Counterpick Labs news & patch notes

Hi! Sorry this patch is not the most exciting... but it sets us up for some cool new features :) General - Rewrote core rendering code to improve rendering performance. This will not be noticeable to most players, but it allows me to work on some new resource-heavy features without being constrained by performance on lower-end machines such as Chromebooks. UX/UI - While in a lobby, pressing Tab will now focus the chat box, and Tab/Esc will unfocus it. - Tab is no longer a bindable key. (Previously it was technically bindable, but pressing it caused the game screen to unfocus). If this causes issues for anybody, please let me know. - The mouse cursor will now automatically be hidden when the keyboard or a controller is in use. Bugs - Healing from the Leech upgrade will now only activate for the player who placed the Leech debuff. - Fixed broken cutscene for the Angry Jim story mission. - Fixed bug where Jim only had one life (instead of two) on Casual difficulty of the Angry Jim story mission. - Fixed text formatting issue in the Quickplay post-match screen after defeating a rare NPC.

Hi folks! We've been due for a balance patch for a while. Highlights include reworked Folding Blade attacks, buffs to various Secondaries, buffs to Shine Bracer, and nerfs to UFO.

General

• Increased shield damage universally by ~10%
• Slightly altered velocity curve of downward-sending attacks (spikes) against high-damage opponents. Spikes should feel more impactful, knocking opponents back faster initially. However total distance knocked back should be similar.

Crossbow:

• Now automatically reloads when user is KOd
• Can now be reloaded while in the air

Buckler:

• Increased damage to 8-12 depending on charge (up from 4-8)
• Slightly increased daze hitstun multiplier when bashing a shielding opponent
• Reduced start lag by 1 frame

Players reported Buckler's payoff not feeling high enough to compete with grab-based secondaries.

Harpoon

• Up throw angle now launches inward rather than outward, increasing combo potential

At higher levels of play Harpoon was seen as underwhelming. Increasing the reward should help close the gap with other secondaries without overly impacting levels of play where harpoon is already powerful.

Gauntlet:

• Reduced start lag by 1 frame

Oleg

• Rage now activates at 75 damage (up from 70)
• Slightly reduced knockback resistance

Warp mine

• When using the up special recover macro to self detonate a mine, the mine will no longer stick to opponents. (There was some strategy around this, but it often occurs accidentally on both players' parts and is especially confusing for newer players).

Folding blade

• Reworked forward strong. It now stabs forward, covering less area than it did previously in exchange for slightly faster frame data.
• Reworked forward tilt. It now slashes forward, faster but with much less range than the previous forward tilt.
• Dash attack: Reduced end lag by 1 frame.
• Down air: Added a weaker hilt hitbox.
• Up air: Added a weaker hilt hitbox. Increased damage (+1) and knockback of strong hitbox.
• Forward air, up air: Added a weaker hilt hitbox. Increased knockback of strong hitbox.

These changes are meant to address a few issues: many newer players found Folding Blade's forward strong to be overpowered and over-centralizing due to its strength and coverage. At the more experienced levels of play, some players found folding blade to be one-dimensional in its combo game. Across all levels, Folding Blade's kill potential felt limited if one failed to land a tipper forward strong. With these changes, forward strong should no longer be so oppressive at lower levels of play, and the new weak/strong hitboxes should open up additional combo routes, including into kill moves. The stronger aerial hitboxes should allow for more outright kills when juggling and edgeguarding opponents.

Chakram

• Forward tilt: Increased start lag by 1 frame and end lag by 2 frames.

Magnosphere

• Forward tilt: Increased size of strong hitbox relative to weak hitbox
• Down tilt: Reduced end lag by 1 frame
• Down air: Reduced end lag by 4 frames, slightly increased base knockback
• Back air: Increased size of strong hitbox relative to weak hitbox
• Up strong: Slightly increased knockback scaling
• Up air: Slightly increased base knockback and (for weaker hitboxes) knockback scaling

Pincers

• Up strong: Slightly increased knockback scaling

UFO

• Side special: Slightly increased size of hurtbox
• Neutral special: UFO is now destroyable during the channeled traveling phase of the attack
• Up special: UFO is now destroyable (both the UFO that carries the player upward and the UFO once released)
• Down special: Increased end lag by 2 frames

Some of UFO's abilities felt too low risk given their high reward, making them spammable and difficult to contest at certain levels of play. These changes aim to make UFO abilities more contestable without reducing their reward.

Shine bracer

• Up special: Usage now refreshes after getting hit.
• Side special: Slightly reduced horizontal velocity. Slightly decreased size of hitbox.
• Neutral special: Reduced start lag by 3 frames and end lag by 2 frames. Now charges twice as fast and deals 6-12 dmg (previously dealt 5-15).

Bugs

• Fixed bug where attempting to load a control profile in local multiplayer could freeze the player's menu.
• Fixed bug where the max lives/points in a replay could be incorrect.
• Fixed bug where the "round won" Arena overlay could appear at the start of replays.
• Fixed bug where loadouts could still be altered after confirming your loadout in the quickplay rematch screen.
• Fixed bug where player names could be swapped in the post-match screen in quickplay.

