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Steam News23 July 20261mo ago

Throw a Wrench In It: Update 1.6.0

We're Back We're back from our week-long Summer break and shipping the first update in our soon-to-be-public roadmap! Look for that to drop before the end of the month.

In this update9

Full notes

Full SWAPMEAT update

Read the full published notes in a cleaner layout. The original post stays linked below.

What changed

8 fixes4 additions7 changes1 removal
  • Balance
  • Events
  • Gameplay
  • Performance
  • Fixes
  • UI and audio
changedNew AbilityIntroducing Poprocks ! Hold the ability input to charge up your damage, then release a powerful bolt of elemental energy. If the hit kills an enemy, a cluster of elemental grenades will spawn.
changedNew Enemy and Meat!We wanted to give players a way to heal Harvester Nodes and Shrine events, so allow us to introduce Grease Monkey, a decommissioned auto-mechanic bot who never got the memo that he'd been replaced. The Grease Monkey torso comes with six wrenches that you throw at friendly structures like Harvester Nodes and Shrines to heal them.
addedCamera ControlsAdded an option in the Video settings to adjust the camera follow distance for the player.
addedPerformance GainsAdded pooling projectiles and pooling enemies to help reduce performance spikes
changedGameplayThe internals of shooting have been adjusted. Previously projectile and hitscan visually appeared to fire from the muzzle of the weapon, but logically fired from the camera. Because of our patented meat swapping technology, it was very hard to figure out where the player's weapons were, and they could easily be under the ground or in a wall. So we made the visual/logical split. Moving the camera actually affected your shots, and we really wanted to add camera distance options. We realized we could use the same visual logical split to guarantee that the projectiles originated in a good place, closer to the line of fire. Now they logically fire from the character at whatever the camera is aiming at. This fixes issues with range calculation on shorter range weapons, and shooting at enemies near your character.
addedGameplayPlayer-team event structures (such as Harvester Nodes during the extraction event) now have more health the more players are in the game, matching the increased volume of enemies.

SWAPMEAT changes

changedIntroducing Poprocks ! Hold the ability input to charge up your damage, then release a powerful bolt of elemental energy. If the hit kills an enemy, a cluster of elemental grenades will spawn.
changedWe wanted to give players a way to heal Harvester Nodes and Shrine events, so allow us to introduce Grease Monkey, a decommissioned auto-mechanic bot who never got the memo that he'd been replaced. The Grease Monkey torso comes with six wrenches that you throw at friendly structures like Harvester Nodes and Shrines to heal them.
addedAdded an option in the Video settings to adjust the camera follow distance for the player.
addedAdded pooling projectiles and pooling enemies to help reduce performance spikes
changedThe internals of shooting have been adjusted. Previously projectile and hitscan visually appeared to fire from the muzzle of the weapon, but logically fired from the camera. Because of our patented meat swapping technology, it was very hard to figure out where the player's weapons were, and they could easily be under the ground or in a wall. So we made the visual/logical split. Moving the camera actually affected your shots, and we really wanted to add camera distance options. We realized we could use the same visual logical split to guarantee that the projectiles originated in a good place, closer to the line of fire. Now they logically fire from the character at whatever the camera is aiming at. This fixes issues with range calculation on shorter range weapons, and shooting at enemies near your character.

We're Back

We're back from our week-long Summer break and shipping the first update in our soon-to-be-public roadmap! Look for that to drop before the end of the month. Thank you to everyone who's given us feedback on SWAPMEAT. Here's how you influenced the game since launch!

New Ability

Introducing Poprocks! Hold the ability input to charge up your damage, then release a powerful bolt of elemental energy. If the hit kills an enemy, a cluster of elemental grenades will spawn.

New Enemy and Meat!

We wanted to give players a way to heal Harvester Nodes and Shrine events, so allow us to introduce Grease Monkey, a decommissioned auto-mechanic bot who never got the memo that he'd been replaced. The Grease Monkey torso comes with six wrenches that you throw at friendly structures like Harvester Nodes and Shrines to heal them.

Camera Controls

Added an option in the Video settings to adjust the camera follow distance for the player.

Performance Gains

Added pooling projectiles and pooling enemies to help reduce performance spikes

Gameplay

  • The internals of shooting have been adjusted. Previously projectile and hitscan visually appeared to fire from the muzzle of the weapon, but logically fired from the camera. Because of our patented meat swapping technology, it was very hard to figure out where the player's weapons were, and they could easily be under the ground or in a wall. So we made the visual/logical split. Moving the camera actually affected your shots, and we really wanted to add camera distance options. We realized we could use the same visual logical split to guarantee that the projectiles originated in a good place, closer to the line of fire.

    Now they logically fire from the character at whatever the camera is aiming at. This fixes issues with range calculation on shorter range weapons, and shooting at enemies near your character.

  • Player-team event structures (such as Harvester Nodes during the extraction event) now have more health the more players are in the game, matching the increased volume of enemies.

  • Barrier has been reworked. Previously gaining Barrier would stack the amount and reset the duration, which was either weak when you couldn't reliably trigger it, or overpowered when you could. Now, when you gain Barrier it always sets the Barrier amount to Maximum and resets the duration. However, the Maximum is now 100 (down from 600) and the duration is 10s (down from 30s). We've also added a new level-up item called "Beefed Corn" that increases the barrier maximum.

  • Chilling/freezing an enemy spawner will now slow it down

  • Enemies only display elemental material changes when the elemental effect is actually applied.

Bug Fixes

  • Bozo Balloons will no longer chase Tangus Racer cars after taking friendly fire from them

  • Fixed bug that enemies would hover for a bit after being staggered

  • Fixed bug that staggering a frozen enemy didn't logically remove the Frozen condition

  • Fixed bug where projectiles would appear to fire from the wrong position if the character was not facing forward at the time of shooting.

  • Fixed bug with Agent Duckstone walking on air sometimes

  • Fixed bug where enemies could penetrate through concave cliffs

  • Fixed Carl Quests tab empty state when all quests are completed

  • Fixed bug where mutation and weapon upgrades weren't updating immediately in the UI

  • more accurate collision in Tangus Prime

UX/UI

  • Added barrier UI overtop of player portrait whenever player receives barrier from any source

  • Main Menu UI and flow changes. Added UI support for in-progress run continuation. Main menu now includes a "Continue" button which displays current employee info and location for in-progress runs. You can also see this info on the save select screen if you have multiple employee files that are in-progress, and can abandon runs from here before loading. Also, previously the first planet of a system did not count towards being "in-progress" but we've now updated so that if you start a run and exit to the menu, you will load back into the first planet rather than the lobby.

Known Issues

  • Having issues? Discord is the official bug report depot, ensuring developers see what's going on and be able to work on a fix.

Source

Steam News / 23 July 2026

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