BNL Reborn 0.2.0-beta.72

0.2.0-beta.72

Replay and spectator fixes

Replay cameras now distinguish the viewer from recorded players, fixing invisible player models and misplaced first-person sound effects. Spectating handles stale match information more reliably.

Spectator scoreboard

The Tab scoreboard in replays and spectator mode shows equipped perks with their category backgrounds and hover details. Names, K/D/A and ping have clearer spacing, and the dark panel covers every player row.

Fog and lighting

Fog now blends with water and the sky. Added an optional volumetric fog setting and corrected height coverage. Fixed bloom streaks near the crosshair when firing Astarella's laser and corrected washed-out supply-drop parachute colours.

Build previews and saucers

Speed-pad preview squares stay aligned with the pad while the chevron points in the placement direction. Astarella's manual saucer detonation now sends its latest position and holds the visual while waiting for the server response.

Bulwark aura

The Bulwark range ring fades in when a living ally enters range and fades out when no allies remain nearby.

Client startup and recovery

Reduced delayed initialization of the map colour, scope and FPS display. Improved connection recovery so disconnects return to the current menu, and fixed repeated audio and effect errors.

Empty custom rooms

Custom rooms close when their last online occupant leaves or disconnects. Stale room listings are cleaned up, and creating or joining another room releases the previous membership. Reconnect seats remain while teammates are online.

0.2.0-beta.71

Class perk changes

Bulwark now protects allies within 4 m (was 8 m), and only your own team sees its blue ring. Supply Line now restores ammo for allies you heal even when they are at full health. Accomplice now triggers your on-kill perks on an assist only when you dealt that enemy the most damage. Demolisher's buff now shows the mining icon.

Class perk display fixes

The kill camera now shows your killer's class perk. Hovering a player on the Tab scoreboard shows all their perks at full size. Brawn and Skill class perk emblems now show their I, II or III numeral everywhere, and Brains emblems no longer always show I.

Storms on Paradise - Dynamic Weather

When the storm rolls in, the sky clouds over grey, the fog thickens and the sun dims. It clears again shortly after the rain stops.

0.2.0-beta.70

New class perks

Every class now has three class perks. Choose one per hero from the CLASS row in the lobby perks, or from the Class tab in Your Heroes; your choice is saved with that hero's loadout. Heroes you have not changed keep class perk I.

Brawn: Bulwark and Demolisher

Bulwark: allied heroes within 4 m of you take 15% less damage. A blue ring around you shows its reach, and the allies it protects glow blue. It does not stack with another Bulwark or with shields such as Killer Shield, and Brawn heroes do not receive it. Demolisher: killing an enemy hero gives you 50% more dig tool damage to blocks and 50% more damage to objectives for 10 seconds.

Brains: Supply Line and Quick Builder

Supply Line: allies you heal regenerate 5% of their ammo per second, lasting 2 seconds after your last heal on them. Health stations, self-healing and overhealing do not trigger it. Quick Builder: you build 30% faster.

Skill: Accomplice and Reinforcements

Accomplice: kill assists trigger your on-kill perks, such as Killer Shield, Killer Ammo and Rapid Reset, as if you had made the kill. Reinforcements: each enemy hero you kill removes 70% of the remaining respawn time of every dead teammate, and of your own.

0.2.0-beta.69

Match replays

Public and ranked matches are now recorded and kept for seven days. Open a match in your match history and choose WATCH REPLAY to watch it as a spectator: pick any player, switch to their first-person view, and follow the whole match. Replays play at normal speed, starting with matches played from 14 October.

Better first-person spectating

Spectating a player in first person now follows their exact aim, including flicks and recoil, and shows when they aim down sights. You also see what they see: their build placement box, shield and other screen effects, first-person ability effects such as Sweet Science's dash, their hero level and bricks, and the same colour grading. Spectators now get the map's colour grading in third person too.

0.2.0-beta.68

Launcher refresh

The launcher has the new Block N Load Reborn logo and a fixed window size. Text and hero art fade out instead of being cut off, buttons light up their text on hover, and the News, Patch Notes and Support tabs highlight like the in-game menu.

Launcher fixes

Steam profile pictures show in the account menu again. A new Open Player Log button finds the log from your last game session, so you can share it with support when the game freezes or misbehaves.

0.2.0-beta.67

Monthly ranked leagues

Ranked now has monthly league seasons with Bronze, Silver, Gold, Masters and Champions tiers, based on a separate ranked-only league rating. Players with enough rated matches start the first season already placed; everyone else plays five placement matches. At the end of each month the top three players earn podium trophies, and everyone with at least five ranked games that season earns a trophy for their tier. The first season runs until the end of October (UTC).

Leaderboards

A new LEADERBOARDS tab brings player and clan rankings together. The League view shows the season, its countdown and each player's tier. Player rankings can also be filtered by stats such as kills, headshots, assists and DPS, over the last 30 days or all time; only Ranked and Casual matches count. The old Profile and Clan leaderboard tabs have moved here.

Trophy rooms

Profiles have a new TROPHIES tab with every trophy you have earned and when you earned it. Pin up to five trophies to the showcase on your profile summary, where other players can see them.

Kill accolades on profiles

Combat Record now shows your lifetime First Kills, Double, Multi, Ultra, Fantastic and Unbelievable kills, and your best kill streak. Accolades are counted from matches played from 13 October onwards.

Automatic reconnect

If your connection drops, or the login fails because of a network problem, the game now reconnects automatically for about three minutes and shows a countdown, instead of stopping at the error screen. If a match is running and you are back in time, you rejoin it.

More reliable connections

The game now prefers IPv6 when your network supports it and falls back to IPv4 within a quarter of a second. This keeps players with IPv6 connected through the server provider's recent IPv4 network interruptions.

Launcher account menu

The launcher shows your Steam avatar and moves account controls to the top right, with a Sign out option. News uses the stacked Block N Load logo and a random hero illustration each time the launcher opens, and scrollbars are slimmer.

Fixes

Restored Yeti footstep and movement sounds. Fixed errors on point-blank shots, reload effects that could stop playing for some gear, and several errors when leaving a match or closing the game.

0.2.0-beta.66

Redesigned launcher

A new launcher layout brings News, Patch Notes and Support into a sidebar, with larger update artwork, clearer download progress and a prominent Play button.

Catalogue and blocks

Shop is now Catalogue, with Heroes, Perks and Blocks. Blocks are grouped into Building Blocks, Devices and Hero Blocks. Removed obsolete ownership filters and fixed tab click areas, hover states and navigation.

Clearer perk cards

Larger, centered perk cards preserve their background proportions and use clearer, aligned titles. Hero names appear on badges below hero perks. Removed empty level and ownership space and fixed the last page.

Loadouts and class perks

Heroes are grouped by Brawn, Skill and Brains. Skin portraits fit their panels, including Default skins. The Class tab now shows your class perk inside the same picker as the other tabs.

Return to your custom room

Quitting a custom match returns you to its room if it still exists, keeping your room membership, team and host status. Use the room Leave action when you want to leave completely.

Rally Point spawn colors

Rally Point minimap spawns are dark blue when unselected and bright cyan-blue when selected, distinguishing them from building spawns. Unavailable Rally Points remain gray.

Menu readability

Restored navigation button colors, added border highlights for Play and Clan, improved the Clan Fight lock and text, fixed cropped headers and removed the extra Heroes divider. Corrected broken MMR placeholders and footer separators.

Match interface fixes

Improved the death-camera teammate display and respawn information, moved ping and emote bindings above team-message shortcuts, and fixed lobby portrait and tooltip placement.

0.2.0-beta.65

Custom random heroes

Custom-match hosts can enable Random heroes. The server chooses five distinct heroes with at least one Brawn, Skill and Brains hero, then randomly assigns the same roster within each team. Assignments survive reconnects. Hero switching and new participants are disabled once that match starts; smaller teams use a subset.

Ranked snake draft

Ranked now uses unique heroes across both teams and a 1-2-2-2-2-1 pick order in 5v5. The lower-average-MMR team picks first; players within each team pick from highest to lowest MMR. Casual 5v5 remains free pick.

Clan applications

Players can request to join a clan. Leaders and officers can approve or decline applications, while invitations remain available. Pending applications show a notification on the Clan button for leaders and officers.

Loadouts and shop

Renamed Your Heroes to Loadouts. All 15 heroes fit on one page, ordered Brawn, Skill, Brains, with equal spacing and matching Heroes and Skins headers. Panels fit their content. The shop opens on a full-width hero browser; Featured and Hero Skins categories are removed. A new Blocks category shows named blocks, descriptions and stats.

Perks and match history

The perk editor uses a matching Class tab, and the class perk card is no longer clickable. Match history has a dedicated perks column: hover each perk for its effects. Fixed remaining-cube counts, localized match dates, renamed Total to Duration, and clarified Objective Damage and Drops Collected labels.

Profile and menu layout

Moved career totals into Combat Record and split damage/healing and blocks built/destroyed into separate stats. Reduced empty space, aligned menu panels and improved clan-room text and spacing.