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Lobbies

• Lobbies now support 2v2 and FFA modes, with up to 4 players in a lobby.
• Added spectator support to lobbies. (Note that currently spectators still count toward the maximum of 4 players in a lobby).
• Added a lobby chat system.
• Lobby hosts can now add bots to their lobbies.
• In lobbies (and local matches), players can now set the number of max lives/rounds.

Quickplay

• Quickplay now supports 2v2 and FFA in addition to 1v1.
• Added the ability to duo queue with a friend for 2v2.

UI/UX

• Reworked lobby and quickplay UI to support new 4-player features.
• When selecting a stage, ctrl/start no longer selects a random stage. Instead it selects the currently-focused stage.
• The default random stage pool for new players now excludes stages with hazards.
• Improved button mappings for 8BitDo controllers.

Bugs

• Fixed rare bug where stage and blastzone colliders wouldn't load at start of quickplay match, causing player to fall endlessly.
• Fixed rare desync caused by sticky warp mine.
• Fixed bug where using UFO abduct on an opponent that is already being abducted could cause the game the crash.
• Fixed bug where crossbow's arrow wouldn't trigger the Leech upgrade in Arena/Hybrid modes.
• Fixed bug where crossbow's arrow didn't ignore super armor. (It is supposed to beat super armor since it's a secondary weapon).
• Fixed minor bug where UFO neutral special would appear to continue channeling if the button was held while getting knocked out.

Sorry about the long wait for this update. Should be back to a faster update cadence now :)

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General

• Added support for up to 4 players/bots in local multiplayer. (Online support coming soon).
• Bot-only matches are now supported.
• Added teams. Friendly fire can be set to off, on, or partial (50% damage).

UI/UX

• Redesigned local multiplayer UI.
• Altered Arena/Hybrid mode UI to support 4 players.
• Oleg's rage is now indicated as active via a rage symbol rather than a red aura. (Colored auras are now used to indicate team).
• Shortened many Arena/Hybrid upgrade descriptions.

Bugs

• Fixed bug where Television could teleport instantly upon landing, ignoring typical landing lag.
• Fixed bug where using UFO Barrage (down special) on a frozen opponent would cause the opponent to remain stuck in the ice cube.
• Fixed rare bug where players' air resources could reset without landing.
• Fixed bug where incorrect animation would play for shield breaks.

{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/44893435/520663252128482f1b321693d49d00c1576d7953.png This patch includes some major under-the-hood code optimizations. Not the most exciting in terms of content but it allows me to work on some more exciting features that were previously held back by performance concerns.

General

• Re-wrote core animation, rendering, and collision logic to optimize game update speed.
• These optimizations primarily target rollback (netcode) performance. In high playercount and high rollback test scenarios achieved roughly ~50% speedup.

Art

• Icy stages now have a dedicated ice block tileset. This should make the ice effect much clearer to new players.

Balance

• Note that due to the updated collision system you may notice minor changes to various hitboxes and hurtboxes. In general, collisions should align a little better with the visuals. If anything feels very off please let me know.

UFO

• The UFO flies slightly lower during neutral special (abduct). This enables the opponent to more consistently jump over the UFO as an option for counterplay.

Buckler

• Slightly increased size of hitbox.

Cannon

• Slightly tweaked hitboxes on up, down, and back aerials to better match the explosion visuals.

Bugs

• Rare desyncs caused by the old animation system should theoretically be fixed, though some time will be needed to confirm this.
• Fixed visual glitch where quickplay opponent's UFO wouldn't disappear when it was supposed to between rounds.
• Fixed visual glitch involving Magneto Sphere's Tomato skin with the Blueberry palette equipped, where a white stem would briefly appear after using forward strong.

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0.31.0 - April 25, 2025

This patch includes art improvements, general gameplay quality-of-life changes, and some gear-specific updates.

Art and Animations

• Re-designed several gear pieces. The most significantly impacted are all Suits, Quad Staff, Chakram, Cannon, Wrecking Ball, Harpoon, and Spiked Fist.
• Improved run and jump animations.
• Notable changes to skins: (Quad staff skin) Wooden Cross now has a permanent slight glow. (Oleg skin) Xenoleg's head is now furry. All cannon skins have been updated to show depth.

To those wondering, Wrecking Ball is no longer spikey because it caused some players confusion with its similarity to Spiked Fist. Spiked Fist now looks like the previous design for Wrecking Ball.

UI/UX

• Added difficulty indicators to gear pieces to help guide new players.
• Streamlined all gear descriptions. They all now fit within 2 lines of text.

General Gameplay

• Added checks to prevent accidental fastfall when performing down aerial attacks by pressing down + the attack button simultaneously.
• There is now a brief grace period when attempting to waveland while landing. This should make wavelanding much smoother/easier and reduce accidental rolls/parries when trying to waveland.
• Pressing two attack buttons simultaneously (the same input for a dash attack) while in the air now inputs a neutral air attack.
• Increased walk speed across the board.
• High level bots now have slightly less effective DI (directional influence).

