Patch 0.4.0 - Patch Notes and release date!

RELEASE DATE FOR PATCH 2026-02-06

🐟 Patch Notes – Gameplay, Units & Rank Update

This update focuses on core mechanics, new units, rank progression, and a major UI polish pass, alongside a pile of bug fixes and balance tweaks.

⚙️ Gameplay & Mechanics

• Added new actions allowing fish to grant stacking buffs (Energy, Resistance) to adjacent units

• Game Speed now affects:

  • Background music playback speed

  • Sudden death timer speed

  • Damage frequency during sudden death

• Game Speed is now saved between games

• Pearls no longer apply duplicate buffs if a fish already has equipment with the same ability

• Fixed resistance values incorrectly dropping below 0

• Resolved multiple pearl-related issues

• Fixed an issue where fish with sub-actions (e.g. trigger on energy full, trigger on adjacent actions) could ignore equipped items

• Fixed adjacency checks where fish requiring a specific tag were instead buffed by all adjacent fish

• Poison stats reworked:

  • Now displays total poison damage dealt by the applying fish

• Crit stats reworked:

  • Now shows total number of crits, not crit values

• Flying Fish removed

• RemovedWheel of Fortunefish rewards removed

• Small tag disabled

• Safe item now scales based on overall beats instead of per-unit activations

🐠 New Units

Standard Units

• Arowana

  • Large treasure unit that gains gold whenever adjacent units gain gold

• Butterfly Fish

  • Gains gold every X beats

  • Introduces mechanics that track collective beats rather than per-unit activations

• Garibaldi

  • Gains increased damage whenever an adjacent unit gains gold

• Golden Trevally

  • Grants Resistance to adjacent units

• Remora

  • Grants Energy to the unit directly in front

Competition Units

• Vampire Squid

  • Large unit that deals damage whenever an adjacent unit heals

• Blue Sea Dragon

  • Heals itself when diagonally adjacent units gain energy

🏆 Rank & Progression

• Added player ranks

• Winning grants rank points; losing deducts points

• New players start at 1000 rank points (Silver) on first login

• Rank logic moved fully to the database

📊 Leaderboards

• Added a Leaderboard menu (25 players per page)

• Players are sorted by rank points

• UI improvements:

  • Next / Previous page navigation

  • Your own rank is always visible at the bottom

  • Clicking it jumps to the page containing your position

  • Alternating row shading for readability

  • Overall visual polish and cleanup

🖥️ UI & UX Improvements

• Added UI groundwork for a future rank system

• Overhauled Siren’s Binding UI

• Improved readability of the unit description window

• Updated unit tags (some units now include new tags)

• Food items now display descriptions in inventory

• New event UIs added:

  • Shells Kitchen

  • Bank

  • The Smith

• Fixed incorrect sorting orders for several UI elements

• End-of-round combat stats added:

  • Stats shown per combat round

  • Each fish has its own row with icon

  • Includes attack type, damage, and more

  • Resets each round

• Post-game stats now show overall stats across all playthroughs

🍽️ Items & Events

• Added new food items to Shells Kitchen

• These grant bonus items with +1 extra:

  • Damage

  • Healing

  • Crit

  • Block

🐛 Bug Fixes

• Fixed poisoned or inked fish incorrectly triggering adjacent fish listening for poison/ink events

• Fixed an issue where the store reroll button wouldn’t re-enable after selling items to afford it