The Operators Update

The biggest update since launch: a full Operator system, a ground-up rework of save & resume, a wide balance pass, and a long list of fixes straight from your reports.

NEW: Operators

Pick your Operator before every run. Each one brings a run-shaping passive and a unique, hand-aimed Active that replaces the generic Global Surge:

• Overcharger - fire-rate frenzy window for your whole board

• Conductor - chain specialist; Active forks lightning across the lane

• Detonator - plants timed charges that cascade into chain explosions

• Warden - lockdown control: vulnerability and hold effects

• Astra - SINGULARITY: drags enemies into a gravity well, then implodes it

• Nyx-7 - BASS DROP: a board-wide pulse synced to the music. Time your tap to the beat for EARLY / LATE / PERFECT grades, with an on-beat approach ring to read the rhythm

• Dynamo - a living capacitor: banks your towers' wasted overkill damage into a Charge meter (live HUD readout), then ARC DISCHARGE dumps the whole bank as forked lightning - the bigger the bank, the bigger the storm

Plus:

• Real-time skill-aim gestures (click, drag, flick, tap) with combo feedback - the wave keeps running while you aim

• Animated procedural operator portraits, a revamped Operators screen with live ability previews, an in-game operator badge, and the surge bar tinted to your operator's colors

• AddedSequential unlock chainwin a run with an operator to unlock the next - with new achievements and unique icons (46 achievements total)

• The tutorial now teaches your Operator's Active hands-on instead of the old generic surge

• Demo players: the first three operators (Overcharger, Conductor, Detonator) are fully playable

Save & Resume: Ground-Up Overhaul

Your saved run is now sacred. A whole class of "resume gave me a new run" / "my bonuses reset" bugs is gone:

• Saves never expire - the old 12-hour limit silently deleted overnight saves. Removed.

• Everything survives resume now: Escalation Engine, Compound Interest, Kinetic Calibration, Overclock Doctrine, and Predatory Learning keep their full built-up bonuses; Signal Saturation keeps its meter rate; Dynamo keeps its banked Charge

• Fixed an exploit where operator passives stacked again on every save/resume cycle

• Starting a new run while a save exists now asks for confirmation before overwriting

• A failed resume returns you to the menu instead of silently starting a fresh run, and the save is quarantined - never deleted

• Resuming a run no longer overwrites your chosen difficulty setting

• Running a second copy of the game can no longer corrupt your save ("save in use" warning)

Balance

Towers

• Phase Splitter: damage 18 → 22

• Voltspear: damage 50 → 58

• Marker Tower: damage 8 → 10, mark duration 4.0s → 4.5s

Modifiers

• Wildfire: burn now scales with your run-wide damage growth - it stays deadly at wave 70+, not just mid-game

• Overkill: excess kill damage now also spills on chain and split kills

• Exploit Weakness: now grants +10% damage on every hit (the +50% vs Marked stays)

• Momentum: switching targets keeps half your stacks instead of resetting to zero

• Blast Core: radius growth standardized at +24px per copy, on every tower

Premium cards

• RemovedKinetic Calibrationtier cap removed - grows +1 flat damage per mod every 5 waves from pickup, forever, and copies stack

Campaign

• Stage starting-lives now scale properly with your difficulty setting

UI & Comfort

• Calmer surge flashes: full-screen flash intensity halved, softer onset, and rapid surges no longer strobe-stack

• Card text shows live numbers: descriptions scale with Thermal Runaway, copies owned, and current wave (no more "+45%" that doesn't match reality)

• Leaderboards: expanded entries now show the run's operator portrait and a bigger, clearer loadout

• Settings, Operators, and Hotkeys screens got Cancel / Defaults / Apply with an unsaved-changes prompt

• End-screen attribution now correctly credits burn and fire-trail damage to the towers that earned it

• Retuned draft card accent colors

Fixes

• Finishing an Unstable Anomaly run now lands on the random map's own leaderboard instead of Orbit's

• A stronger slow is no longer overwritten by a weaker one reapplied on top

• Achievements that unlocked while Steam was unreachable now re-sync at run end

• Restart Run correctly re-applies your operator's passive

• Blast Core splash chill now respects per-tower Cryo Lock copies

• Drafts no longer offer the same card twice in one draft

• Fixed targeting edge cases where front/back picks could double-target one enemy, and a rare error when armored enemies spawned in tight clumps

• The animated main-menu background no longer interferes with pausing

• FixedTutorial polishthe Overcharge demo runs at fixed speed, shows the drag trail, and no longer leaks visuals into the run