Gear

Copter:

• Added an optional dedicated input for copter hover.
• Added a control option for "auto copter hover" (default on). Turn this off to disable copter hovers from the jump button. Turning this off and using the dedicated copter hover input allows for much more straightforward control of copter's aerial movement.
• You can now double jump directly out of hover.
• Slightly increased ground speed.
• Reduced max hover length from 2.5 seconds to 2 seconds.
• Slightly reduced max hover acceleration.

Harpoon

• Slightly decreased base kb of back throw to compensate for release location in new animation being further behind player.

Quad Staff

• Renamed to "Folding Blade". (Let me know if you have a better name idea based on the new design!)
• Redesigned dash attack. The new dash attack has more range and should be more useful in closing the distance to your opponent.
• Down strong now has a tipper hitbox. Added 1 frame of start lag.
• Tweaked forward strong hitbox so that it doesn't extend as far behind player. Reverse hits should be less common.
• Slightly increased kb scaling of up strong.
• Tweaked forward and up strong animations so that their windups look less similar to each other.

Chakram

• The weak hits of forward and up strong should now link much more consistently to their strong hits. Added +1f start lag to each attack.
• Increased distance covered by dash attack.
• Down strong animation now better reflects range.

Flame Cannon

• Re-designed explosion VFX.
• The strong hitbox of down air now spikes! Added 1 frame of start and end lag.

Pincers

• Slightly increased base kb of up strong.

Wrecking Ball

• Renamed to "Magno-sphere". (Again, let me know if you have a better name idea based on the new design!)
• Slightly increased kb scaling of up strong.

Spiked Fist

• Updated the attack animation so that the spikes pop out while attacking.

Umbral Cloak

• Increased end lag of whiffed counter by 1 frame.

Shine Bracer

• Up special now goes higher. Added 1 frame of start lag.
• Aerial drift now possible sooner at the end of side special.

UFO

• (Minor quality-of-life change): when using gadget input (as opposed to jump input) to release up special UFO projectile, the lockout window (which is there to prevent accidental offstage self-destructs from spamming the input) now only occurs in specific situations such as immediately after hitstun and after performing aerial attacks.

Bugs

• Fixed bug where copter hover would sometimes not work, especially at start of a match.
• Fixed oversight where dedicated short hop and full hop buttons wouldn't trigger ledge jumps.
• Fixed issue where the shield sound effect would plays one frame too early.

0.31.1 - April 27, 2025

(Followup to 0.31.0)

General

• You can now rematch your quickplay opponents unlimited times. To prevent abuse and to encourage matchmaking, after 5 matches in a row you won't earn any more peanuts until you rejoin the matchmaker. (Previously there was a hard limit of 3 matches per quickplay set.)

UI

• Changed gear difficulty indicator icon from yellow star to red sphere.

Gear

Copter

• The manual copter hover input now works out of parasol down special, aerial shine bracer down special, and tumble. This gives it parity with "regular" auto-hovers.

Folding Blade

• Tweaked blade shape of default skin.
• Tweaked color palettes for default skin.
• Forward air: +2 frames end lag (landing lag unaffected)

Pincers

• Up air and down air: +1 frame end lag (landing lag unaffected)

Flame Cannon

• Decreased backward/inner range of the second hit of jab.

Bugs

• Fixed glitch where it was possible to turnaround in the air while using flame cannon's neutral air attack.
• Fixed visual glitch where certain secondary weapons wouldn't disappear while holding the warp mine detonator.
• Fixed bug where shield hits could occur through respawn invulnerability.
• Fixed bug where reflected UFO down special projectiles wouldn't deal damage.

New Secondary Weapons

• Added 3 new secondary weapons: Crossbow, Buckler, and Gauntlet.
• Crossbow: "A one-handed crossbow whose arrows deal massive shield damage. It must be reloaded after each shot".
• Buckler: "A small buckler that can be used to bash opponents, knocking them back. Bashing opponents while they are shielding or countering will inflict additional stun. Chargeable".
• Gauntlet: "A weighty metal glove used to grab, hurl, and punch. Slow but powerful, capable of directly knocking out damaged opponents".
• Each can be unlocked for 1500 peanuts for online use. (For Gear Pack owners they are unlocked automatically).

Balance

Plunger

• Up throw now sends the opponent straight up rather than slightly behind.
• Forward throw now sends more horizontally.
• Back throw now sends slightly more vertically.

In simple terms, these changes are intended to flip plunger's DI (directional influence) counterplay. Previously the "correct" response to being up thrown was to DI behind the opponent, now the proper DI is away from the opponent. The DI "mixup" is now back throw rather than forward throw. This should feel more intuitive. (For an explanation on DI see the advanced tutorials in-game).

Harpoon

• Reduced down throw endlag by 3 frames.
• Reduced up thrown endlag by 2 frames.

At high levels of play, landing harpoon grabs didn't feel rewarding enough considering its slow start and end lag.

