Hey everyone!
First off, I wish you all a happy New year and a wonderful 2026!
Lets kick this new year off with a big update for the LinkShift Demo which is already live and also quickly talk about the development plan for 2026.
New Demo version 1.05.0 - Major features/changes
Joker Nodes can now manipulate/affect other Joker Nodes
Amplified Nodes are always collected
Glitch Status is removed from Relaxation Mode.
New Boosters added
Booster Rebalance
Point Breakdown on results screen
Readability improvements
Bug fixes.
Lets highlight a few of the new features!
Joker Nodes Affecting other Nodes
Jokers will now affect any other Jokers it will be placed adjacent to or connects to. It can create a wild range of new ways to manipulate the grid and opens up new strategies and ways to solve the on going puzzle.
Note the Bomb on the lower left. It can not clear the Glitched node since its connector does not point towards it.
When the player connected a Full Connector Joker, the Bomb grows all its Connectors and is able to clear the Glitch Node. The Full Connector Joker even gave another Full Connector Joker all its Connectors which in return even affected the placed Joker too. You can see the chain reaction possibilities here!
Amplified Nodes are always Collected immediately
Amplifying Nodes by connecting all of a Node their Connectors is a great way to create big collections. With this new change, Amplified Nodes will always be collected with whichever collection is first.
This leads to bigger and more varied collections. It allows or more dynamic ways to score and building up multiplier with bigger leaps.
New Boosters
The roster of different Boosters you can encounter during an Exploration run has grown in size (which is by no means final either)
You will see things like, Easier Blockers Booster, Longer Collection Times etc.
Score Breakdown
To give you a better understanding how you have managed to build a crazy scoring combination of Boosters, the scoring screen will now give you a full break down of all the ways you managed to score points during your last run.
This is my no means final and I am keen on learning from you how you would like to see these statistics be improved!
Those are just a high level view of the changes in v1.05.0. Go ahead and play the demo and see how you like all the recent changes. Let me know what you think!
LinkShift Development plan 2026
LinkShift is scheduled to release in Q1 2026 and things are moving fast. On the development side I am full steam ahead on the release version and its progressing nicely.
There are 14 Jokers in at the moment but aiming towards 20 on release. Steam Leaderboards are working and are visible in the game. The third game mode is done and full functioning and feels very different to the other modes. Lumines fans might like this one ;).
The first order of business for now will be the Steam Next Fest Demo and adding Steam Achievements to the full game.
Hope this gives you a bit of insight what's coming. Let me know what you think!
Cheers,
Tim