MILESTONE UPDATE! Workshop Support, New Animation, Areas and more!

This is Milestone 5 out of 9! Check out our Road to 1.0 post for info on planned updates and schedule!

⚙️ Steam Workshop Support!

Surprise! With this update, players can create, share and and download all sorts of content including entirely custom Beasties, re-colored or modified Beasties, new Plays, and music tracks! Players with matching mods can even play together in online lobbies!

There are already some mods ready and available for you to try on our Workshop page! And for all the dirty details on how to create and share your own content, check out our Official Guide! We worked to make the process and tooling as user-friendly as possible. We're incredibly excited to see what players create!!!

🖼️ Beastie Art Updates

• Skorock: Animation COMPLETE!

• Noizard: Animation COMPLETE!

• Merrifly: Animation COMPLETE!

• Scrubbub: Animation COMPLETE!

• Grubiron: Animation COMPLETE!

• Beetlback: Animation COMPLETE!

• Armantis: Animation COMPLETE!

• Wottle: Animation COMPLETE!

• Webbounce: Animation COMPLETE!

• Goofsder: Animation COMPLETE!

• Varkabond: Animation COMPLETE!

  

  The number of Beasties marked as complete has gone from 60 to 71. PHEW!!!!!!

⭐New Stuff

• NEW AREA: Burblog

  

  • Explore Geo City's more quiet, suburban district!

  • Burblog is home to a notorious neighborhood Pickup Beastieball Court where strong teams gather for casual games. It's the perfect spot for coaches who want to play practice games and level up their team!

• NEW FEATURE: Emotes!

  • 

  • You can now hold down the "Clap" button to strike a pose with your Beasties!

  • Emotes make it easy to line up your team for screenshots...

  • ...They also add another way to communicate with online opponents! React to exciting moments in-game, or send emotes from the post-match results screen as a friendly "GG"!

  • Design your own set of Emotes in a new Coach sub-menu!

• NEW BGM: Burblog

• NEW VS. MUSIC: VS. The Silent Warriors

  • This track features live bass guitar and drum performances from peak divide, the composing duo behind games such as Unbeatable! It's a standout track amongst our game's colorful array of boss themes... We're sure you'll enjoy this one!

  • Players who have already passed their point the story will have the new songs available in Music Setup.

  • The OST is updated on Steam and Bandcamp!

• Environmental improvements

  • A monorail now runs through Geo City!

• New Steam Achievements

  • Added achievements for certain main story events as well as post/late-game challenges, including the new Pickup Beastieball Court.

  • We mainly wanted to add these because we frequently see players wondering what is available in the post-game, or how to gets stars on their save file, so the added achievements are meant to codify what is already established in-game.

  • We still intend to add more achievements in the future and don't consider the current set as "true 100% completion," so we are still maintaining the placeholder "unachievable achievement"... for now!

• All Beasties are now voiced! Here are the new voices added:

  • Grubiron

  • Beetlback

  • Orgella

  • Waglash

  • Vultoxin

  • Magpike

• The game is now fully playable in Brazillian Portuguese! Enquanto o Hexa não vem, bora jogar vôlei!

✨Major changes and improvements

• ICYMI, check out our Springtime Bonus Update patch notes - we added many cool features in that update, with some getting further improvements today!

  • The Beastiepedia pose viewer has been greatly expanded and improved!

  • Beastiepedia metamorph data is now available in all languages.

  • Preset Beastie tags are now available in all languages.

  • Updated Jack encounters are now available in all languages.

• Bigmoon Bash Rank & Reward Changes

  • We've massively increased the SP awarded to players for competing in Bigmoon Bashes - including retroactively! If you've played in Bashes before, open SportNet for an SP bonus!

    • As the premier way of playing PVP with others, we want to reward players who participate in events, since more participation makes it more fun for everyone!

    • Our hope is that the extra SP makes it easier for players to stay up to date on Bash events, re-building and updating their PVP teams without needing to grind single-player content.

    • We're continuously looking for ways we can gracefully improve the experience of PVP-focused players without compromising the balance/pacing for those who favor single-player content.

  • We've increased how quickly players Rank up from losses in a Bigmoon Bash when in early Ranks.

    • This change was in effect during the most recent Open Bash, but wasn't mentioned in patch notes.

    • Since SP is awarded based on Ranks, combined with the above change, this helps players get more rewards for the same amount of participation, even if they're struggling to win.

    • This also helps to normalize the number of games required to reach 5 stars. Previously, players with a typical 50-50 winrate would have to play many more games to get to 5 stars than those who won nearly every match. By bringing their experience a bit closer together, we hope to reduce some frustration and also make Bash Scores a fairer value of comparison between players.