Spiked Fist

• Slightly reduced kb scale.
• Landing early while using aerial spiked fist will now cause you to transition to the grounded spiked fist animation. Landing after the aerial hitbox has come out will still cause you to transition to a landing animation, cancelling most of the attack's end lag.

This should make aerial spiked fist feel more consistent for newer players.

UFO

• Increased end lag of abduct by 2 frames.
• CPUs with UFO equipped will now use abduct and barrage slightly less frequently.

Bugs

• Fixed rare bug where stage would fail to be erased after finishing testing out gear in the loadout gallery.

This patch doubles the total number of loadout combinations, from 450 to 900 :) The next patch will focus on some art/animation improvements and some gameplay tweaks. If you have any gameplay concerns or any art-related suggestions please let me know in the comments or in the Discord! Thanks! - Motmot

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UI Overhaul

• Redesigned Loadout menus.
  • Instead of being text-based, Loadout menus now use a comprehensive set of menu icons representing gear pieces and skins.
  • Players can now create Loadout Presets to easily swap between their favorite gear combinations.
  • Flattened menu and sub-menu structure, allowing for loadout edits with fewer menu actions.
  • Cosmetics are now accessible without toggling to a separate menu.
  • In the Loadout Gallery players can now equip unowned skins and palettes in order to preview them in action and in combination with other unowned cosmetics.
• Redesigned Stage Selection menus.
  • Stage selection is now icon-based and flattened. Players no longer need to enter a sub-menu in order to change the stage.
  • Added icons for stage cosmetics, simplifying skin and palette selection.
  • Added the ability to customize one's random stage pool for local and lobby matches. Increased the prominence of the random stage selection option.
• Redesigned Play menu.
• Redesigned top-level Controls menu.
• The Upgrade Gallery (which shows all available upgrades and their effects) can now be viewed directly from the game mode selection menu.
• Re-arranged various other menus. Several intermediate menus have been removed, flattening the game's overall menu structure. This should simplify menu navigation.
• Added a slight zoom effect indicating menu depth. This should help with the feeling of getting lost in sub-menus.

Bugs

• Fixed visual glitch where Copter blades would sometimes disappear for a period of time.
• Fixed visual glitch where UFO's shading would sometimes disappear while using down special.

New Gadget: Shine Bracer

• Added a new gadget. The Shine Bracer is a wrist-worn device that harnesses the power of stars.
• Added Arena new upgrade: Nova Boost - your Shine Bracer's recovery range is greatly increased.
• Added skins for Shine Bracer: Heart, Hexagon, and Skull.

General

• Slightly increased prominence of visual effect of hitting a shield. Added a subtle sound effect for hitting shield.
• Lower level bots (levels 1-4) are now easier. (Previously they were too tough for most totally-new players).

UFO

• Up special: Increased the minimum delay before the UFO can be released by pressing the gadget button. This is to prevent accidentally releasing the UFO immediately after initiating up special, which caused players to self-destruct offstage. Note that you can still immediately release the UFO by pressing the jump button.

Warp Mine

• Aerial Pest upgrade no longer triggers on self-detonates, as this allowed for infinite stalls offstage.

Bugs

• Fixed rare bug where throw knockback could be greatly increased when overlapping with a stationary warp mine.
• Fixed graphical glitch where the dark overlay that appears at the end of story missions and when the game is paused wouldn't fully cover the screen.
• Fixed bug where player could respawn in ice cube if Touch-of-Deathed and frozen in same hit.
• Fixed bug where landing UFO's neutral special with lightning grease active would cause the abducted opponent to fall prematurely.
• Fixed bug where bot's UFO gadget would be visible while the bot itself is hidden while in the loadout menu.
• Fixed rare bug where certain accounts would repeatedly get logged out after completing quickplay matches.

New Gadget: UFO

• Added a new gadget, the UFO. The UFO is a floating companion that can shoot projectiles, abduct your opponent, and pull you upward with a tractor beam. You can also hop inside it and charge at your opponents, dealing damage on contact.
• Added Arena upgrade for UFO: Warp Drive - your UFO and its projectiles are faster.
• Added a skin for UFO: Jello.

General Gameplay

• Removed shield pokes. (Shield poking was the ability to hit shielding opponents by attacking the part of their body not covered by shield).
• Increased damage taken by shields by 10%.
• Reduced number of frames that the ledge remains "occupied" when a player gets off the ledge.

Warp Mine

• When placing a mine on top of an opponent it'll now stick to them. This works through shield. As with regular mines, mines stuck to your opponent can be detonated or teleported to.

Jet Boots

• Slightly reduced up and down special fuel usage.
• Slightly increased fuel recharge rate.

Parasol

• Float hitbox extends slightly further downward. This combined with the universal ledge change makes it more difficult to ledgehog parasol's up special.
• Increased inner hitbox size of side special.

Harpoon

• Increased start lag by 1 frame.
• Back throw: Slightly increased angle. Increased base knockback and reduced knockback scaling. (This should make back throw a bit less effective as a kill option).

Bugs

• Fixed bug where the game could freeze after quitting out of a lobby and joining a new one.
• Fixed an oversight that sometimes allowed players to cancel jab combos into light and dash attacks.