Lobby and map voting

Map voting shows the map name, mode and one miniature cube per objective instead of a text count. Removed old thumbnail stamps from the voting view. Moved team-composition warnings clear of headings and hero names. Single-charge abilities no longer show a redundant charge count.

0.2.0-beta.64

Lobby presentation

Hero stands center correctly for four- and five-player teams. Block and perk loadouts sit below each hero with space between panels. Larger map-voting cards are centered on the hero lineup and stay above the chat bar.

Teams and ready states

Enemy portraits show the opposing team vertically, including selected heroes before Block In. Portraits are centered on a folded ribbon, green locks show ready heroes on both teams, and team headings use your configured team colors.

Perks and ability charges

Class perk tooltips use clear class labels and omit empty downside sections. Your Heroes has one Edit button with Class inside the perk editor. Teammate ability icons now show remaining charges separately from recharge timers.

Menus and tutorial

Fixed broken loading placeholders and patch-note spacing. The Learn page fits above the footer and plays the original beta tutorial locally, with audio and playback controls. Removed the line crossing squad player names.

Map previews

Added reliable same-arena thumbnail fallbacks for Olympia Ivy Edit and Blockageddon 3 Cube when their external images are unavailable. Map cards show objective counts, including Eco City, Erosion and both Paradise variants; maps without objectives show no count.

Trondson Echo-Location

With Echo-Location equipped, Sonic Staff right-click reveals enemy players within its existing 11-meter radius for seven seconds. Ally healing and the 26-ammo cost are unchanged. The base staff is unchanged. Rejoin after updating to receive the new perk data.

Server fixes activated

A separate server deployment activated health-pickup portrait attribution, lifesteal healing totals and portal block-placement fixes on 11 October. These fixes are now live. The beta.64 in-game notes were built before that activation and still describe them as pending.

0.2.0-beta.63

Perks on scoreboards

Hover a player name in the in-game Tab scoreboard or a player row in match results to see their perks, including their class perk. Older results without saved perk details say when those details are unavailable.

Menus and performance tool

Main navigation now has three buttons above two centered buttons. Run Benchmark is in Graphics settings and can be found with settings search. Removed obsolete Workshop map filters, progression rewards and Steam Guides panels; the profile loadout sits lower. The footer shows the installed client version.

Match lobby

Enemy hero portraits appear on the left while map voting sits at the bottom.

Objectives and spectator colors

Maps without objectives no longer show empty objective cube indicators. Spectating now uses distinct colors for the two teams.

Jinxed devices

Device targeting and attack cycles refresh when Jinx changes their team. The report of Kreepy Boxes staying closed still needs verification in a live match.

Server fixes pending

Health-pickup portrait attribution, lifesteal healing totals and portal block-placement fixes are prepared but await a server restart. They are not active with this client-only deployment.

0.2.0-beta.62

Compact teammate HUD

Teammate rows are smaller, with tighter spacing and readable ability cooldowns and brick counts. Nickname length still leaves the indicator columns aligned.

Conquest alerts

Blockbuster alerts now appear in a smaller row below the attack timer instead of overlapping its progress bar and countdown.

Hero weapon poses

Fixed aiming rotations accumulating when offscreen hero animations skip a frame. This addresses weapon pose drift found while investigating Cogwheel attachments.

Terrain protection restored

Restored protection accidentally lost in beta.60: a block arriving around your head forces a crouch, and being trapped inside solid terrain moves you to free space. Restored movement correction synchronization at high frame rates.

Doc Eliza

Eliza no longer takes damage from her own weapons, including the Beautiful Bubbles variant. Her chemical clouds already targeted opponents only. This balance change is already live.

0.2.0-beta.61

Yeti ice axe

Fixed Yeti's dig tool sometimes hitting his own animated model instead of the block in front of him. Metal and forcegate shot blocking remain intact.

0.2.0-beta.60

Teammate HUD

Your own player now appears in the team roster. Rows show the ability icon, brick reserve and nickname in that order. Ability cooldowns count down in seconds; longer names no longer move the indicators, and the rounded background fits the visible name.

Aimed enemy health

Aiming at a visible enemy shows their health bar. Walls and the existing visibility rules still apply.

Device range indicators

An optional Interface setting shows the effective range of your placed devices while aiming at them. Shaded volumes and ground-contact contours make the range easier to judge, and opaque blocks hide the preview. This option is off by default.

Ability area preview

Press G to toggle an area preview for supported area abilities. Rebind it in Controls. F still casts immediately. Device Info now defaults to U; custom bindings are preserved.

Shallow water

You can run through water with a solid block immediately below the shallow surface. Deeper water still requires swimming.

Settings and radar

Search across settings tabs to find options more easily. Restored the familiar radar marker and increased the contrast of its green pulse. Block icons in the lobby panel are centered.

Metal and forcegates

Metal blocks stop explosive projectiles and shield players behind them from blast damage. Shots can enter forcegates and hit targets inside, but stop before leaving, including shots fired from inside.

Projectile cleanup

Fixed a path that could leave Tony pellets and other rocket-style projectile visuals floating after a hit or timeout.

Killer Ammo feedback

Killer Ammo now plays the ammo-station range-entry sound when its refill activates, with increased volume to make it easier to hear during combat.

Ninja shuriken alternate fire

Hold right click to prepare the three-shuriken throw, then release to throw. A tap still throws normally. Holding does not increase projectile speed or damage.

Skill - Second Wind

Fall damage now restarts the out-of-combat recovery timer.

Paradise dynamic weather

The dynamic-weather version of Paradise now has one timed rainstorm per match, with rain, varied thunder and sky flashes. Fixed the daytime sun flare remaining visible at night.

Avalanche appearance

Avalanche and Permafrost areas have clearer shading and fade when they end.

Original audio restored

Restored the original music and chat sounds, replacing the beta soundtrack and chat sound overrides. Game audio also silences when tabbed out, while match-found alerts remain available.

Login and launcher

Updated the connection-status panel appearance. The launcher now keeps five previous game logs to help investigate issues after a restart.

0.2.0-beta.59

Avalanche

Avalanche now leaves a visible frozen area for 4 seconds, slowing enemies inside by 30%.

Yeti - Permafrost

Enemies who stay inside Avalanche for 2 seconds become rooted for 0.5 seconds, once per cast. Avalanche radius is reduced by 20%. Uses the old Avalanche perk card art.

Yeti - Ice Machine

Snowthrower right-click converts one existing block into friendly ice instead of placing snow. Friendly ice does not slow allies. Right-click fire rate is reduced by 35%. Uses the old Snowthrower perk card art.

Deathmatch

Surrendering is no longer available in Deathmatch.

Match loading screen

Restored the previous match loading screen following feedback on the beta layout.

0.2.0-beta.58

Standing up under a fresh brick

Standing up just as a brick lands above your head now puts you back into a crouch instead of leaving your head inside the brick, which let players see and shoot through walls. If your body ever ends up inside terrain, you are lifted to the nearest free space above.

Falling through the map

Movement corrections (being pushed out of other players and walls, and snapping back onto the floor) are now applied reliably at high frame rates. This should stop players slowly sinking through the ground or ending up underwater after bumping into players or devices. Please keep reporting it if it still happens.

2015 beta soundtrack

The main menu, loading screens, character select, build phase, death screen, match end and hero kill stings now use the 2015 beta music. The main menu loops "I Saw Beautiful Stars". The build-phase music no longer starts a second, overlapping copy with three minutes left.

Beta chat sounds

Sending and receiving chat messages now plays the 2015 beta chat sounds.

Match loading screen

The match loading screen uses the beta-style layout: both teams face each other with five-player rosters, each hero's equipment and key bindings, and loading progress beside every name. Team colors follow your color settings.

Winter maps

Paradise - Winter uses the 2015 beta color grade and brighter terrain lighting. The grid lines visible on distant sand are gone. Water no longer draws over friendly build barriers, and barriers drop with the beta's burning edge.

Paradise - Dynamic Weather

Night now arrives 18 minutes after the first assault and stays for four minutes before the day returns, instead of passing in a moment.

Radar on the minimap

Radar markers are larger, with a dark backing and team-color ring, and each radar now shows its detection range as a circle on the minimap.

Chat punctuation

Chat messages keep characters such as <, > and <3 instead of removing them.

Brawn I - Rally Point

The Rally Point marker on the map no longer shows a text caption; the marker itself still shows when it is available.

Yeti

Avalanche now slows enemies by 30% for 2 seconds where the beacon lands. The Facewash and Yuri 'n Ice perks are removed; Chill, Dude is Yeti's hero perk. (Already live since October 8.)

0.2.0-beta.57

Perk layout and tooltips

The class perk layout now appears immediately when opening the match lobby or Your Heroes. Hovering a class perk beside a lobby character now shows its details, including teammates' perks.

Menu sounds

Fixed duplicate sounds when navigating menu buttons and perk sections.

Winter appearance

Paradise - Winter now uses cooler beta-inspired lighting, denser snowfall, and corrected winter dirt and bark textures. Snowfall still follows the Graphics setting independently of snowy terrain.

