it, and that click never plays a move or buys anything by accident.
The game opens faster. The title art now holds for 1.2s instead of 2.1s, counted from when it first appears instead of from when the game had finished loading behind it, so the menu is ready about a second sooner on a typical PC and more on a slower one. The title art file is also 7× smaller, and the menu's small Steam icon is no longer a huge image that had to load first.
Russian text uses a pixel font. VT323, the body-text font, has no Cyrillic, so Russian text fell back to a smooth system font that was larger than the numbers beside it. Some cards ran off the screen as a result. It now uses a Cyrillic pixel font matched to the game's own.
Clearer Flood Marble description. The simple line now says you push the marbles in that pit into one of the adjacent pits. Updated in all 11 languages.
The Crane's placing tip is accurate. While you place a marble it said to click any pit; it now says one of your pits, the only ones the Crane can place into. Updated in all 11 languages.
The Skeleton King's description now says what it actually does. It used to talk about marbles landing in "certain pits". It now explains that the King's pits start with Bone marbles, and that every Bone sown, by either player, pays a marble into the King's Mancala. Updated in all 11 languages.
New enemy flavor text. Pebble, The Hoarder and The Chess Player have reworded descriptions, and the Ancient Serpent says something new when it's beaten. In all 11 languages.
The tutorial's free-play box gets out of the way. When the tutorial hands you the match to finish, its instructions box used to stay over the board for the whole match. It now folds down to a small strip (SCORE TO WIN, a button to bring the tip back, and SKIP) as soon as you make a move, or after a few seconds.
Clearer capture explanation in the tutorial. It now says to land your last marble in one of your empty pits to steal every marble in the opponent's pit across from it, plus that last marble. Updated in all 11 languages.
A tie now really replays the match. When both Mancalas ended level (TIE — REMATCH!), the board was dealt again but the opponent's Score Target stayed as low as you'd left it, so the replay was an easy win. The replay now starts the match over: the Score Target refills to where the match started and your points go back to 0. Frozen pits from before the tie are cleared, and once-per-match Blessings such as the Crane and Guardian's Shield are ready again. On the 2nd Stone and up, the opponent again has its 50% chance to move first, as in a new match.
Capsule upgrades no longer carry over into your next run. Upgrades picked from Capsules in the Bazaar stayed active after a run ended, so every later run started with their bonus until you closed the game. A new run now starts with none. Continuing a saved run still keeps that run's upgrades.
Points no longer double after a scoring move. While a move's score popup was showing, the POINTS box counted that move twice (a +202,910 move briefly read as ~406K); it now shows your real total throughout.
The pit you sowed from stops pulsing when the sow ends. That pit pulses while its marbles are sown. If your last marble landed back in it, the pulse could carry on through the opponent's turn and into your next sow. That happened most often after a Boomerang, because the marbles after its return run back along your own pits.
Endless rounds no longer all look like boss fights. After clearing the campaign, every Endless round showed the BOSS tag and boss colours, because the game still remembered the final boss's slot. Only the real boss round of each Endless table does now, and the other rounds show their MATCH 1/2 and 2/2 counter again.
Losing in Endless now shows your Endless round. The Run Ended screen showed the table and match where the campaign ended instead of how deep into Endless you got. It now shows ENDLESS and the round, like the in-match display.
Beginner's Pouch patches now look like the rest. Cosmic Loom and Stellar Loom from the Beginner's Pouch showed in the Shifters view with a plain dark border and no coloured ring around the icon. They now get their blue and purple borders like any other patch, including in runs you continue from an earlier save.
A warning when saving fails. If the game can't save (a full disk, or a save file another program kept locked at launch), a message says so once, instead of failing silently.
Steam saves survive crashes. If the game or PC crashes while saving, the last good save is restored instead of starting over, and a save that's briefly locked at launch (antivirus, Steam Cloud) is never overwritten.
Your saved run survives the tutorial. Quitting the tutorial deleted the Continue slot of the run you had saved.
Closing the game from Steam keeps your Bazaar purchases (Continue could roll them back).
Continue no longer resumes into a broken turn when the game was closed in the half-second between turns (a free extra move, or a board with no moves left).
Volume, speed and Skip Animations are remembered between launches. The volume sliders now start at the level the game has always played at (shown as 50%).
Embroidery patches are paid for when you click them. Spending more during the stitching could take your money below zero, and leaving the Bazaar mid-stitch cancelled the purchase.
Stardust Sale no longer discounts the capsules already on the shelf, as its text says.
Cracked Board: a Flood surge aimed into a shattered pit no longer wipes your bought marbles from the pouch; only the marbles that fall through are lost.
Hoarder's Bag adds a marble to every pit (it left your last pit nearly empty), and Minimalist's Hands really takes one from each.
Ice Storm: Lightning landing on a frozen pit now chains to the other frozen pits.
Dampener's 3x combo cap also holds for the damage dealt while a move plays out.
A Glass that shatters, or a Bomb that blows up, as the last marble of a move counts where it landed: no more surprise extra turns or captures from the pit before it.
A capture no longer also fires the captured Multiply, Flood or Black Hole (no phantom "MULTIPLY ×2", no Flood picker or Black Hole pull on an empty pit).
Vectorist turns Boomerangs into Skips for the match only; your pouch keeps its Boomerangs.
Claymore counts every marble that reaches your Mancala, including the move's last one.
Cleansed curses really do come back in Endless, as the warning says.
The SWEEP bonus can be earned again.
Echo Stone, Echo Comet and The Crane now say that some special marbles trigger, instead of promising it for every marble.
Back (Esc / B) goes back one step on the Compendium's detail cards, the Stone info box and the Crane, and closes whatever you opened over a Kalah box reveal. A controller's B no longer closes two things at once.
After a win the pits look locked during the wind-down.
Big sows run smoother with Screen Shake on (the screen was rebuilt for every marble).
No more sounds while alt-tabbed, and the Embroidery stitch sound no longer restarts when you come back. Alt-tabbing during the launch holds the music, intro included, until you return.
The defeat sound is pitched down, as intended.
The intro music plays only when the game starts, not again after a lost run or a quit to the menu.
Long marble and blessing names (German, Italian, French, Russian…) wrap inside their cards.
More of the game is translated: the run-lost lines, "ACQUIRED" and the banish messages. In Russian, counts now read correctly ("1 turn left", hits, marbles in a pit, tables cleared, capsule choices).
Steam Deck: the controller settings list your default buttons when Steam Input is in charge.
Borderless display mode applies without a restart.
Browser version: starting a run, Continue and the menu buttons no longer wait for the sound to unlock. With a controller they could hang until the first mouse click.
Beating The Skeleton King reveals the Bone marble in the Compendium.
Black Hole's unlock hint names the demo's real requirement (Stone 2).