This patch allows players to earn rewards while enjoying their preferred game mode(s), with or without the pressure of human competition. It also aims to promote quickplay usage to increase the likelihood of finding player opponents.

NPC Collecting

• Added optional NPCs (CPUs) to quickplay (explained further below). NPCs vary in playstyle, difficulty, rarity, and appearance. NPC opponents are indicated with "(npc)" next to their name.
• (This means that players can now earn peanuts and progress on daily and weekly tasks even if there aren't any other players to match with).
• There are currently 9 playstyle traits that NPCs can have. Some only appear at higher difficulty levels.
• The difficulty level of NPCs that you match against will increase/decrease as you win/lose matches.
• Higher rarity NPCs start the match with upgrades. Defeating these NPCs will earn you extra peanuts. (Note that rarity is separate from difficulty level).
• NPCs have unique names and appearances. Added several hairstyles and face accessories that NPCs can wear.
• If you like playing against a specific NPC, you can save them and spar against them whenever you want.

Quickplay Matchmaking

• There are now 3 matchmaking modes: Standard, Player-only, and CPU-only.
• Standard is the recommended mode. It will prioritize matching you with other players, but will fall back to CPUs when a quality match cannot be found. (The other two modes are self-explanatory).
• You can now queue for any/all of the 3 game modes (Classic, Arena, and Hybrid), and earn rewards for all 3. You can queue for multiple modes simultaneously, and you will match against opponents who have at least one mode in common with you.
• You can now "snooze" player opponents to avoid matching against them for the remainder of your session.
• Scaled peanut values by 10x. All accounts have had their peanut balance increased by 10x, all prices are 10x, and rewards have been increased 10x, except for the following:
• The peanut reward for match completion is now based on time played, rather than a fixed amount per match. Kudos are now worth 5 peanuts. These tweaks should reduce pressure to only queue for the most "optimal" (i.e. the quickest) mode, and should discourage certain behaviors such as win trading.
• Note that NPC matches will reward slightly fewer peanuts than similar-length PvP matches, to make up for the consistency and speed of the CPU-only queue (and to encourage PvP!).

CPU AI

• There are now 10 difficulty levels, 0 through 9. (Previously there were 7).
• Improved CPU AI's ability to traverse gaps in non-standard stage layouts.
• Made various other minor improvements to CPU AI.

Gameplay

• Removed hidden exploit that allowed players to perform dash attacks directly out of shield and out of jab.

UI/UX

• On/off toggle menu items are now represented with filled/empty boxes.

Bugs

• Fixed bug causing occasional replay descyncs on stages with bumpers.

This patch significantly improves the CPUs. They should now challenge the majority of players and should legitimately help dedicated players improve at the game. Given how difficult it can be to find real people to play against I think this is pretty important! The new AI will also allow me to add some new features I'm pretty excited about... more on that soon. Please leave feedback on the new CPUs via any of the usual channels. Thanks!

CPU AI

• There are now 7 CPU difficulty levels, up from 4. The new difficulty levels are Dummy, Very Easy, Easy, Medium, Hard, Very Hard, and Extreme.
• Significantly improved all aspects of CPU AI. Note that some of these improvements are only relevant at higher difficulty levels.
  • Offense: Improved attack selection, timing, combo routes, and edgeguarding.
  • Defense: Improved ability to defend against opponent attacks and projectiles. Added the ability to escape aerial juggles, use directional influence, and floor tech.
  • Neutral: Higher level bots can bait out attacks, whiff punish, and mix up their approaches.
  • Improved awareness of gear piece-specific strategies and abilities.
  • Advanced techniques: Higher level bots now incorporate dash dancing, wavedashing, wavelanding, shield dropping, fastfalling, and more.
  • Improved awareness of common scenarios such as shield pressure and jab mixups.
  • Improved stage positioning and awareness.
  • Higher level CPUs are generally more resistant to "cheese" strategies, encouraging honest gameplay that will help players improve.

Tutorial / Story Missions

• Life Lessons mission: Tweaked the star requirements and the number of opponent lives (due to the improved CPU AI). Also tweaked the stage's platform placement.
• In platformer missions, players now have 3/1 lives on veteran/expert difficulties (up from 5/3 lives). This is a reversion of the increase from patch 0.20.5.
• Expert difficulty story missions are now locked until the mission is completed on any other difficulty.
• Added shortcuts from the pause menu to restart the current mission at a different difficulty level.
• Targets that require a specific attack type are now red + yellow, to differentiate them from "regular" targets.
• Added other minor QoL changes to the Intro Tutorial and Jim's Message mission.

Bugs

• Fixed rare bug where matchmaker could continue searching for a match while already in a quickplay match.
• Fixed issue where equipping Television would cause the Life Lessons cutscene to play out incorrectly.

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Art

• Added shading to the majority of character sprites. This includes gear pieces, respawn platforms, and avatar faces.
• Redrew and added depth to stage tiles to give them a 3-dimensional appearance.
• Tweaked a few animations, including some Flame Cannon animations and Chakram back aerial attack.
• Re-drew Oleg. His eyes and mouth are now subtley animated during certain actions to give him a more lively feel.