• View Past Bash Records

  • A new menu on SportNet allows you to browse your past Bash records!

  • Note that older Bashes only stored the bare minimum data for rewards, so some data will be missing from those

• Greatly expanded NPC crowds!

  • Many more characters can now appear in the background during matches!

  • As you progress through the story, fans of the coaches you've defeated might show up to cheer for you in future games!

  • Characters in the crowd now emote and react to events during the match as well!

• Increased rewards for Rank Defense! Playing Rank Defense creates fun interactions for other players, and exposes users to the widest diversity of opponent teams, so we want to encourage players to return to this post-game challenge.

• Performance optimization! In particular; we discovered our auto-calibration was not properly detecting the impact of certain 3D effects on some graphics cards. We've improved this calibration so that users' automatic settings should be much more accurate.

• Overhauled playbook and encounter designs across the game to account for balance changes and new traits, including/especially for procedurally-generated teams (Random teams + Tower Tourney).

🌕 Upcoming Bash

Steam post image BIGMOON BASH: RANBATS!

• A Bigmoon Bash is coming this weekend! This one features only random teams, so no teambuilding is necessary! Jump into the game and see how you roll with random Beasties!

🔧 Balance Changes

This is the smallest list of Balance Changes we've considered for a major update since the game's first release. The truth is that overall, the range from the best-performing to the worst-performing Beasties is the smallest it's ever been, and team diversity is overall as high or higher than ever. So we're now able to hone in on smaller problems and make surgical tweaks to hopefully keep things in balance without upsetting too many existing teams and strategies out there.

This patch's largest single focus is in curbing Spirit offense in subtle ways, but there are a few other changes we anticipate getting a lot of discussion. Without further ado...

🍄 Traits

• (NEW!) Fortress: When at the net, can attack without volleying and restores 12 STAMINA after Defense

  • 🔄 Given to Armantis in place of Power Forward We love Power Forward, but it never felt *perfect* for Armantis, especially after we decided to redesign Ricochet to be more flavorful. It felt like a missed opportunity that Armantis didn't get to make good use of the play that really was designed in honor of them. So we're debuting a new design which is meant to keep the spirit of Power Forward but enables Armantis' more unique gameplan. This notably has virtually no impact on the strength of their net Perfect Shot, which is their current "strongest" attack.

• Plucky

  • 🔻New effect: Can't be given FEELINGs (except BLOCKED) Yeah, it was always kind of weird that Plucky also stopped BLOCK. Goofsder finally had enough positive results that we could justify making this tweak.

• Watchtower

  • Removed🔄New effectApplies +1 BLOCK to attacks targeting adjacent allies This trait has been the center of debate, complaint, and adjustment for many patches. Its ability to redirect attacks exposed a lot of unfun interactions and pushed us to make a lot of careful adjustments in an effort to keep space for this trait and the gameplay it enabled. We decided to take a step back and re-examine what we like about Watchtower, and whether we could come up with something that achieved the parts we liked without carrying the bad, and this is what we came up with. We like this trait's unique positioning interactions, and the way it allows players to safeguard a brittle Beastie with planning and teambuilding. But its redirection ability took a lot of agency from the opponent and removed a huge variety of counterplay. We're excited to see what players can build with this iteration; it still enables "free" position-based defensive support but without invalidating the opponent's targeting choices.

• Deviant

  • Renamed to Rogue

  • Adjusted🔼New effectPOW x1.5 and ignores BLOCK when their target is changed Deviant/Rogue hasn't quite had enough of an edge for its difficulty to trigger, and we wanted it to still feel relevant especially with the above change to Watchtower.

• Decoy

  • Adjusted🔄New effectAlways the nearest to opponents. Becomes the target of opponent Support and Defense plays. We tried really hard in the last patch to give Boldlur a new more effective gameplan, and in many ways we succeeded; Boldlur saw increased usage, and went from bottom-performing to a very balanced winrate. But their ability to wall out teams under certain offense thresholds made them grindy and unfun to play into. Boldlur best excels at being difficult to wipe out, which is not as valuable a gameplan in Beastieball as it would be in conventional tactics games, so we struggled to find a way to make Boldlur relevant. This new Decoy iteration is our new best idea after throwing out quite a few other concepts.

• Stagecraft

  • 🔼 When active, reduces to damage to 50 (from 66) We're making a couple tweaks around Plumask in an experiment to see if we can make them work better in their intended role. The addition of Rousing Strike made Plumask shine as a supporter, self-ramper and attacker all in one and made them easier to slot onto more teams. We are shifting that tool away from Plumask for being a bit centralizing, and looking for other ways that Plumask can be more consistent without relying on it.