Brawn I - Rally Point

Fixed Rally Point rejecting grounded players because of their normal downward movement velocity. Eligible Brawn heroes can offer teammates a spawn while standing or walking; the existing combat, airborne, and free-space checks still apply.

0.2.0-beta.56

Class perks

Every hero now has a required class perk alongside their three regular perks. Class perks use green cards in the match lobby and Your Heroes, and appear beside each character's block loadout. The first perk for each class is available; perks II and III are not available yet.

Brawn I - Rally Point

Teammates can select your moving spawn marker on the map to respawn beside you. You must be alive, grounded, have room for both players, and be out of combat for five seconds. Attacking or taking enemy damage restarts the timer. Rally Point is unavailable in free-for-all.

Brains I - Shared Recovery

Healing an ally restores your own health for 50% of the health actually restored. Overhealing does not count. Healing from health stations and their medkits is excluded.

Skill I - Second Wind

After five seconds out of combat, regenerate 10% of your maximum health per second. Attacking or taking enemy damage restarts the timer.

Color terrain minimaps

The large map and corner minimap now show the terrain in color, with a more opaque image for readability. Water, lava and acid planes are hidden in the map image only; they remain in the game world. Spawn and objective markers remain overlaid.

Beta presentation and winter support

Restored the beta parchment backgrounds, loading-screen presentation, lobby hero and player-name styling, and gold waiting spinner. Snowfall is available in Graphics settings for winter-enabled maps, independently of their snowy terrain. This update adds winter appearance support without adding winter map variants to matchmaking.

Experimental ragdolls

Extended experimental physics-driven deaths to all 15 heroes. Ragdoll presentation remains experimental.

0.2.0-beta.55

Ragdoll fix

Experimental ragdolls no longer thrash and spin after a death. The game kept bending a fallen hero's spine and head toward where that player was last aiming, which fought the physics. Bodies now collapse and settle naturally. Ragdolls still cover Nigel, Boris, Genie, Tony, O.P., Sarge, Sweet Science and Trondson; other heroes keep their death animations.

0.2.0-beta.54

Clan rooms and invitations

Clan Fight rooms now show player profile pictures. Invite online clan members from empty spots on your team. Ready and Switch Sides buttons are centered, Start Match sits in the rules panel, and Leave Room is at the top right before banning begins.

Clan map pool and layout

Show Map Pool is available in the Clan Fight browser and room. Opening it compresses the panel above instead of covering it, with scrolling for details that no longer fit. Panels align with Casual and Ranked, redundant labels and Back buttons are removed, and Clan Fight opens without a fade.

Clan navigation and leaderboard

My Clan, Leaderboard and Browse Clans now use the same tabs as Profile. The leaderboard includes a sortable Members column alongside MMR, matches, wins, losses and win rate. Fixed broken separator characters in clan lists and member details.

Menu polish

Custom room Go Back now uses the framed button style. Chat tab labels use title case. This release keeps the IL2CPP backend and the experimental ragdolls from beta.53.

0.2.0-beta.53

Clan fights

Clan Fight is now beside Ranked. Any clan member can create a room using fixed Ranked settings. Players automatically join their clan side, and the room leader can swap both teams. Matches require 4v4 or 5v5 with everyone ready; click READY or press F5 to toggle your status. Teams lock when banning begins. Captains alternate map bans with 10 seconds per turn until one map remains, then ban one hero each before the Ranked draft and its class limits. The familiar lobby layout includes clan colours, countdown sounds and transitions between phases.

Clan chat and leaderboard

Use clan chat from the menus or during a match. Find the clan leaderboard under CLAN, showing MMR, total matches, wins, losses and win rate. Clans start at 1000 MMR and their rating changes with clan fight results.

Experimental ragdolls

Physics-driven deaths are available for Nigel, Boris, Genie, Tony, O.P., Sarge, Sweet Science and Trondson. Other heroes keep their existing death animations. This is an experimental test: occasional awkward bends and movement around hard landings are still being tuned.

IL2CPP test build

This Windows test release uses IL2CPP instead of Mono. Please report crashes, loading problems or gameplay differences along with your game log.

0.2.0-beta.52

Paradise dynamic weather

Paradise and Paradise - Dynamic Weather join Casual map voting and Custom Games as separate choices. Both use Classic rules; the dynamic variant is labeled CLASSIC + DYNAMIC WEATHER. Starting when combat begins, the sky, lighting, fog and reflections gradually move through daytime, overcast, sunset and full night at 20 minutes. Daylight returns over the next five minutes, then the 25-minute cycle repeats. Everyone shares the same weather, including players who join or reconnect during a match.

0.2.0-beta.51

IPv6 connections

Lobby and match connections now use IPv6 when your network has it. The game tries IPv4 and IPv6 at the same time and keeps whichever connects first, so you get the faster route to the server, which for some players is noticeably lower and steadier ping. If IPv6 is not available, nothing changes and the game uses IPv4 as before.

0.2.0-beta.50

Casual and Ranked queues

Casual and Ranked are separate queues again. Casual stays automatic: with 8 or 9 players waiting it starts a 4v4 after 30 seconds, and as soon as 10 are waiting it starts a 5v5 Casual match straight away, with free hero pick and no draft. Ranked starts a 5v5 draft match once 10 players have chosen Ranked. Casual is now solo queue only; squads of up to five can still queue Ranked. A 5v5 Casual match now fills an empty slot through backfill when someone leaves. These changes are server-side and already live.

Match found shows everyone

The Match found prompt now shows one circle per player in the match: ten for a 5v5 and eight for a 4v4. It previously showed eight circles for every match.

Ranked draft and idle players

In a Ranked draft, the hero you start your turn on now respects your team's limit of two heroes per class: if your last-played hero's class is already full, you start on a hero you own from the class your team has fewest of. The server also refuses a pick over the limit, a pick when it is not your turn, and changes after you lock in. Idle players in Ranked are warned but no longer kicked; Casual still removes idle players so their slot can be backfilled. These changes are server-side and already live.

Smoother health bars

Health bars and names above heroes and devices no longer shimmer or look jagged at a distance, and the thin health dividers no longer flicker. Device health bars now share the hero style, with the dark outline and name tag, but without the 20 and 100 health dividers. The outline around player names is lighter.

Block loadout fix

Fixed the block loadout bar sometimes disappearing during a long match and leaving only its background.

Discord and launcher

Discord now shows Block N Load Reborn with its logo for everyone, including friends who use other Discord apps. The launcher has a sharp, high-resolution icon. After a network or VPN change, the launcher now gets a fresh sign-in ticket for the game instead of failing, and it comes back promptly when the game closes.

0.2.0-beta.49

Clan fixes and friends

The clan page now retries automatically if clan data is delayed. You can browse and search other clans while already in a clan. Leaders and officers can invite a player directly from the friends list, including offline friends. Name searches also find uniquely matching names surrounded by decorative symbols. Coloured clan tags now appear beside player names in custom lobbies.

Interface options

Teammate position indicators start smaller and have their own size slider in Settings > Interface. You can also hide the CRITICAL health-bar label. The Conquest display has moved down so it no longer overlaps the preparation message.

Portraits and match history

Christmas Boris now keeps his portrait on match markers and scoreboards instead of showing the Block N Load logo. Match history includes the surviving base in the cubes remaining total, and player names no longer show formatting tags or broken tag fragments.

Crate fixes

The level-200 crate skin now places its own crate instead of the default skin. The server also corrects rejected or redirected predicted placements, fixing a path that could leave floating crates visible with high-ping building enabled.

Discord and memory diagnostics

Discord activity uses the Block N Load icon and can now be turned off in Settings > Interface. Discord connections are cleaned up when disabled or disconnected. Added small, rotating memory logs to investigate the reported excessive memory growth; the cause of that report is still under investigation.

0.2.0-beta.48

Clans

A new CLAN tab sits next to PLAY. Anyone can found a clan with a name and a tag of 2 to 10 letters or digits, then invite players by their exact name; each player can belong to one clan, and a clan holds up to 20 members. The leader can promote members to officer, who can invite and remove members, and can hand over leadership, rename the clan once every 7 days or disband it. The clan page shows who is online and where they are. Your clan tag appears in front of your name on the Tab scoreboard and on the end-of-match scoreboard, in a colour the leader picks from the swatches or as any #RRGGBB colour. If a leader is away for 30 days, leadership passes to the longest-serving officer, or to the longest-serving member if there are no officers.

Christmas Boris

Boris gets a festive Yeti outfit, free for every player. Christmas Boris has his own model, first-person arms, portraits and shop art, and appears in Boris's skin list once you have this update.

Live Now on Home

When someone is streaming Block N Load on Twitch or YouTube, the Home page shows a LIVE NOW strip with the channel, the stream title and the viewer count. Click a stream to open it in your browser. The strip only appears while someone is live.

Discord status

If Discord is running, your Discord profile now shows that you are playing BlockNLoad Reborn: whether you are in the menus, queueing or in a match, with the mode, map, hero skin, squad size and a timer, plus a button for friends to get the game. Start the game with -bnl-no-discord to turn this off.

