Bubbles popped now bank when you Extract. Your lifetime pop count - and the achievements and power unlocks tied to it - grows at the moment you extract, matching everything else the run banks. A run lost to a game over or surrender banks nothing. Arcade mini-games no longer count toward lifetime pops; BUBBLEATHON does, on Extract, like the main game.
Achievements pop the moment you earn them. Some achievements used to arrive all at once on your next launch. Every achievement now unlocks at its earning moment - and if you were owed any from before, they arrive on your first launch after this update.
The TV, The Vampire and The Ball ask for less XP. The last three locations were a cliff rather than a climb. All three are eased on every difficulty; the pacing between them is unchanged.
The Ball is a real fight now. It takes a fixed number of crosshair hits to bring down - your crit build cannot one-shot it, and nothing else can hurt it. Its dossier now says so: only crosshair hits shoot it down.
The Vampire's darkness now covers your power-up choices too. Picking mid-attack is meant to be done under pressure - the crosshair's pool of light sits over the cards now, not under them.
The arcade cabinet starts at 1 mystery globe. First play costs 1 (was 10), still +1 per finished run, still capped at 44.
Poltergeist's boss entrance gets its moment every game. The Rift boss's slow-motion intro plays on the first boss appearance of every run, not just the first time you ever met it.
Cowan-Reines is worth its rarity. Each of its four summoned neutrinos now counts as a real appearance - their values double one to the next (x2/x4/x8/x16) and the doubling sticks for the rest of the run.
Genie Lover is a much bigger deal. Each of its 4 charges grants +2.5% multicast chance (was +1%) - and the card no longer appears before the Genie Lamp can actually multicast.
HELIX weapon squares show their charges. Weapons read "LV n" plus the same charge pips every other pick wears.
HELIX's REPLICATION got the entrance it deserved. The mode's only one-charge power now plays a full mitosis when claimed - your actual gun is scanned, split and swept along the orbit rail into its clone.
Infuser hits show their own damage numbers - light blue, at every connect, on bubbles and bosses alike. And no HELIX number prints a pointless ".0" anymore.
Fixed the power-up bar stalling on very deep Poltergeist runs. Past a certain score the bar froze full and stopped granting bonuses - cutting off the road to the #INF race. It now keeps paying all the way to the score ceiling.
Fixed a paired boss vanishing in BUBBLEATHON. With two hittable bosses summoned together, hits could resolve against the wrong one and leave its partner invulnerable. Hits now land on the boss under your crosshair.
Fixed a leaderboard score waiting for your next launch. A score upload Steam refuses now retries throughout the session - within minutes, or the moment you walk back to the cabinet - and keeps retrying through Steam's busy periods, so grinding personal bests back to back always lands.
Fixed the monitor frame disappearing after BUBBLEATHON. Returning to the main game on the monitor no longer leaves its frame invisible for the session.
BUBBLEATHON's extraction panel no longer shows rewards it cannot give. The coin and mystery globe rows are gone; the two real rewards sit together.
Fixed the HELIX aim line appearing to skewer the core. With a second gun up and the core dark at low health, the two aim cues could read as one line through it - the cue now fades near each barrel.
Fixed hard seams in HELIX's boss-takeover backgrounds and the last faint seam in the Something reveal's swirl - the noise behind them is now exact on every GPU.
Fixed the mystery-globe chime settling into one repeated pitch during long minting streaks - the ladder climbs and re-climbs, and the deep bag thud moves with the chord.
Fixed a mid-session Shake & Flash toggle not reaching some HELIX effects until the next launch.
HELIX mass kills roll out as a chain. Very large simultaneous kills cascade in a wave instead of one stacked jolt - more satisfying and easier on the frame rate.
NUCLEAR and SHOCKWAVE were rebuilt as true screen effects - the blast warps the board and expands as a heavy dome; SHOCKWAVE is a dispersive prism shell that leaves the board genuinely clearer (and pushed gems now stay pushed).
Popping bubbles costs less per pop - lifetime stat bookkeeping no longer runs on every single pop.