Cosmetics

• Added shield skins. Currently there are two: Beach Ball and Smiley, each with their own set of unlockable color palettes.

Flame Cannon

• Neutral Air: Added 5 frames of aerial endlag. (Its abnormally low aerial endlag was something of an oversight).
• Neutral Air: Increased size of strong hitbox relative to the weak hitbox.

Bugs

• Fixed bug where shield break hitstun was reduced when a player's shield was broken immediately after performing a self-detonate with warp mine.

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Wrecking Ball

• Added a new primary weapon, "Wrecking Ball". The wrecking ball is a mechanized flail attachment propelled by advanced magnet tech. It excels at mid-range combat and can be thrown to finish off opponents from afar.
• Wrecking ball is automatically unlocked online for Gear Pack owners, otherwise it can be unlocked for online use for 250 peanuts.

Cosmetics

• Added 3 wrecking ball skins: Basketball, Tomato, and Eyeball.
• Default wrecking ball skin palettes: Iron (default), Poison-tipped, Bloodied, Gold-coated.
• Basketball palettes: Classic (default), Red, Teal, Lights Out, Showboat, Up-tempo, Intangibles, Inner Dog, World Champs, MVP.
• Tomato palettes: Tomato (default), Tomatillo, Rotten, Sunkissed, Heirloom, Caspain Pink, Blueberry, Grape.
• Eyeball palettes: Blue (default), Brown, Green, Grey, Lavender, Red, Sickly, Alien, Golden.

Arena Mode

• Added Wrecking Ball arena upgrade: "Big Ball" (Your wrecking ball projectile is larger and deals more damage).
• Lightning Grease: there is now has a minimum delay between applications of jolt. This prevents multi-hit moves from applying multiple stacks of jolt.

UX/UI

• Added "Stronger Opponents" setting. Turning this setting on will remove the skill cap for quickplay matchmaking for your account, allowing you to match with stronger opponents.
• The "Find New Opponent" option after a quickplay match now allows you to change your loadout before queueing for your next match.

Bugs

• Fixed an issue where players could be locked out from grabbing the ledge for too long after being hit by a weak attack.
• Fixed bug where a thrown Warp Mine could permanently freeze mid-air if the mine's owner was hit or KO'd mid-teleport.
• Fixed visual glitch where quad staff skin layers were misaligned.
• Fixed bug where pressing the platform drop button while not on a platform mid-turn could cause your character to temporarily get stuck in place.
• Fixed issue where the Advanced Tutorial demonstration of floor teching wasn't working.

This patch aims to increase game speed and pacing by increasing aerial mobility, increasing attack speed, and reducing knockback scaling on many attacks to make them more usable as setup tools for combos and knockouts. Shoutouts to the folks in the Discord who helped test these changes.

General Gameplay

• Significantly increased fast fall speeds.
• Increased max air speed and acceleration.
• Suits now gain more speed from dash attacking.
• Buffering an air dodge with no direction input will now cause you to wavedash down instead of airdodging in place.

UX/UI:

• Increased volume of "match found" sound effect.
• Escape now must be held for 2 seconds to exit fullscreen. This allows keyboard users to use esc as back button without accidentally exiting full screen.
• You can now bind 3 buttons/keys to a single input, up from 2.
• Keyboard users can now bind a key to use as a dedicated start button, as an alternative to the default keys.

Gear Pieces

Quad Staff

• Slightly reduced length of bladed section of staff. This means most attacks had their range slightly reduced (unless otherwise specified).
• Jab: -1f start lag.
• Up tilt: -1f active frames, -1f end lag. Reduced knockback scaling on strong hitbox.
• Forward tilt: -1f start lag, -1f end lag.
• Down tilt: -1f end lag. Increased size of inner hitbox.
• Dash attack: -1f start lag, -3f end lag. Range unaffected.
• Up strong: -1f start lag, -1f end lag.
• Forward strong: -4f end lag.
• Down strong: -1f start lag, -1f end lag.
• Neutral air: -1f end lag, -1f landing lag. Range unaffected.
• Up air: -2f active frames, -2f end lag.
• Forward air: -1f start lag. Range minimally affected.
• Down air: -1f start lag, -1f end lag. Reduced knockback scaling.
• Back air: -1f active frames, -2f end lag. Reduced knockback scaling on tip hitbox.

Flame Cannon

• Up tilt: -1f start lag, -1f active frames, -1f end lag. Reduced knockback scaling.
• Forward tilt: -1f start lag, -2f end lag.
• Down tilt: -1f start lag, -1f active frames, -2f end lag.
• Dash attack: -1f start lag, -1f end lag.
• Up strong: -2f start lag, -1f end lag. Slightly reduced hitbox size.
• Forward strong: -2f start lag, -2f end lag. Slightly reduced hitbox size.
• Down strong: -1f start lag, -2f between active frames.
• Neutral air: -2f start lag.
• Up air: -1f start lag.
• Forward air: -1f start lag, -1f end lag. Reduced knockback scaling of final hit.
• Down air: -1f start lag, -1f landing lag.
• Back air: -1f start lag.