Menu tabs in two rows

The top menu now has two rows of equal tabs, HOME, SHOP and PROFILE above LEARN, BENCHMARK and MAP EDITOR, between the PLAY and CLAN buttons, so labels are no longer squeezed.

Friends list and loading fixes

Friends who leave the game now show as offline straight away instead of staying online until you reopen the list (server-side, already live). When the server is slow to answer as you join a lobby or match, the game now retries after 5 seconds, then 10, instead of waiting 15 seconds each time, which shortens the stall at Loading 100%. The launcher keeps your previous game log as player-prev.log, so a crash or freeze can still be reported after you restart.

0.2.0-beta.47

New hero health bars

Hero health bars now show their size at a glance: a small tick marks every 20 health and a full divider every 100. A dark outline frames the bar, and a pulsing CRITICAL tag appears under any hero at 25% health or less, friend or foe. Hero names above the bar are a little smaller, with a dark outline and a richer team colour so they stay readable against bright scenery. Health bars on devices and blocks are unchanged.

Shields and Block Buster on health bars

A hero with a shield now shows it on their health bar: a shield icon in their team colour on the right and a honeycomb pattern over their health. Shields that run out, such as Killer Shield, the genie lamp's shield and the Block Buster shield, show a clock on the left of the bar that empties as the shield runs down; shields without a time limit, like Sweet Science's, show no clock. A hero carrying Block Buster shows its gold gem on the right, with a small gold shield on the classic, extreme and uber versions, which also shield them. Block Buster lite has no shield, so its clock shows how long the Block Buster itself lasts.

Teammate locators

Teammates you cannot see now appear as their hero portrait with their distance: over their position when they are behind a wall, or at the edge of your screen with an arrow when they are off screen or behind you. The ring turns red and pulses while that teammate is at critical health. Locators follow the world marker size setting, and you can turn them off with Teammate locators in Settings > Interface.

Healing received updates

Healing you give yourself, such as Doc Eliza's Miracle Cure, Sergeant's True Grit, Sweet Science's Power Surge and healing perks, now shows your own hero portrait instead of a plus (this part is server-side and already live). The panel can now be moved all the way to the bottom of the screen at any size; near the bottom, additional healers stack upward. While you drag its X offset, Y offset or size slider, the settings menu fades and a sample panel shows exactly where it will appear. Its size setting no longer depends on the healing number size setting.

Sarge rocket launcher sight

The rocket launcher's aiming sight no longer sometimes turns pink with the General Sarge and Camo Sarge skins.

0.2.0-beta.46

Smaller update downloads

The launcher now supports downloading only the changed parts of game files when a patch is available. It checks the rebuilt files and automatically downloads the full file if needed. This launcher update prepares your installation for upcoming smaller game updates.

0.2.0-beta.45

See who is healing you

Healing you receive now appears to the right of your crosshair, with the portrait of each hero healing you in a green ring and the total they have healed. Heal stations show the portrait of the player who built them, and stations placed with the map show the heal station icon. When several teammates heal you at once, each gets their own row with their own amount; healing from your own perks shows a plus. This replaces the old self-healing number. Its settings are now called Healing received (show, size and position), and if you never moved the old number it moves to the new spot automatically.

Kill accolade updates

Kill streaks now allow 8 seconds between kills (was 6). FIRST KILL is awarded once per match, and kills in the waiting arena no longer use it up. When your kill earns an accolade, the accolade replaces the YOU KILLED message; the message still shows for other kills and whenever accolades are off. A new Kill accolade pop-ups setting in Settings > Interface keeps accolades in the kill feed only, and kill feed rows with an accolade now pop in slightly.

Arctic Wolf pistol

Nigel's Arctic Wolf M1911 now carries a suppressor and fires with a quieter suppressed shot. Its metal and grip finish are refreshed, and during reload the hand now grips the slide cleanly. This is a cosmetic update; the pistol's damage, fire rate and reload time are unchanged.

Heal Bane smoke fades out

The orange smoke on heroes under Heal Bane now fades out when the debuff ends instead of disappearing at once.

0.2.0-beta.44

Caulk Gun: lock onto teammates

When Tony holds the Caulk Gun, four curved markers now spin around the chest of every teammate within range and in sight. The teammate nearest your aim gets faster, brighter markers: hold primary or alternate fire and the Caulk Gun locks onto them. The lock now holds until you let go of the trigger or they move out of range, even if you look away or they step behind cover, and the spray follows them. Aiming straight at a block or an enemy works as before, and a block under your crosshair still wins unless you are aiming almost directly at the teammate. Markers only appear for the Caulk Gun.

Caulk Gun keeps spraying across blocks

Sweeping the Caulk Gun from one block to the next no longer sometimes stops the spray and makes you press the trigger again. Keep holding it to repair a whole wall in one go.

Caulk Gun balance

Caulk Gun healing is 30% lower: 14 health per second, 28 with alternate fire (was 20 and 40). Its ammo capacity is 75 (was 150). Repairing blocks and devices now uses half as much ammo as spraying players. The Caulk Gun no longer slows enemies; that moved to the new Sticky Caulk perk. Teammates being healed now see a healing icon while the spray is on them. These changes are server-side and already live.

New Tony perk: Sticky Caulk

Tony's new hero perk makes the Caulk Gun slow enemies, but it uses ammo twice as fast. It is available in the shop now and is already live; its own icon arrives with this update.

Heal Bane smoke

Heroes under Heal Bane now give off a dim orange smoke, so you can see who is receiving less healing. You still see your own Heal Bane as its icon.

0.2.0-beta.43

Kill accolades

Kills can now earn Combat Arms-style accolades. FIRST KILL for the match's first kill and HEADSHOT for a headshot kill, plus kill streaks: each kill within 6 seconds of your previous one moves you up from DOUBLE KILL to MULTI KILL, ULTRA KILL, FANTASTIC and UNBELIEVABLE. Your own appear large above your kill messages, and everyone's streaks are shown in colour in the kill feed. Dying ends your streak. This is an experiment; turn it off with Kill accolades in Settings > Interface.

Crosshair: hide it or pick a new shape

Settings > Interface > Crosshair has a new Show crosshair option that removes every crosshair and reticle from the screen, including the original and melee ones; aiming is unchanged. The custom crosshair gains ten shapes (T, T + dot, X, X + dot, Circle, Circle + dot, Circle + cross, Square, Square + dot and Chevron), an Outline option that keeps it visible on bright backgrounds, and a Dot size slider. Your saved crosshair carries over; the centre dot is now round.

Hide your weapon

Settings > Graphics has a new Show weapon model option. Turn it off to hide your first-person weapon, tools and arms completely. Shooting, building and aiming work as normal.

Genie's healing orb

Genie's heavy orb is now green for her and her teammates, since it heals them; enemies still see it red. Each Genie can have at most two orbs out at once: firing a third removes her oldest. The two-orb limit is a server-side change and is already live.

Choose your game language

The launcher has a new Game language setting above the Play button. Block N Load's text, announcer voice and video subtitles are available in English, Spanish, Russian, German, French and Brazilian Portuguese. Some text added by BNL Reborn, such as the newest perks and settings, is still English only.

Faster, more reliable launcher start-up

When no update is available, the launcher now confirms this by downloading a tiny file instead of the full 12 MB update list, and the update list itself is requested compressed. If the update server stops responding for 30 seconds, the launcher carries on with the game you have installed instead of waiting forever. Your game now also tells the server which release is installed, so future releases can ask an out-of-date game to update.

Heal Bane only on direct hits

Heal Bane now triggers only on direct hits such as bullets, melee swings, thrown weapons and explosions. Bleed, burn, poison and other damage over time no longer re-apply it. This server-side fix is already live.

0.2.0-beta.42

Distant Arctic Wolf shots

Other players' Arctic Wolf silenced shots no longer sound as if they were fired right next to you. The shot was already getting quieter with distance exactly like the standard rifle, but it was a much sharper, brighter recording, which the ear reads as close and loud. Other players now hear a duller version with the same loudness and tone as the standard Longshot rifle shot at every distance. The Arctic Wolf owner's own first-person shot is unchanged.

0.2.0-beta.41

Caulk Gun keeps its lock on teammates

Tony's Caulk Gun now holds onto a teammate much more reliably while healing them. It stays connected while they strafe or run, as long as your aim stays roughly on them (within about 35 degrees) and they are within a few metres of the gun's range. Brief blocks such as a teammate stepping behind a small obstacle, or passing through a force field, water or a ladder, no longer break the heal. It still releases when you aim clearly away, a wall blocks your view for a moment, they move well out of range, or you let go of the trigger.

0.2.0-beta.40

Nigel rifle balance

Nigel's rifle now deals 65 damage on a full-damage headshot. Body-shot damage remains 40, and its full-damage range is unchanged. This server-side balance change is already live and requires no download.

