Though we still have some work to do, it’s getting close to time to bring Sumo online for Early Access play. This patch focuses on more bug fixing and polish passes. We’ll keep the focus on polishing with likely smaller, more frequent updates until we reach a point where we’re comfortable opening it up for a public release.

Today’s update is focused on making testing easier for new beta players by way of updating the tutorial and fixing the character ability preview system.

New Features

Credits - The game’s credits have been implemented and are now accessible from the Main Menu.

Gameplay Changes

When a player is furthest behind, they now begin the next round with a fully loaded boost bar rather than gaining just a single increment of the bar. They can use their ability immediately at the start of the round.

Art Updates

In the Character and Level Select UI menus, the button that exits back to the previous menu has been changed to an ‘X’ button.

The ability preview system should be back online and operational, with all new preview videos recorded for each character. A mouse button has been added to toggle the ability preview as a mouse-only UI user. In an online game, the UI should now update if other players are watching ability previews.

Updated level select screenshot images to reflect the latest changes to the environments.

The tutorial has been finally updated - Jump is listed on the tutorial, and Quick Dash no longer refers to requiring boost. The old screenshot images have been replaced with small quick videos demonstrating each aspect of the game’s controls.

Improved the visuals when a player is the farthest behind after a given round. This information is now reflected directly in the score screen, with a sparkle and floating up arrow animation on the character portrait, followed by that portrait glowing yellow until the next round begins. The old ‘Bonus Boost!’ text popup has been removed.

Altered the VFX of the WaterWorks pipe water blast to be less noisy and more water-like.

Changed the physics of destroyed WaterWorks hexes to scatter a bit more and be less floaty. Bits of former hexes still on the battlefield will now properly be affected if the hex they are sitting on explodes, rather than just dropping down to the water. The destructibles now use a random seed, so each one will explode in a different manner than the rest.

Added more facial expression triggers during all character abilities.

Bug Fixes

Fixed a semi-rare game crash that could trigger at the end of any game round.

Optimized media textures used for character ability previews and the new tutorial, which should fix some hitching that happened when the UI was first loaded.

The tutorial screen will now update to instruct mouse controls if you are actively using the mouse to navigate the UI.

Fixed an issue that caused the Victory screen’s Return to Lobby button to have an odd hitbox for clicking.

Fixed an issue where the main game camera didn’t reset back to its starting position and continued to track positions of players during the countdown after the first round of a new match. The camera now always resets back to starting position and will remain there until characters are moving.

Fixed an issue where Level Select screen would not gain mouse usability when triggered after returning to lobby from in-game.

Fixed a bug where it was possible to transition to the score screen area and back to gameplay in Railway Rumble and still have trains incoming from the previous match.

Fixed performance issues in WaterWorks, specifically regarding when hexes blew up. The VFX of the water geysers beneath each exploded hex are much less obscuring as a result.

Fixed character facial expressions never triggering for connected online players (who were not the host player).

Fixed an issue that caused the lower left player panel in the character select screen to have an odd mouse hitbox on it’s Go Back button.

Fixed an issue where pressing F to activate keyboard or gamepad-based friend inviting mode did not darken the character select panels. The friends list should be the only highlighted feature in friend invite mode.

Fixed an issue where mousing over a button would not de-highlight the former active button from keyboard/gamepad controls.

Fixed an issue in Classic where the water splash VFX and audio would trigger on the pawns floating in the water during the score screen.

Fixed a lot of unnecessary log printing in crash/debug logs.