Chakram

• Up tilt: -1f start lag, -1f active frames, -1f end lag. Reduced knockback scaling.
• Forward tilt: -2f start lag, -3f end lag.
• Down tilt: -2f active frames, -2f end lag. Reduced knockback scaling and increased knockback angle.
• Dash attack: -1f start lag, -3f end lag.
• Up strong: -3f active frames, -4f end lag.
• Forward strong: -3f active frames, -3f end lag.
• Down strong: -2f between active frames. Reduced damage from 13 to 12.
• Neutral air: -2f start lag, -1f active frames, -2f end lag. Slightly reduced range.
• Up air: -1f start lag, -1f landing lag.
• Forward air: -2f start lag, -1f end lag.
• Down air: -1f start lag, -1f end lag, -1f landing lag. Reduced range.
• Back air: -1f active frames, -1f end lag, -1f landing lag. Reduced range.

Pincers

• Up tilt: -1f start lag, -1f active frames, -2f end lag. Reduced knockback scaling.
• Forward tilt: -1f start lag, -2f active frames, -2f end lag.
• Down tilt: -1f start lag, -1f end lag. Reduced knockback scaling.
• Dash attack: -1f start lag, -1f end lag.
• Up strong: -2f start lag, -1f end lag.
• Forward strong: -2f start lag, -3f end lag.
• Down strong: -1f start lag, -1f end lag
• Neutral air: -1f active frames, -2f end lag.
• Up air: -1f start lag, -1f landing lag.
• Forward air: -1f start lag, -1f landing lag.
• Down air: -1f start lag, -1f landing lag. Reduced knockback scaling.
• Back air: -1f start lag, -1f landing lag.

Warp mine

• Slightly reduced base knockback of explosion and reduced damage from 12 -> 10.
• Endlag of self detonate now scales with percent.
• Reduced start lag of placing mine (neutral special) by 1f. Reduced end lag of strong mine toss by 1f.
• Your mine now freezes in place when you initiate a teleport, making it more consistent to use tosses (especially strong tosses) for recovery.

Parasol

• Reduced dive damage from 10 -> 8.

Jet boots

• Reduced spin attack start lag by 2f, reduced end lag by 1f.

Suits

• Oleg, Skelebob, Television: Slightly increased ground speed.
• Oleg: Slightly decreased weight (knockback resistance).
• Space suit: Slightly increased gravity and reduced jump height. Decreased shield size.
• TV: Increased shield size.
• Skelebob: Decreased instakill threshold by ~5%.
• Cloak: Added +2f end lag on whiffed counters, reduced length of active counter hitbox by 1f.

Secondaries

• Reduced start lag of all secondaries by 1f.
• Plunger: Reduced knockback scaling on up throw and forward throw.
• Spiked fist: reduced end lag by 1f. Reduced knockback scaling.
• Harpoon: Reduced end lag on whiff by 5f. Increased knockback scaling and decreased angles of down throw and back throw (this makes them more powerful kill throws). Reduced knockback scaling of up throw.

Controls

• Added support for playing with a mouse.
• Added a brief controls onboarding questionnaire to help set up new players with a default control layout that fits their playstyle.
• Changed the default keyboard controls based on player feedback. Note that this may mess up your existing keyboard binds and profiles. Please ensure they are correct and re-save any profiles. for the inconvenience!

UI/UX

• Redesigned loadout menus to be less overwhelming.
• Altered UI to be easier to navigate with mouse.
• Secondary menu selection (used to change color palettes) is now bound to /grab instead of /jump.
• To reduce new player confusion, Enter (in addition to Space) can now be used to select menu items. Control now acts as a "start" button for keyboard users.
• Replaced various floating UI prompts with new menu items to reduce clutter.

Gameplay

• When tap jump is on it is now possible to perform upward light and strong attacks out of jump squat.
• Added a 2-frame leniency window for directional light and strong attacks in cases where the direction is pressed after the attack input.
• It is now possible to wall jump with tap jump.
• Tap-jumped air jumps are now delayed by 3 frames to allow players to perform upward aerial attacks without jumping.

These changes should make tap jump much more usable. It should now be much easier to perform upward light, strong, aerial, and special (gadget) attacks without accidentally jumping.

Tutorial

• Tweaked tutorial to better accommodate tap jump users.

Bugs

• Fixed bug where game would crash when joining a quickplay match directly from watching a replay.
• Fixed bug where progress could not be made in the Directional Influence tutorial.

I'm aware of a bug that sometimes causes replays of online matches to desync. Still looking into this. Note that several other minor patches were released over the past couple weeks. I don't typically post patch notes for those here as Steam announcements as I don't want to spam people who are following this game, but anything major I'll make sure to post here and you can read the full patch notes in-game!

Steam Early Access

• Counterpick Labs is now out (for free) on Steam Early Access! The web and Steam versions of the game remain equivalent, with cross-play, cross-progression, and account linking.
• The banana stand is now open on Steam and has been re-opened on web. Thanks for your support!