Ninja weapon balance

Ninja's primary Katana attack is 15% slower. Shurikens now load three at a time and reload in one second; primary fire uses one shuriken, while alternate fire uses the full magazine. Reserve capacity and regeneration are unchanged. This server-side balance change is already live and requires no download.

Astarella Saucer Launcher balance

Astarella's Saucer Launcher magazine has been reduced from four shots to three, and its reserve-ammo regeneration is 30% faster. This server-side balance change is already live and requires no download.

Brains heroes can heal

Every Brains hero can now heal teammates. Trondson's Sonic Staff alternate fire heals allies in its radius for 15 health, then 5 health per second for 4 seconds; it now costs 20 ammo (26 with Echo-Location) and no longer reveals nearby enemies. Genie's heavy orb no longer deals damage: it passes through enemies, stops on the first teammate it touches, including one who walks into it, and heals nearby allies for 10 health per second. Tony's Caulk Gun heals allied Heroes by default (20 health per second, 40 with alternate fire) and now stays locked onto a teammate until you aim well away from them, lose sight of them or release the trigger; the Healing Caulk perk has been removed. Vander's Static Gloves beam heals allied Heroes for 20 health per second. Doc's Globe Gun globes heal allied Heroes near where they burst for 12 health. The healing values are already live on the server; the Caulk Gun lock-on and the orb stopping for teammates who walk into it need this update.

Arctic Wolf updates

Nigel's Arctic Wolf skin gets a winter outfit: a one-piece camouflage balaclava, a cloth scarf and a reworked jacket with clearer pockets, with matching portrait and shop images. Its sidearm is now a worn WWII-style M1911A1 with its own firing sound, slide and magazine animation; damage, fire rate and reload time are unchanged. The rifle has a reworked grip, thumbhole and trigger guard so the hands no longer pass through it, the right hand now works the bolt during reload and after each shot, and the silencer cloth sits on the barrel. The silenced shot's position is now updated just before it fires, so it is heard from the right place. This is a cosmetic update; Nigel's gameplay is unchanged.

0.2.0-beta.39

Two custom skins for everyone

Nigel Arctic Wolf and Sweet Science Darklord (listed as Demon) are now unlocked for every player, including new accounts. Reconnect if you are already online to refresh your inventory.

Arctic Wolf iron sights

Reworked Arctic Wolf with open iron sights, a centered front post and a segmented top rail. The scope and scope overlay are removed, the cloth wraps now render white, and the rifle has more room around the support hand. Fixed an exposed cartridge in the idle pose and adjusted the aiming view to keep the crosshair clear.

Arctic Wolf shot distance

Fixed the Arctic Wolf skin's silenced shot sometimes being heard at full volume anywhere on the map. Depending on the order in which the game loaded its sounds, the shot could lose its connection to the rifle's normal sound settings, so it no longer faded with distance. It now always fades exactly like the standard rifle shot, and the game falls back to the standard shot if the rifle's sounds cannot be loaded.

0.2.0-beta.38

Ping and country flags on the scoreboard

Holding TAB now shows each player's ping, colored by quality, in a new PING column, and a small country flag beside their name. The game server works out each player's country from its own offline database; other players only ever receive the two-letter country code, never an IP address. Players whose country is unknown show no flag. IP Geolocation by DB-IP, licensed under CC BY 4.0.

Hero abilities start instantly

Pressing F now starts your hero ability immediately. It no longer cancels a reload, a tool action, building or a weapon switch, and no longer waits for them to finish. What each ability does, its cooldown and its charges are unchanged.

Arctic Wolf silenced shot

Nigel's Arctic Wolf rifle skin now fires its own silenced shot, followed by the usual bolt action, which is louder in first person. Reloading and the other rifle sounds are unchanged. Other players hear the silenced shot at the same loudness as the standard rifle shot.

Spawning on the same beacon

Two players who respawn at the same moment on the same spawn beacon no longer spawn inside each other and get stuck. The first player takes the beacon; the second stays in the death camera until it is clear and can pick another spawn point meanwhile. This is a server-side fix, already live.

Change Heroes loading stalls

Fixed changing heroes or joining a match sometimes stalling on the loading screen through several connection retries. The server now answers a new match connection immediately. This is a server-side fix, already live.

Sweet Science double reload

Fixed Sweet Science reloading twice when a Blitz dash was used right as a reload finished. This is a server-side fix, already live.

0.2.0-beta.37

Silence while minimized

The game no longer keeps playing music and sound effects while its window is minimized. Audio returns as soon as the window is restored. When a match is found, the game restores its window, brings it to the front, flashes its taskbar button and plays the match-found alert, so a queue pop is not missed.

Ninja teleport and force fields

Fixed O.P.'s Katana alt-fire teleport sometimes placing him inside an indestructible force field and leaving him stuck, especially when cast while crouching near force fields. The teleport now always lands him fully clear of force fields, pulling back slightly toward him when needed. This is a server-side fix.

Sweet Science Blitz impact

Sweet Science's Blitz dash no longer shows its impact effect after every dash. The effect, and a fully charged Blitz's splash damage, now happen only when the dash actually hits a player, a block or a force field. A dash that ends in open air does nothing extra. This is a server-side fix.

Deathmatch enemy presentation

In the queue deathmatch, other players are now treated as enemies everywhere on screen. Spotted enemies are highlighted again, whether revealed by a Radar or an ability, and your hitmarkers appear when you damage them. You no longer see other players' healing numbers or the icons for health and ammo stations and other devices they place. After you die, the camera briefly shows who killed you and then no longer follows other players.

Emotes in deathmatch

Hero emotes now work in the queue deathmatch. The server had been refusing them because deathmatch players have no team. This is a server-side fix.

Standing still at very high frame rates

Fixed an old bug where, at very high frame rates (around 1000 FPS or more), a hero standing still kept flickering between standing and falling, with repeated landing sounds. The hero's movement now stays on the ground at any frame rate.

Faster frame rates in busy matches

Removed several sources of constant background work and memory churn: hidden debug windows no longer run every frame, Astarella's orbital beacon safety check no longer rescans the whole scene, text fields are repaired once instead of four times a second, and Vander's glove beams and Tony's Space Nail Gun no longer allocate memory every frame. On the in-game benchmark (Very Low, 1080p) this measured about 10% higher average FPS and 19% better 5% lows. Results vary with the match and hardware.

0.2.0-beta.36

Automatic match reconnection

Fixed a connection handshake stall that could leave match transitions or hero changes stuck on a loading percentage with a Retry connection prompt. The client now sends the handshake immediately and automatically retries temporary connection and no-response failures with a short bounded delay, without requiring the player to click the prompt.

Tony Caulk Gun hit feedback

Tony's standard Caulk Gun now plays its confirmed hit sound when it starts slowing an enemy and every half second while the spray remains on that enemy. Enemy detection also works correctly in Deathmatch. Healing Caulk continues to use its existing ally-healing behavior.

0.2.0-beta.35

Performance and frame pacing

Reduced repeated CPU work from stable world audio emitters, spread runtime voxel chunk rebuilding across frames, and reused bounded physics-query buffers for turret targeting and projectile collision checks. Matched Very Low benchmarks measured 1.35-2.35% higher average FPS from the audio change and about 21.6% lower worst per-frame chunk work from the rebuild budget. Results vary with the match and hardware.

Astarella orbital beacon stability

Removed legacy shadow-map work from Astarella's orbital beacon particles after a matching beta.33 crash dump identified a native Unity shadow-rendering fault. The beam and particles still render normally.

Benchmark and match exit fixes

The benchmark Exit button now returns to the menu, and pressing M can no longer toggle its minimap during a measurement. Ranked spectators also recover to the main menu if the server does not acknowledge a normal leave request.

Better performance diagnostics

Optional match performance reports now include network queue depth, message age, packet processing and server-clock timing. This helps identify the cause of delayed actions while keeping logging disabled by default and storing reports only on the player's PC.

Interface polish

Centered kill, objective and voice-line notices have stronger shadows for better readability. The PLAY queue roster can show whether each player entered through Casual or Ranked when the automatic public queue server update is enabled.

0.2.0-beta.34

Launcher update recovery

The launcher now automatically recovers when its local installation record is damaged instead of stopping on a JSON error. It verifies every managed game file against the signed release, restores anything missing or damaged, and rebuilds the local record. Update state is also written more safely to withstand interruption or power loss. The beta.33 game client is unchanged.

0.2.0-beta.33

Client performance

Reduced CPU work in busy matches by culling offscreen remote hero animation, staggering turret and Tesla target scans, consolidating repeated audio and team color updates, skipping inactive local motor callbacks, and reusing temporary effect collections. Gameplay, movement, networking and device firing continue normally.

Turret and Tesla targeting

Turrets and Tesla coils now perform target perception at a fixed, staggered rate instead of rescanning once per rendered frame. Target prediction, firing, line-of-sight handling and network messages retain their normal behavior.

Local hero voice positioning

Fixed the local hero's voice sometimes moving to only one side of headphones while turning or moving. Character voice playback now stays aligned with the camera listener.