• Synchronize

  • Added🔄New effectGets any 🔼BOOSTs that their ally gets. This suggestion came from a player feedback and we like it enough to try it out. Our intention with the previous iteration of Synchronize was to give Crabaret a new trait that still let them function as an explosive offensive pivot in ways similar to how they did with Agile. In practice the trait was difficult to build around and therefore felt underwhelming. This iteration has many more interactions to build with and keeps the most fun elements of Synchronize, although it also means pushing Crabaret's playstyle further from their origin.

🏃 Plays

• (NEW) Passion Strike: SPIRIT Attack, 105 POW. Feel 1 WEEPY before contact.

  • Via level up

    • 🔼 Plumask

  • Via friendship

    • 🔼 Crabaret, Squimage, Diabloceras, Orgella

  We're tweaking the power and distribution of some Spirit attacks, and in the process we felt there was a vacuum for this power level of attack for Plumask and other Beasties.

• (NEW) Copycat: SUPPORT. Can target opponents or allies. Copies target's trait.

  • Via level up

    • 🔼 Gremlur

  Since the introduction of Adaptation, Gremlur has found an exciting spot on a lot of teams and as part of a lot of creative combos, to the detriment of their original trait, Slippery. Since Gremlur has proven to be a good boy when allowed to have any Beasties' trait, we decided to codify it by giving them a signature play that allows them to change their trait. This allows a Slippery Gremlur to get some of the fun of Adaptation at the cost of a move slot, or for an Adaptation Gremlur to adjust their strategy without TAGGING OUT.

• (NEW) Dodge Roll: DEFENSE. Nearest opponent feels +1 BLOCKED. TAG OUT with benched ally.

  • Via level up

    • 🔼 Wottle

  • Via friendship

    • 🔼 Daredillo

  With the change to Daring Pass, some players felt Wottle was lacking in interesting tools to build with, and we tend to agree that historically Wottle has had a challenge carving out its own niche. We really want to see them succeed as a defensive support/pivot Beastie first and foremost, and we think Dodge Roll is a potentially exciting addition to their kit in that light.

• AdjustedFaithRenamed to Daring Pass, with distribution adjusted significantly (see below). Faith is one of the oldest plays in the game and something we distributed sort of "automatically" without a lot of intention. When looking back over the gameplay of Spirit focused offense over the last while, we felt that Spirit had too much similarity with the gameplan of Body and Mind, and we wondered whether we could do more to further differentiate the different type playstyles. The solution we're experimenting with is to overall reduce Spirit's access to "easy" offensive support in the form of boosts from tanky or supportive Beasties. Instead, we're giving access to this play only to relatively frail or aggressive Beasties who would prefer to be the main attacker. In this way, Spirit-focused teams need to field multiple offensive Beasties to get mounting offensive pressure, or they can rely on Rally... but it is difficult to get the benefits of both without compromising defense.

• Share Snack: SUPPORT. Evenly split the STAMINA of target and self. Can target any Beastie in an adjacent row. Previously, Diggum could target opponents as long as they used Share Snack from the net. Now, when at the net, Diggum can only target opponents in the front row. We're excited about the ways this play has empowered more use of Diggum, but its all-powerful effect also warped many games around them and made Diggum function all too well as an offensive Beastie when they're meant to shine even more as a support. We hope with this change that Diggum is still effective as a support, but in more passive ways, either intimidating the opponent to keep their healthy Beasties back or restoring their own ally's STAMINA more often.

• Supercommit

  • 🔻 95 POW. (From 100 POW)

• Rousing Strike

  • 🔻 60 POW. (From 65 POW) Our main reasoning for setting Rousing Strike to 65 POW was by comparison to Thriller; Rousing Strike gets to be same power level (65 + jazzed), but takes an extra turn to "activate" in exchange for being able to support an ally or boost a different play. In practice, its best use cases saw players trying to use this play to score a point, and then chain the Jazzed boost to a powerful serve on the following turn. We enjoy that and other creative uses of this play, but we want to make them a bit more rewarding by making this play a bit more difficult to score wipes with.

• Distraction

  • 🔻 Removed the POW debuff effect This play had sat unchanged in the game's repetoire for many months and patches, and went mostly ignored. In the previous patch, we tried to find a way to make it more relevant while better enabling defensive playstyles. While we're happy with the improvement to other defensive tools, with this one we may have gone a step too far, making Distraction into a play that was simply grindy and unfun to play into. Now that players have had a taste of the power of controlling targeting from the net, we're curious to see whether this play finds continued use on some Beasties while being less overbearing.