Story Missions

• Added a new single player mode: Story Missions. Learn about Jim and his fellow interns in the first three missions of Season 1: Intern Drama. New Story Missions will be released periodically.
• As with all offline modes, you can play Story Missions while queueing for quickplay.

Dash Attacks

• Added dash attacks for all primary weapons.
• With auto dash attack turned on, input a dash attack by pressing light attack while running. You can disable auto dash attacks in the controls menu.
• You can also dash attack by pressing any two attack buttons (light attack, strong attack, grab) simultaneously.

UI/UX

• Added a Roadmap under Main Menu > Extras.
• Reorganized menu structure to hopefully be less overwhelming for new players.
• In modes where players have infinite lives, added a new infinite hearts icon (previously 3 hearts were shown).
• Added a "quit" button to main menu for Steam version.

General Gameplay

• Slightly increased overall knockback. Knockback from most attacks is now slightly higher at the start of the knockback trajectory. This is intended to give hits more impact and make knockback feel less floaty.
• Slightly to moderately increased base knockback of most tilt attacks (directional light attacks).

Balance

Televisioin

• Instant transmission (teleport) no longer inflicts self damage.

Space Suit

• Slightly increased fall speed.

Skelebob

• Slightly increased fall speed and ground speed.
• (Visual only) Made Skelebob shorter.
• Slightly reduced jump height.

Oleg

• Slightly increased fall speed.

Warp mine

• Self-detonate no longer sends you into knockdown/tumble and has set endlag regardless of percent. Distance knocked back still scales with percent.

Chakram

• Increased base knockback of down light, forward light (close hitbox only) and forward air (close hitbox only).
• Forward light: Reduced endlag by 3f.
• Up air: slightly decreased knockback scaling.

Cannon

• Increased base knockback of forward light.
• Forward and up strong: Reduced start and end lag by 1f, and slightly decreased size of uncharged hurtbox.
• Down strong: Reduced start lag by 1f.
• Up air: Reduced start lag by 1f.
• Forward air: First and second hitboxes are lower. This is intended to reduce instances of whiffing slightly over your opponent's head.

Pincers

• Increased base knock back of forward light, down light, up light, and forward air.
• Forward strong: Reduced end lag by 2f.

Quad Staff

• Increased base knockback of up light, forward light, down light.
• Up light: Slightly reduced range and reduced end lag by 3 frames.
• Forward strong: Increased endlag by 2 frames.

Performance

• Optimized rendering of various graphical elements. This should hopefully address rare crashes experienced by a few individuals.

Arena Upgrades

• Removed "Shield Dmg Up", "Reaper" (heal on KO), and "Regenerate" (heal while shielding) from the upgrade pool.
• These upgrades consistently felt unimpactful.

Bugs

• Fixed bug where it was impossible to interrupt Jet Boot hover with aerial Spiked Fist.
• Fixed glitch where attempting to input a shield drop with a gadget input while not on a platform would cause you to momentarily drop your shield.
• Freezing Grease: fixed glitch where oleg wouldn't get unfrozen properly if frozen while charging a strong attack with super armor.
• Fixed UI bug where arrows were sometimes difficult to click on horizontal value selector menu items.

I planned to have a new gear piece and new cosmetics ready for this patch, but unfortunately adding the new single player mode took much longer than anticipated. I'll work on this next! And now that the structure's in place, future missions will be easier to add. Thanks for you patience.

Hi folks! I forgot to post these one-by-one but here some highlights from updates to the demo I've made over the past ~week. Please note that I'll now be focusing on content + final Steam integration work for the upcoming Early Access launch on July 12th, so there won't be any significant updates to the demo until then. Account Linking

• Account linking between Steam and web is now available! Navigate to the Settings menu in-game to get started.
• If it wasn't clear to anyone, Steam demo progress (and web progress, if you link your accounts) will carry over to the Early Access launch.

UX/UI

• Added pausing to offline modes (bot matches and local multiplayer matches). From the pause menu you can resume, exit, and restart your match.
• When a player exits a private lobby match, the lobby will no longer automatically disband. Instead, both players will be sent back to the loadout screen.
• Simplified the post-quickplay menu. This is intended to reduce incidences of players accidentally searching for a new opponent when they intended to rematch.
• The color swatches in the loadout menu are now clickable, and will take you directly to the corresponding color palette menu.

Tutorial

• The shield section of the tutorial is now easier.
• Added back the "Quick Start" tutorial module.

Controllers

• Added support for PowerA Switch Pro-style wired controllers. (If you have a third-party controller that doesn't work properly, please reach out!)
• Increased the default deadzone value for the right control stick to accommodate controllers with high default resting values.

Hi folks! The demo for Counterpick Labs is now available! Grab a friend to play online in a private lobby, or try sparring against a bot :) Note that the full game will be also be free-to-play. The goal of this demo is to gather feedback and give players a taste of what's to come. Also - remember to add Counterpick Labs to your wishlist to be notified on the game's full release!