Consistent performance benchmark

The benchmark now uses its authored cinematic camera values and a fixed 120-degree first-person view, independent of saved player FOV settings. This keeps repeated Very Low comparisons consistent.

0.2.0-beta.32

Main menu controls

The Benchmark tab now shares the available navigation space with the other tabs, keeping Settings and Exit visible and clickable.

Performance benchmark

Run a one-minute scripted 4v4 Beach Base benchmark from the main menu. Choose a graphics preset or your current settings, inspect the results, and copy or open the report. Your graphics settings are restored after the run.

Optional match performance reports

An Interface setting can record local performance reports during matches to help investigate frame-rate problems. Reports include frame timing and workload details and stay on your PC.

Settings window visibility

Fixed the settings window opening with an invisible frame or behind the main menu.

0.2.0-beta.31

Match found shows the right team size

The Match Found prompt now shows one slot per player in your queue: eight for casual 4v4, ten for ranked 5v5.

Conquest results highlights

Zones Captured and Minutes in Zone now highlight each team's own leader instead of copying the Objective Damage highlight.

New perks: Rapid Reset, Life Steal, Heal Bane

Rapid Reset (offensive): killing a Hero instantly removes 60% of your remaining ability cooldown, movement speed -10%. Life Steal (offensive): every weapon shot heals you for 25% of the damage dealt to enemy Heroes, max health -10%. Heal Bane (offensive): enemy Heroes you hit with your weapons receive 60% less healing for 10 seconds, reload speed -15%. Nerves of Steel has been retired. Life Steal and Heal Bane only trigger from your own weapons, not turrets, devices or blocks.

New Tony perk: Healing Caulk

Caulk Gun spray also heals allied Heroes; it no longer slows enemies. This build adds the shop art for Healing Caulk and Life Steal.

Balance: Nigel, Genie, Vander, Yeti, Trondson

Nigel's rifle has no bloom while aiming (moving and jumping still spread) and quick scoping snaps instantly; no-scope spread reduced a little. Genie's orbs are fully accurate. Vander's Static Gloves zap fires the instant you click. Yeti's Snow Thrower alt fire has a 2.5 m splash, flies faster and deals 20 on a direct hit. Trondson's Kobold Lamps equip 60% faster. These server-side changes are already live.

Custom game lobbies

Fixed players getting stuck at Loading Lobby 100% when creating or starting a custom game. Already live.

0.2.0-beta.30

In-game patch notes fixed

The in-game Patch Notes panel showed the most recent updates again; it had gone blank once enough releases accumulated. The full history stays on the website.

Map vote thumbnails

Map thumbnails now keep the cube count and the Classic/Conquest label clear of the map name and the vote counter, so all four stay readable in map voting.

Ability cooldown reduction on active cooldowns

Ability cooldown reduction now speeds up a cooldown that is already running instead of only the next use. Gaining the effect shortens the remaining wait, losing it stretches what is left back out, and progress already made is always kept. This server-side change is already live for all clients.

Launcher sign-in reliability

Signing in through Steam no longer leaves the launcher on Not signed in when the Reborn service is briefly unreachable after approval. The launcher keeps your approved session, retries the confirmation, and Sign In re-checks a saved session before opening Steam again. Sign-in steps are logged to launcher-auth.log for support.

Single reload after Blitz dash

Fixed weapons reloading twice, including after a Sweet Science Blitz dash. This server-side fix is already live for all clients.

0.2.0-beta.29

Custom match hero switching

Custom hosts can enable Hero Switching in match settings. Players can then use Change Heroes from the in-match menu to select a new hero and loadout, just like Deathmatch. The option is off by default and is visible in the custom-game browser. Chat now announces when a player is changing heroes instead of reporting the expected connection transition as a disconnect.

Sweet Science ammo and dash reliability

Fixed ammo counts becoming stale when reserve refills overlap a reload. Reactive Ammo now updates reserve ammo without overwriting loaded charges. Blitz dashes now require a valid charge for the equipped weapon and enough ammo for the selected dash; invalid or repeated casts are rejected and ammo is synchronized.

Change Heroes loading recovery

Hardened reconnecting when changing heroes in Deathmatch. Late callbacks from an old connection can no longer affect its replacement. Connection and login handshakes now time out and offer a retry instead of leaving the loading screen waiting indefinitely.

Deathmatch lobby departures

Fixed departed players remaining in the Deathmatch hero-selection lobby. Lobby roster updates now remove players who have left, clearing their hero slots and portraits while preserving players explicitly marked offline for reconnects.

Genie orb impact limits

Restored the original effect pooling and effect-count limit for genie orb impacts. Repeated impacts now reuse effects and respect the graphics effect limit instead of creating unrestricted new impact effects.

Vanilla death-camera effects

Restored death-camera color correction using the original vanilla color ramp, plus the original vignette, blur and chromatic-aberration calculations. Restored the high-quality death-camera bloom settings and removed the old workaround that disabled the death-effects stack.

Spectator minimap alignment

Fixed minimap markers shifting away from the map image in wide or short spectator layouts. The marker layout and map image now fit the same frame dimensions.

Online launcher patch notes and game status

The launcher now fetches patch notes online and keeps the last downloaded notes for offline use. Its visible name is Block N Load Reborn. Game status resets when the launched game closes, and Play, Repair and Uninstall are disabled while it is running.

Ranked lobby and matchmaking fixes

Restored the ranked lobby fence normal mapping, highlights and illuminated details. Your own chat name now follows your friendly-team color setting. The 5v5 match-found prompt shows all ten acceptance indicators, including while waiting in Deathmatch.

Map mode labels

Map thumbnails now show Classic or Conquest labels, with Conquest highlighted in gold. Map titles display their base names without the Conquest suffix so they fit more clearly in voting, custom-map selection and the PLAY menu.

Weighted casual map voting

Casual map voting now supports configurable map weights and always offers distinct maps. Higher-weight maps have a greater chance to appear without duplicate pool entries; player votes and ranked map selection are unchanged.

Beach Base Mid Edit Conquest

Added a separate Beach Base Mid Edit - Conquest map for casual voting and custom matches, with three capture zones, safe metal floors, and the established Block Buster attack rounds. The original map remains available.

Deathmatch glue and build previews

Fixed placed glue briefly showing enemy red before its ownership arrives. Deathmatch uses the regular build preview with friendly-colored construction brackets. Glue receives shadows but no longer casts them; bear-trap shadows are unchanged.

0.2.0-beta.28

Complete match statistics

Restored a separate Destruction column without removing damage dealt, healing, building, K/D/A or Conquest participation. Headers and values align for both teams.

Deathmatch queue and global chat

Leaving the waiting Deathmatch keeps your matchmaking queue and elapsed search time. Global chat is available inside Deathmatch, and queued players in its lobby are marked DEATHMATCH.

Deathmatch trap ownership and previews

Your placed glue no longer affects you and uses friendly colors. Build previews also use your friendly color; other players and map traps remain hostile.

Trap shadows and map barriers

Glue and bear traps receive shadows, with reduced glue emission so shadows remain visible. Removed the built-in blue and red forcefields from the waiting Deathmatch map.

0.2.0-beta.27

Piggy Bank reserves

A Piggy Bank counter now shows how many you have placed and their total stored bricks, appearing only while you own piggies. Looking at a Piggy Bank also shows its stored bricks beside its name.

Conquest ownership colors

Score multipliers now use orange. Fully captured zone circles fill with their team color on the HUD and minimap.

Self effect recipients

Fixed self effects applied to another player being rejected by caster-relative targeting. Nested buffs now target the player carrying the effect, including in Deathmatch, while repeated applications of the same effect remain shared.

Conquest capture-zone floors

Each Conquest capture zone now has a full metal floor at its lowest capture level. The floor stays in place when surrounding terrain is destroyed, so players can stand on it and capture without rebuilding a platform.

Enemy-spotted team radio

Fixed silent enemy-spotted ping callouts. Pings now play the sender hero or skin voice over team radio regardless of distance, and respect the mute teammate pings setting.

Deathmatch ownership and devices

Deathmatch treats each player as a separate side. Your devices use friendly colors and target other players; other devices and map traps use enemy colors. Map traps trigger regardless of their saved team, and team-scoped device limits apply per player.

Deathmatch scoreboard

The Tab scoreboard now shows everyone in one ranked, scrollable list with K/D/A columns and a highlight for your row.

HUD readability fixes

Fixed missing teammate brick counts and centered the outlined numbers over the cube icon. Fixed overlapping scoreboard K/D/A headers on the two-team scoreboard.

Teammate brick reserves

The in-match teammate roster now shows each teammate's live brick reserve beside their name using the familiar cube icon. Values stay exact below 1,000 and use compact notation such as 1.5K and 3.2K above it.

Zone identity and minimap state

Zone captured and lost announcements now name the affected A/B/C objective while retaining their short duration and friendly/enemy color. The minimap marks each full capture area with its neutral, friendly or enemy ownership color, plus a live perimeter trace in the capturing team's color.

