MAJOR 6-player Multiplayer, Store overhaul, 100 campaign levels, Share/replay, Community & Level Creator Update!
Hey everyone,
This is a bigger BOOM Bound update than a normal patch, so I wanted to post something more detailed for players, nostalgic Use Map Settings Bound fans, and anyone with a pseudo-dev brain who likes knowing what changed behind the scenes.
BOOM Bound has always had that old-school custom map energy: simple idea, hard execution, quick retries, explosions everywhere, and that “one more try” feeling. The goal of this update was not to turn BOOM Bound into an overdesigned modern progression game. The goal was to preserve the original feel while making the game more stable, more testable, and better prepared for future community features.
A lot of the work in this update was invisible. The biggest changes happened around the stuff players usually only notice when something breaks: retries, scene reloads, multiplayer joins, disconnects, powerups, Store safety, screenshot/result sharing, and levels finishing earlier than expected.
What This Update Focused On
Big thank you to GPT-5 / Codex / Fable-tech for helping push through a lot of the testing, analysis, and implementation work. Even with AI help, this has been a huge amount of work, and I still have a long roadmap ahead.
- Single Player stability
- Multiplayer stability, including up to 6 players simultaneously
- All 100 campaign levels
- Six-player multiplayer stress testing
- Retry / Home / Menu flow cleanup
- No-coins retry bug handling
- Store and purchase safety improvements
- Screenshot and result sharing polish
- Replay / replay-snapshot foundation work
- More analytics hooks, building on years of feedback and gameplay data
- Special powerup stability, including Orb and Angel Wings behavior
- Level 8 balance tuning
Multiplayer Work
One of the biggest goals was making Multiplayer more stable. Multiplayer is where small issues become much easier to expose because multiple players are joining, loading scenes, syncing levels, disconnecting, retrying, and triggering gameplay events at different times.
This update focused heavily on making Multiplayer safer around:
- room creation and joining
- same-level loading
- scene reloads
- disconnect handling
- player spawn behavior
- powerup interactions
- level finish behavior
- cleanup after leaving a room
The game was also stress tested with multiple players, including 6-player Multiplayer testing. That does not mean no bug can ever exist, but it does mean Multiplayer went through a much more serious pass than before.
100 Campaign Levels
The current campaign has 100 official levels, and this update helped stabilize the full campaign experience around level loading, death, retry, completion, and returning to menus.
BOOM Bound is supposed to be hard because the levels are hard, not because a menu, retry button, Store action, or scene transition breaks something.
Store, Sharing, Replay, and Analytics
This update also touched support systems around the actual gameplay loop.
- The Store flow was reviewed for safer behavior.
- Screenshot/result sharing received more attention.
- Replay/replay-snapshot support was worked on as a foundation.
- More analytics were added so future updates can be based on real player behavior.
That matters because BOOM Bound is a game where small friction points make a big difference. If players are dying repeatedly on a level, retrying, quitting, clearing, sharing, or getting stuck somewhere, I want future updates to be guided by that kind of feedback.
Level 8 Balance Tuning
Level 8 kept its original gravity/suction idea, but the pull strength was reduced slightly so it still feels dangerous without feeling as unfair.
The goal was not to remove the identity of the level. The goal was to make it feel more balanced while keeping the original challenge intact.
The DNA of BOOM Bound
A lot of BOOM Bound’s DNA is closer to that "games" old-school Use Map Settings Bound games than a modern over-polished progression game.
If you played old custom maps, Bound maps, survival maps, dodge maps, impossible micro maps, or weird arcade-style maps where every death made you want to restart instantly, that is the feeling I want BOOM Bound to keep.
The game should feel nostalgic, fast, chaotic, unfair-but-learnable, and satisfying when you finally clear something.
What The Next Major Updates Are Focused On
I still have a lot more planned. Honestly, even with GPT-5 / Codex / Fable helping, the roadmap is big enough that it may take until the end of the year at minimum.
The next major update direction is focused on community, creators, new levels, and new modes.
- Level Editor inside the main game
- Steam Workshop / custom map sharing
- Steam Achievements — roughly 100 achievements are already planned out
- 1v5 Multiplayer Mode — similar to the current 1v5 concept, but with multiplayer queue support so others can join
- 2 more custom game modes
- 40 community-made / community-inspired Bound levels that I have not had time to add yet
- 25 more official levels, bringing the official campaign total to 125 once finished
Level Editor / Creator Direction
One of the biggest long-term goals is to let players create BOOM Bound levels directly inside the game.
The dream is to make level creation much less tedious:
- easy explosion timing controls
- millisecond/speed adjustments
- copy/paste explosion patterns
- faster repetitive tile placement
- easy testing before publishing
- vertical and horizontal level support
- Steam Workshop sharing
The first version of this would most likely focus on free custom map sharing first. Paid creator maps or a creator marketplace would be a later step and would need to be handled carefully and correctly.
Please Share Feedback
Please share as much criticism and feedback as you can. Positive feedback helps, but criticism is honestly more useful right now.
If something feels broken, unfair, confusing, too slow, too hard, too easy, or not fun, I want to hear it.
Helpful feedback format:
- Mode: Single Player, Multiplayer, Store, Endless, etc.
- Level: if applicable
- What happened:
- What you expected:
- Can you reproduce it?
- Screenshot/video: if possible
Especially useful feedback:
- Multiplayer bugs
- Retry/Home/Menu problems
- Store or purchase issues
- Levels that feel unfair for the wrong reason
- Powerup issues
- Screenshot/result sharing bugs
- Any weird behavior after dying, retrying, disconnecting, or finishing a level
PHEW 🫡
Thank you to everyone who plays, tests, breaks things, reports bugs, or just enjoys the old-school Bound-style chaos.
There is still a lot more work ahead, but BOOM Bound is moving toward a much bigger community and creator-focused future.