🔫 Block League
- New weapon: H.E.A.L.
After months of betatesting, it’s here: the first healing weapon of Block League!
It comes with a limited amount of bullets (6) and a magazine size of 3. Bullets are limited because, during our tests, we noticed that having 2 healers with unlimited ammo meant turning their target into an immortal being. Choose wisely when and whom you want to heal!
Bullet trajectory is another aspect we’ve changed compared to the first version. Initially we wanted something similar to the Rescue Gun in S4 League: a weapon shooting healing orbs that healed players stepping onto them. They had physics, their trajectory was arch-shaped. However, Block League is a bit faster than S4 League and this first version was turning the game into a camping party, because it was really hard to hit people: orbs were too slow and people were too fast. So people stood still. Now, you clearly don’t want a camping game when the goal (at least in Touchdown mode) is to bring the ball into the enemy’s base, so in our second attempt we tried to spice things up a little: we converted the orb into a bouncing one. More chances to hit! But.. no, still hard as hell.
Fast forward and we change the trajectory: no physics, just an orb following a straight line. The situation improved as you didn’t have to calculate much where the orb would have gone, but hitting was still a nightmare; even after turning up the speed of the orb. Then the epiphany: homing orbs!
Now, you don’t want instantly homing orbs, that’d be too overpowered. You could shoot randomly and still heal someone. No, what we’ve done is maintaining the straight trajectory and, if a player is close enough, homing mode activates. This rewards players with good aim and avoid the frustration of the first attempts. Also, did we tell you that orbs go through walls?Last but not least, H.E.A.L. is the first weapon that slows you down when reloading but not when shooting. The motivation behind this choice is double: firstly, healers shouldn’t lag behind if they’re trying to heal a teammate who’s running (orbs don’t last forever); secondly, more important, slowing down really felt off somehow, breaking the game flow.
We hope you enjoy the new weapon! We’re curious to see how it’ll change the meta. Also, a big shoutout to Scarecrow01, who made the 3D model.
🧙 Fantasy Brawl
- Darkening player skin during respawning invulnerability, showing their HP bar again
✏️ Quikbild
- Wordlist: Many languages received a review and new synonyms
🕹️ Arcade
- Arcade party: correctly show crowns in the leaderboard in case of tie
- Arcade party: removed the quit button during the interlude
New players were confused by that, clicking it by instinct. We also thought of putting a button saying “Quit” but it might look like an incentive nonetheless. The interlude lasts 5 seconds, so players can still leave afterwards
🏟️ Hub
- Profile: sort unlocked titles alphabetically according to the player’s language
❓ Misc
- CRASHFIX: spectators in parties weren’t correctly handled when their party leader entered a match by joining a queue
Remember you can support what we do by donating on Liberapay! 🫶
Current donators: Samuel, Fabio, David Ruffner