Clearer Conquest HUD

Conquest objectives now use circular badges, the game's familiar font and compact, centered world markers. Team score targets are easier to read, cube health and progress bars have more breathing room, and zone status sits beneath the top HUD to keep the view clear.

Block Buster attack countdown

The orange attack progress bar now drains correctly for the full attack duration, with a separate seconds label and improved spacing.

Animated zone boundaries

Capture areas now have straight animated grid walls spanning the zone's bottom and height limits without bending over terrain. A subtle glow, softened edges and distance fade keep the boundaries visible without overwhelming the scene.

Conquest match results

Both teams now show correctly labeled ZONES CAPTURED and MINUTES IN ZONE columns. Minutes display as decimal minutes, and every contributing majority-team player present when a zone converts receives capture credit. These stats are recorded for matches played with the updated server.

Native match confirmation and voiced pings

A queue match found while playing queue deathmatch now opens the game's original Match Found presentation with its normal accept, decline, countdown, confirmation, sound and desktop alert behavior. Placing a PING marker also sends the existing Enemy Spotted hero callout to your team, including the marker, notification and the correct voice for the speaking hero and skin.

Conquest reliability and live tuning

The Conquest display now restores itself reliably on every map load instead of sometimes requiring a game restart. Starting bricks can no longer exceed the mode's cap. Starting bricks, brick cap, capture and attack durations, all Block Buster targets, triple-zone rate and capture bounds are now controlled by the Conquest CDB card, so new matches can be tuned without a server restart.

Connection stability

Reduced false Connection Lost errors during long map-loading stalls. The server now accepts any received session traffic as proof that a player is still connected and allows up to 60 seconds for delayed liveness responses before disconnecting a silent session.

Matchmaking queue rollback

Restored matchmaking to each mode's configured players-per-team value and removed the experimental 30-second 4v4-to-5v5 expansion window. Matches now pop at their configured size as before, while the newer safeguard preventing a player from backfilling a match they already left remains in place.

Queue deathmatch combat sides

Every queue-deathmatch player is assigned a unique free-for-all team ID. That identity is propagated to owned devices, projectiles, effects, and pickups while the legacy protocol's three-value team field remains Neutral for compatibility. Health pickups dropped by kills transfer to the collecting player's team before applying their heal. Player-built Radar and Nigel's Spot Prey reveal every player on a different FFA team, and spotted-player outlines are reconciled if the character model loads after the network effect.

Queue deathmatch rules

Every other arena player is now a real combat enemy, including scoreboard kill credit, on-kill perks such as Killer Shield and Killer Ammo, enemy hit-confirm sounds, enemy-colored kill announcements, normal health drops and ownership-aware targeting for bleed, traps, turrets, Tesla coils and other effects. Enemy minimap markers obey your own line of sight instead of shared neutral-team vision, and team-only attack, defend and help callouts are disabled. The shared arena has no team-size limit, starts each player with the full 1,000-brick cap, protects every respawn with a no-build zone, and uses twelve supported spawn areas clear of lava and built-in caltrops. Team force fields are suppressed on both the server and client, and every death chooses a new random respawn area when another is available.

Queue controls and loading stability

The pause menu now has a native-styled CHANGE HEROES button that returns you to hero selection without leaving matchmaking, the live queue count beneath the match clock is easier to read, and respawns now take two seconds. Fixed an erroneous returning-player timer that could reload an active map, while Zone reconnects now discard stale unit traffic safely instead of leaving you stuck dead. Common assets now load in bounded batches to reduce the long pause around 21–29% and report unusually slow batches in the log.

Runtime compatibility

Bundled the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 and current v14 x64 runtime libraries required by the legacy Wwise audio engine and Unity App UI plugin, preventing startup failures on PCs where those redistributables were not already installed.

Queue deathmatch

While queued for Casual or Ranked, enable PLAY WHILE QUEUED to enter a shared free-for-all on Search and Destroy. Every other player is now an enemy: arena players have no team, beneficial effects remain self-owned, and team spawn protection plus pre-placed health and ammo stations are removed. Tab opens a YOU / EVERYONE ELSE scoreboard, while the native match clock shows elapsed arena time and the regional queue population. The PLAY controls are aligned without overlap, and leaving preserves your matchmaking place.

Custom join reliability

Reconnecting to a custom match during the disconnect grace period now restores the preparation timer and transfers the player into the running map instead of leaving LOBBY PREPARATION stuck at zero.

Hero preview lighting

Restored the bright studio lighting in YOUR HEROES after the gameplay character-shadow correction made profile models too dark. This is isolated to the profile viewport; heroes in matches still receive realtime shadows and local-light falloff.

Crash reporting and stability

Fixed a native crash that could occur as the local player died while the third-person presentation was being removed. The launcher now includes an OPEN CRASH REPORT button that opens the newest report so crash.dmp and player.log can be sent to the team. Killer Ammo now plays the familiar ammo-station sound whenever an on-kill refill restores ammunition. Extreme mortar spam can no longer create unlimited simultaneous audio voices and exhaust the client audio engine.

Conquest audio

The Block Buster pickup sound now plays as an attack boost begins. The zone-capturing loop now plays only while you are personally inside and helping convert that zone, instead of playing for captures by teammates elsewhere.

Conquest rules and feedback

Conquest cubes must now be destroyed in order, team brick reserves are capped at 3,000, and attack/capture transitions announce immediately. Zone captured and lost notices use the appropriate team color and clear after two seconds.

Matchmaking and chat

Players who leave a match can no longer backfill into that same match. Queue chat spacing and layering were corrected so recent messages and the input area remain readable.

Combat reliability

Killer Ammo now updates the clip and ammo display immediately, including kills with the final bullet, and shows how much ammo was added. Gameplay effects now remain active at the map's maximum height.

Launcher storage cleanup

The launcher now removes completed update downloads, rollback transactions and obsolete helper files after a successful update, preventing old updates from accumulating on disk.

Leaderboard profiles

Click any leaderboard player row to open that player's profile, with native hover and click sounds. Profile statistics now load correctly, and the LEADERBOARD tab remains available as the way back.

PLAY and friends layout

Ongoing matches use larger map previews, centered gold player names, full MMR values and cleaner spacing. The friends footer now shows online and total friends, keeps its full-size icon visible, and attaches notifications to that icon.

Map voting and currencies

Map voting cards now identify one-, two- and three-cube maps. The retired Bounty Block currency has been removed consistently from every Main Menu page.

Conquest updates

A continuous capture cue now plays while a zone converts from neutral or enemy control toward your team. Block Buster thresholds are now 7 minutes for Light, 5 for Classic and 3 for the strongest tier; holding all three zones still scores twice as fast.

Astarella ground-pound cancellation

Double-jumping after starting Astarella's airborne ground pound now cancels its powered landing. A later CTRL press can arm a new ground pound, so damage follows the latest airborne action.

Sky Bridge Conquest

A separate experimental Sky Bridge Don Edit variant adds three capture zones. Hold two zones to earn Block Buster time, or all three for double speed. Light, Classic and Uber attack rounds alternate with shielded capture phases. The original map remains available.

Objective feedback

A compact team-colored HUD shows ownership, capture progress and nearby player counts. Animated floor markings and elevated sky beams identify each objective; beams change between friendly, enemy and neutral colors. Supply-drop notices sit beside the Conquest display.

Capture and attack sounds

Added distinct capture/loss cues and the matching Block Buster announcement and music when an attack begins, plus a cue when it ends.

Client polish

Updated health-bar styling, active chat-tab highlighting, forcegate construction previews and construction-completion audio. Also adjusted lightning, water materials and graphics settings.

Ping wheel

Hold your ping binding to open a callout wheel. Move the mouse to choose a message, then release to send it; release in the centre for a regular ping. Escape cancels. You can walk, sprint, crouch and jump while the wheel is open.

Block Buster countdown

A new animated warning counts down the final ten seconds before a Block Buster crate automatically breaks, with stronger emphasis during the last three seconds. It follows the server timer, including when you join late, and disappears if the crate is destroyed early.

Scoreboard perk cards

Hover a player name in the Tab scoreboard to see their hero and equipped perks, using the same information shown on the kill card.

Gravity Well and Graviton Stance

Fixed overlapping pulls cancelling each other. Gravity Wells now resume holding a target after Graviton Stance ends, including when the stance pulls someone into a well that was not yet active. The affected player needs this updated client for the complete fix.

Critical-hit damage numbers

A critical hit following normal hits now correctly enlarges and italicizes the combined damage indicator. The critical style no longer depends on the first hit being a crit.

Falling blocks and large collapses

Limited falling debris and destruction particle bursts during large cuts. Reduced excessive spinning of falling blocks, and capped break particles when falling blocks are disabled.

Building preview

Restored the build-fill emission calculation for a brighter team-coloured preview, with clearer device textures inside. Refined the order in which the fill and device are drawn.

Hero presentation

Corrected Trondson portrait sizing and restored Vander Graaf lightning in YOUR HEROES. Fixed a dash impact-position error that could place Sweet Science effects near the map origin.

