It's been a while since our Next Fest demo, and we've been working hard on the game the whole time. We'd like to thank everyone for their patience with us, this is our first foray into game development and there were many unknowns that meant things took longer than we ever anticipated. Largely our focus has in improving the smoothness of the experience overall.

Now that we have this solidified foundation we've decided it's time to open it to Early Access, as we are more ready than ever to accept feedback and suggestions from the community. We're so excited for more people to be able to try the game!

We'll be focusing on adding more content between now and our 1.0 release, so look forward to it! A more detailed roadmap will also be posted in the near future.

If you're wondering what's new since the Next Fest demo, we have a whole series of revisions and changelists published on our Discord[discord.gg], but here is the condensed version:

Highlights:
✅ overhauled game lobby menu entirely, now including online chat and game preview
✅ replay viewer
✅ reorganized options menu with a bunch of new options
✨ improved ball sound effects
✨ several usability improvements to the Map Editor
🗺️ new maps Badminton, Brick Break, and Pentagon

Features:
✅ lobby player chat
✅ one-way collision paddles and obstacles now supported
✅ game now defaults to fullscreen mode on first launch
✅ replay viewer, including automatic recent replay cache, and ability to save replay from game
✅ added support for alternative keyboard layouts, such as Dvorak, in the default controls
✅ added a vsync option
✅ new game lobby menu that is more intuitive and user friendly
✅ dynamic preview window added to lobby menu and map select
✅ reworked map select menu to be more intuitive and user friendly
✅ game zooms out when serving so all players can see their paddles
✅ simplified voting system for back to lobby
✅ accessibility option to disable or lessen text animations
✅ ready status displayed per-player during lobby practice
✅ options menu reorganized
✅ new sliders to adjust volume of game sfx, music, and menu sfx as well as master volume separately
✅ new bloom quality option
✅ new graphics for pressed keys in controls reminder
✅ new option to enable 4 players on one keyboard
✅ controller support in the map editor
✅ map editor hotkey for adjusting object z order (pg up/down)
Improvements:
✨ map editor feature: stacking multiple breakable obstacles will now only break them one at a time
✨ loading animation for map refresh in the online practice mode
✨ the right click menu on text field now has a more appropriate size
✨ unified capitalization throughout the game, all text that isn't a proper noun is now lowercased
✨ the lobby browser now automatically filters out lobbies that are on a different game version than you
✨ improved how lobby browser looks when it has a lot of lobbies (scrolling)
✨ improved the look of the map info box in the lobby menu
✨ removed the unintuitive game option to disable keyboard support
✨ map settings are now visible to non-hosts
✨ winner names can now be longer before they start scrolling on the win screen
✨ improved ball sound effects
✨ decreased clutter of the cityscape section of the background
✨ improved text readability to several menus
✨ readied players can no longer be moved and unreadied by others in online lobbies
✨ autostart timer when players ready in online lobbies
✨ more animation flare for the popup score
✨ lobby host name is now included in lobby browser
✨ touch-ups to several menu icons for visual consistency
✨ previously focused menu item is reselected when backing out of a menu
✨ corrected transparency graphics for ghost paddles
✨ improvements to background graphic cityscape
✨ workshop upload errors are more informative
✨ auto-hide mouse cursor when using controller
✨ add drop-down icon to variation picker to make it more obviously an adjustable option
✨ improved layout and pixel alignment of some panels and ui elements
✨ remapped default KEYBIND B serve and jump buttons to be more intuitive
✨ opening steam overlay pauses the game
Maps:
🗺️ new map Badminton
🗺️ new map Brick Break
🗺️ new map Pentagon
🛠️ 2v2 and menace modes added to several maps
🛠️ changed some maps to use the new one-way collision paddles so the ball doesn't get jammed in various places
🛠️ balance tweaks made to almost all maps
🛠️ adjusted score position on big ball team variation
⬇️ Air Hockey was removed for now as it needs several fixes
⬇️ Asymmetric Air Hockey was removed for now as it needs several fixes
⬇️ Some experimental variations were removed for now as they need some improvements
❌ Vanishing Point and Vanishing Bricks were migrated to workshop maps
Bugfixes:
⚙️ More consistent background parallax with different zoom levels
⚙️ Tooltips don't go off screen in menus
⚙️ Joining via invite no longer assumes you're using a keyboard to play
⚙️ Fixed keyboard echo events in the workshop upload menu
⚙️ Adjusted pause menu player labels to fit correctly in the screen width
⚙️ Game reset/ball reset message no longer duplicated
⚙️ fixed alt+enter not working when the chat is open or the game is paused
⚙️ fixed rally display not showing
⚙️ fixed out of bounds ball glitch under certain circumstances
⚙️ fixed chat and context menu misplacement when using alternate resolution scale settings
⚙️ fixed display messages for unreadying/joining/leaving lobby
⚙️ changing the spin override no longer repeatedly reloads the map for other players
⚙️ make sure to only send one chat message when a vote goes through successfully
⚙️ better lobby stability around host/other clients crashing
⚙️ map screenshots are now generated with the correct visual
⚙️ fixed text entry on Steam Deck
⚙️ winner name now populates right away on the win screen
⚙️ match override settings now stick when returning to map selector
⚙️ background music now stops when using the map editor
⚙️ disconnecting from a lobby after voting for reset/rematch no longer crashes
⚙️ changes to options menu now save correctly
⚙️ fixed crash when dragging corner handles in map editor
⚙️ correct tab in map select is selected by default for 6+ player lobbies
⚙️ fixed crash in map editor when ending a test
⚙️ chat message for game winner now says "team" when applicable
⚙️ fixed crash on certain custom maps when hitting the ball
⚙️ lobby owner now displays correctly for public game lobbies

Today marked the conclusion of the Steam Next Fest event! We wanted to take the opportunity to thank everyone for downloading the demo, and giving our little game a try! This has been our pet project for a while now, and it's very exciting to finally get some public eyes on the project.

The Next Fest demo will go offline Monday 6/24, so if you haven't found the time to give our game a try yet, you will have a little more time to do so.

Beyond that we hope to take the game into early access in the near future, but we aren't committing to a date at this time. If you want to stay informed of our plans, or if you have any lingering feedback to give us, consider joining our discord community![discord.gg]

Thanks again for playing!
~Kittens Are Software team

Come hang out with the developers for a few matches, or watch some gameplay live.
Join our Discord https://discord.gg/YrApMRNRnp for voice chat!

Come hang out with the developers for a few matches, or watch some gameplay live.
Join our Discord https://discord.gg/YrApMRNRnp for voice chat!

Come hang out with the developers for a few matches, or watch some gameplay live.
Join our Discord https://discord.gg/YrApMRNRnp for voice chat!

This is a test stream to see if all my settings are good.