• Launch

  • 🔄POW to 65 (from 100). Now calculates based on front-row bonus instead of back-row bonus.

  • 🔄 Updated text to clarify that it SHIFTs before contact; can now be used even if the space ahead is obstructed (this was a hidden feature not mentioned in the text before). ⚠️ This changes how power is calculated, but the result roughly identical to before. Our only intention is to clarify the effect text and order of operations with Traits such as Unpredictable.

👹 Beasties

• Bildit, Handicoot, Bandicraft

  • 🔻 Plays Removed: Lure Shot This is just clean-up...

• Axolati, Hopsong, Hopra

  • 🔻 Plays Removed: Faith (Daring Pass)

• Illugus, Shloom

  • 🔼 Plays Added: Feint

• Collarva, Wormask, Plumask

  • Added🔻 Plays RemovedRousing Strike We love seeing Plumask succeed as an offensive threat, but Rousing Strike made them very efficient at ramping, attacking and supporting and could easily bend the games they appeared in. It was mainly added for Hopra and we would rather keep the move powerful in their hands rather than try to balance it for Plumask's kit. Instead we're giving Plumask other ways to more easily slot on different teams.

• Merrifly, Cherrily, Mascurry

  • 🔼 Plays Added: Swarm

  • 🔻 Plays Removed: Faith (Daring Pass), Confident Pass Cherrily has consistently hovered around the top of usage and winrate for a long time, and for good reason; they are the best in the game at supporting offensive strategies with their incredible trait and support access. What gives us some pause is that Cherrily has become a staple on mixed-type teams as well as type-specialist teams, which to us indicates that they were just a little bit too good at too many roles. We are removing some of their type specialization with the goal to see a wider variety of Beasties shine in offensive support roles. We also want Cherrily to be more of a defensive liability, but their access to powerful passes often meant that opponents didn't want to target attacks into them lest they simply use the opportunity to get more boosts.

• Platypulse

  • 🔼 90 SDEF (from 85)

  • 🔻 115 MDEF (from 120)

  • 🔼 Plays Added: Zigzag

  • 🔻 Plays Removed: Ricochet Platypulse is in a tight spot where they are one of the less-used Beasties, and performing perfectly fine, but players frequently bring up how swingy they are into different matchups (being too strong into mono-Mind teams and weak into anything else). We're trying a light touch to even up their matchups. This is where their MDEF was in the game's initial release, but way back in January 2025, players didn't know how to make good use of Platypulse and felt it was weak in its role as a mind defender, while feeling irate about the strength of Mind offense at the time. We're in a different world here in May 2026, so maybe Platypulse can inch closer to what we originally intended for them. Ricochet is something we gave to Platypulse without enough forethought, in the wake of having to remove it from Armantis. Now that it's back in its rightful owner's hands, we reexamined its place in Platypulse's kit, and feel it's not quite the right fit. We see Ricochet as an above-curve power attack that is mostly used by Beasties lack high Mind POW or ideal synergy with it; Platypulse is a perfect storm of both. We're changing it out with Zigzag, which has slightly less power at its peak and better synergizes with Platypulse's deep pool of strong passing plays.

• Radillo, Daredillo

  • 🔼 Plays Added: Daring Pass

• Diggum, Duggout

  • 🔼 Plays Added: Lure Shot

• Beetlback

  • 🔼 Plays Added: Mark, Lock Target

• Wottle

  • 🔻 Plays Removed: Faith (Daring Pass)

  • 🔼 Plays Added: Flight

• Armantis

  • 🔼 Plays Added: Ricochet

• Turogue, Turtaneer, Tortanchor

  • 🔻 Plays Removed: Faith (Daring Pass)

• Squimage, Diabloceras

  • Added🔻 Plays RemovedSupercommit, Counter This is just a minor clean-up of rarely used plays in light of their new addition of Passion Strike.

• Crabaret

  • 🔼 Plays Added: Daring Pass&

• Conjarr

  • 🔼 Plays Added: Distraction

• Opposur

  • 🔼 Plays Added: Daring Pass

• Grazada

  • 🔼 Plays Added: Distraction

🚧Other Fixes and Changes

• Adjusted some Beastie spawn locations in light of the new area added

• Improved safety checks on file saves to ensure that corrupted save files are not stored as backups.

• Added a sound for when time is running out during an online match.