Profile and settings fixes

Unequipped badges and titles now stay unequipped when changing menus. Escape closes Settings correctly instead of leaving it open while the camera can move.

Faster startup

Removed the startup video and warning sequence so the client proceeds directly to login.

Server card and targeting fixes

Block card changes, including caltrops, now refresh without a server restart. Constant effects under aura and buff correctly respect ignore-caster targeting.

Charged bananas and Banana Lock

Kreepy's banana alternate fire can now be charged for up to 0.5 seconds to increase throw speed, with matching first- and third-person animations. The new Banana Lock perk roots enemies for 1 second on direct alternate-fire hits instead of making them slide, but reduces banana capacity to 2. Ground peels still cause normal slips.

Career and hero statistics

PROFILE now has a career overview and a selectable hero roster with matches, wins, losses, win rate, MMR, kills, deaths, assists, K/D, play time, damage, healing, objective damage, building and destruction. Combat totals use the permanent match archive instead of only the latest ten matches, with headshot kills and DPS included.

Consistent statistics for everyone

Incomplete match records are excluded from all career and hero totals so every statistic uses the same complete data. Headshot percentage uses the displayed kill total. Older incomplete records are retained in the archive, but no longer inflate profile totals; XP, MMR and ranks are not reset.

A clearer PLAY layout

Casual and Ranked tabs now sit in the squad header. Squad portraits show level and MMR, Allow Backfill uses a visible native tick, and Play/Leave Queue and Spectate use the original red button styling. The map pool starts collapsed, with a Show/Hide control and uniform previews that preserve image proportions.

Global chat and menu polish

Global chat now shares the footer tabs with squad/custom chat and private messages, with unread alerts and original send/receive sounds. Fixed duplicate notifications and cleared global history between matches. Refined tab hover states, panel backgrounds, borders, headings, scrollbars and the Friends Online label.

Match history and spectators

The detailed scoreboard now shows Damage Dealt and Healing from archived combat counters, with unavailable values shown clearly for older records. Improved scoreboard readability and added native menu sound feedback. Spectators return to the menu when matches end, including reconnecting viewers. Ongoing Matches now lists only Casual and Ranked games.

Perks and YOUR HEROES

Fixed perk headers, effect-text overlap and delayed layout changes in the lobby. Updated Banana Lock artwork. Corrected overexposed hero-preview lighting and restored stronger material highlights and the preview platform's appearance. Removed the obsolete PROFILE Blocks page.

Mud surface restoration

Reworked mud shading to restore deeper-looking depressions, fine surface detail and wet highlights along the rims and bottoms. Corrected normal decoding, highlight response and the black strips seen during earlier shader work.

Bluer, continuous ice

Ice now has a richer blue body with simulated internal lighting. Adjacent blocks blend into a continuous surface, and finer surface normals and roughness break up overly smooth reflections. Ice remains opaque; transparency and screen-space refraction have been removed.

Build-phase and placement audio fixes

Fixed custom matches getting stuck at zero with the barrier still up when the minimum build time is selected. Build sounds no longer accumulate across placement attempts, and now stop when the local action ends even if cancellation is missed. Delayed build-start messages cannot restart a completed local action.

Supply-drop reconnect cleanup

Supply drops now use their current movement state to stop falling audio and hide stale parachutes when you join or reconnect after landing. Duplicate or early landing events cannot restart the fall loop.

Client maintenance

Updated legacy scene-load callbacks and cleaned up invalid shader import stubs. Corrected shader validation render targets and case-sensitive texture tracking. Rebuilt the client and visual assets, with these release notes included in the game, launcher and website.

Unity 6.3 LTS

The client now runs on Unity 6.3 LTS (6000.3.23f1), with rebuilt game assets and compatibility fixes. Close the game and reopen the launcher to update.

A new Home screen

See live player counts and animated status counters, browse patch notes, and open the online roster to search for players and send friend requests.

Your PLAY dashboard

Browse ongoing matches and spectate, view the current map pool, manage your squad, and see the queue and online players. Global chat connects players in menus and queue. Join shorthanded games remains available.

Detailed match history

Browse recent matches with map and hero artwork, sort results, and search player profiles. Click a match for its archived team scoreboard, including hero portraits, player stats and MMR changes. Ratings display in MMR points, with animated loading and value transitions.

Launcher news

• Added the missing beta.13, beta.14 and beta.15 release notes to the launcher's news cards.
• Use the arrows to browse recent gameplay, visual and client updates.
• This is a launcher-only update. The beta.15 game files do not need to download again.

Client update

• Refreshed the game client and bundled shaders and materials.
• Existing players can update through the current launcher. Account and game settings are retained.

Combat and building

• Other players' build previews now receive moving target updates through the server. Both players need this update.
• Added a yellow poison screen border with biohazard symbols.
• Refined bleeding borders and drips, increased effect contrast, and changed healing symbols to green crosses.
• Added Graphics > Status screen borders: one saved switch for burning, bleeding, healing, and poison overlays.
• Improved distant radar-outline visibility without changing radar range.
• Corrected the Block Buster drop beam's landing cleanup.

Visual corrections

• Fixed the black blocks obscuring Roly Poly Shake Shake in third person.
• Restored explicit transparent snow-particle rendering for Shake Shake.
• Updated original-font and game-branding restoration, grass shading, and inside-mud rendering.

Combat visuals

• Added distinct screen-edge effects for burning, bleeding, and healing, keeping the centre of the screen clear.
• Restored the metal, glass globe, and snow appearance of Roly Poly Shake Shake.
• Corrected grey pipe materials on Mountain Express to restore their brownish appearance.

Settings and menus

• Supported game preferences and key bindings now save to %LOCALAPPDATA%\BNL Reborn\settings.json, with migration from existing registry preferences.
• Fixed block-loadout editing for heroes without the crate block equipped.
• Removed the Bounty Blocks section, challenge menu content, and device-level badges from the UI.
• This is a game-client update. The launcher remains beta.12; existing players only download changed game files.

A launcher that installs and manages your game

• Choose your installation folder and download the current game directly. No separate Setup download is needed.
• Small files download together in resumable packs, avoiding thousands of separate requests. Every extracted file is verified against the signed release.
• Pause and resume downloads, or use Repair to restore missing and damaged files.
• Uninstall Game removes managed game files and download cache while keeping the launcher, account settings, and unrecognized custom files.
• This is a launcher-only release: existing beta.11 game files do not need to download again. Game settings storage is unchanged.

Build barriers and device previews

• Your own build barrier stays see-through into the neutral area; the opposing barrier blocks vision into the enemy side. This works for both teams.
• Improved barrier stripe filtering to reduce shimmer during camera movement.
• Removed the unwanted straight blue strip from full-circle device range previews.

Restored visuals

• Corrected washed-out lobby hero and skin lighting.
• Restored force-field interior screen blur and improved its tint.
• Improved Sarge's rocket sight glass and aiming markings without changing weapon FOV.
• Brightened health pickups and softened radar outlines.
• Restored death and respawn camera tint, vignette and soft blur.
• Reduced block-surface seams and restored the vanilla game icon.

Controls and combat readability

• Corrected AZERTY keyboard mapping and removed an unreliable special-key fallback.
• Restored the original player and device health-bar presentation.
• Combined damage numbers stay visible for 2 seconds after the last hit, followed by a 0.5-second fade.

Installed launcher repair

• Fixed a self-update failure that could prevent the installed launcher from opening after the game was installed.
• Future launcher replacements are staged from the already verified new executable and checked again before the helper starts.
• The beta.10 game installer now includes the corrected standalone launcher for clean installations.

Reliable interrupted downloads

• A dropped TLS or internet connection no longer blocks installation after one failure.
• The launcher reconnects automatically and resumes from the last byte safely written to disk.
• Every completed payload is still checked against its signed size and SHA-256 before Setup can run.

Launcher-first installation

• New players now download one 162 MB launcher instead of a ZIP containing Setup payload files.
• The launcher securely downloads and resumes the game installer, then opens Setup so the player can choose an installation folder.
• After installation, the launcher continues to deliver signed incremental game updates and repair changed files.
• Download telemetry now has a dedicated visual gap before the Play button for clearer reading.
• The standalone EXE now carries its native Windows UI dependencies internally, so no companion files are required.

Launcher downloads

The launcher shows overall percentage, downloaded and total size, live download speed, ETA, current file, and completed file count. Interrupted downloads reconnect and continue from their partial data automatically.

Gameplay and UI

• Building stays unavailable throughout emotes and until the first-person camera is fully restored.
• Heroes use stacked 20-HP cells; devices, cubes, and objectives retain their legacy health bars.
• Hero missing-health cells no longer flicker or change while actual health is unchanged.
• Local avatars are restored in the squad and compact player panels.
• Enemy Supply Drop and Blockbuster pickups now appear in the activity feed.
• Perk benefits are green and drawbacks are red.

Maps and rendering

• Map-editor selection and placement geometry is transparent again.
• Grass uses an isolated repeating atlas cell, removing distant white streaks, grazing-angle bands, and visible voxel seams while preserving nearby detail.