• Greatly improved error messaging/handling if there's a network issue when sending out an Away Team

• Added much more robust checking on imported Rank Defense teams, filling in missing plays if illegal ones are removed (we suspect illegal plays are typically being added via Randomizer modes or out-dated balance patches)

• Added universal drop shadow to text on clickable buttons, and adjusted some text/icon colors in accordance

• Added visual FX for "field clearing" play effects

• Made many subtle adjustments to certain traits and ball effects to help clarify confusing interactions. Some of these do impact how some traits match up into certain interactions.

  • Unpredictable now applies 1 NERVOUS to the attacker before receiving the ball (so all subsequent movement effects are cancelled)

  • Power Forward now applies 1 JAZZED before receiving the ball

  • Overwrite now triggers even if the target is WIPED OUT by the attack

  • Ball attack side effects which apply field effects, clear field effects, change traits, or force tag-outs now trigger even if the target is WIPED OUT. (Many already did, but some didn't; we've made this more consistent now).

  • In The Clouds prevents damage changes from either using or receiving SPIRIT or MIND attacks in Rally

  • When a Maverick Beastie attacks an In The Clouds Beastie in Rally, In The Clouds is ignored and Rally damage changes are applied

  • The Block applied by Watchtower is now properly reflected by Stirring

  • Adjusted wording on Slippery and the Tough-redirection rule; fixed such that Slippery can no longer redirect ball attacks to TOUGH allies.

  • Fixed an issue with Flee not triggering in certain interactions

  • Adjusted wording on Bouncy, Galaxy Brain, and Nimble. Trait text is now much more consistent about communicating whether they trigger "when" receiving an attack (before side effects/attacker traits trigger) VS "after" receiving an attack (after side effects/attacker traits trigger)

• Tweaks to opponent AI

  • AI is much more respectful of WEEPY buildup and is more likely to tag out a WEEPY Beastie

  • AI doesn't value a Beastie feeling TOUGH if they have 1 STAMINA or less

• Fixed an issue with missing Team Name text when the Sports King initially unlocks Team Titles in non-English languages.

• Fixed an issue with missing names for incidental Beastie text in Russian

• Updated the sprite for Muffin (Party Pirates assistant character)

• Added a 10% chance for orange Humflits to appear in Garcinia Meadow

• Fixed collisions on certain trees in Attalea Path

• Fixed inconsistent text saying how long a Streak was required to get Gold Level sponsorship from Staying Power Fitness

• Improved text scaling in some languages where text didn't fit on specifically-sized clickable buttons

• Fixed issues with Gym stat point allocation that made it possible to use/buy tokens which didn't get applied

• Added more robust safety nets for sending feedback reports (re-sending if they fail to send initially)

• Reduced feedback report log file sizes so sending is much more consistent

• Some small improvements to online lobby stability

• Removed mistaken pop-up indicating Sweep is weakened by Rally

• Shortened text on plays that SHIFT Beasties

• Fixed an issue where Marcy's pose wouldn't reset to neutral if the player says "no" when asking to begin their ranked match.

• Fixed an issue where Marlin's dialogue would loop if the player left and returned to a specific tutorial-only area

• Added repeating text for Beastie recruit failures during the tutorial

• Added extra safety checking on imported "Frontpage News" data to avoid broken or crashing elements

• Fixed a softlock wherein playing Elena very early on in the Crown Series would prevent you from making progress in her Ranked Match storyline

• Fixed a rarely seen crash when highlighting play data for certain plays in certain story matches

• Minor adjustments to various areas to correct camera issues, collisions, add missing ball shrooms, etc.

• Fixed more typos ======= Subsequent fixes were added in hot patches shortly after release =======

• Fixed a crash in Team Setup menu opened from Rank Defense

• Fixed a crash on file select with weird/bad savedata mod state data

  • ...Twice! Still may be some unresolved background issues here but our priority is to make the game successfully load and play for everyone

• Improved save file hash checking to circumvent regional OS differences

• Fixed music ending prematurely during Pickup Games

• Added Music Setup/custom music to Pickup games

• Adjusted Burblog layouts with better secrets

• Fixed doubling characters during a certain tutorial scene

• Fixed Marlin appearing in the crowd for his own match in the tutorial

• Fixed issue with users not getting historical SP bonusses if they had used SportNet on the experimental build prior to the milestone release

• Fixed dialogue typo

• Fixed issues with mouse inputs in Emote Editor

• Fixed issue where Dominic didn't use his own music for some matches

• Fixed missing play effect text for mods

• Changed URL opening to use Steam's overlay browser to improve behaviour when closing the game

• Added missing ballshrooms to some Burblog areas

• Fixed issue with Gene potentially having one of your Beasties in the audience if they were on an away team