HiveBreak news & patch notes

My biggest quality-of-life pass yet: start every run with a shop and a plan, a fully reworked consumable control scheme, and a wave of automation that handles the busywork so you can focus on the killing.

⭐ Headliners

• Pre-Wave Prep Phase. Runs now open into a shop intermission before wave 1. Spend a difficulty-scaled starting balance to build a base and buy your first gun before a single zombie shows up, then ready up when you're set. Wave-1 guns are properly unlocked, and Play Again re-enters the same prep.
• Consumables, reworked. Grenades are now Ctrl, healing is Space — tap for the smart default (best grenade at your cursor / best heal), hold to open a wheel and pick manually. Readying up moved to Enter.
• Live ability demos in the lobby. Hover an ability while picking and a tiny in-engine clip plays it out: Phase Jump blinking clear of a dog pack, Repulse Nova swatting acid, Bomb Spec wiping a line of walkers. Know before you commit.

🔫 Combat & Weapons

• Pump shotgun overhaul. ~2x fire rate, +50% pellet range, and a rebuilt 3-layer blast you feel in the chest. The auto & sawn-off inherit the new boom.
• Hands-free ammo. Empty mags auto-reload; partial reloads top off instead of dumping loaded rounds; and every gun fully reloads instantly the moment a wave clears — all still drawn from your real armory reserve.

🎯 Controls & Feel

• Quick-tap heal/throw fires the smart pick with no wheel flash, each with a bespoke confirmation sound.
• Grenade blast preview snaps to your cursor the instant you press Ctrl — no more aiming blind.
• Fixed: pressing Shift inside a shop/armory/perk/turret menu no longer casts your special into the arena or burns its cooldown.

🏰 Base & Turret Command

• Click a turret between waves to open its command menu — hover shows a footprint highlight, coverage ring, and a "⚙ Tune" label.
• Rich MAX-OUT preview. Hovering a turret's max-out button shows a before-to-after stat breakdown and total cost — and now works even when you can't afford it, so you know what you're saving toward.
• Structure Auto-Repair (opt-in): damaged defenses fix themselves at wave end, cost split across the team (nothing happens if you can't afford it).
• "Repair & ready up" prompt when defenses are hurt and affordable — one-click patch-and-go, never a hard block.
• Brand action cursors: a cyan cog for configure, a red trash can for demolish — now bigger and clearly readable.

💰 Economy & Progression

• Difficulty-scaled starting cash: Normal $1250 · Hard $800 · Nightmare $500.
• Auto-heal to full on wave clear for survivors — no more "medkit tax" for chip damage between rounds.
• Perk-spend nudge: ready up with 2+ unspent skill points and the game offers to open the perks menu first.

⚙️ Settings & Customization

• Reticle customizer (Settings ▸ Display): pick crosshair style, colour, and size with a live preview.
• New lobby toggles: Death Penalty and Structure Auto-Repair replace the old Purchases / Friendly-Fire switches.

📣 Menu & Polish

• Announcements board now tracks what you've read (unread badges) and only pops open when there's something new — and no longer vanishes after a game.
• Cleaner theme-matched focus ring on dialog buttons.

This patch finally fixes the strange lag that presented itself to the joiners in later waves of the game. Additional changes - Added an announcements section on the main page - Scale the aiming reticle alongside UI scaling (improving cursor visibility)

Hivebreak — What's New Since 1.0

A stability and polish pass focused on keeping the late game smooth when the screen is packed with enemies and defenses.

⚡ Performance & Smoothness

• Improved P2P input sync — Fixed a bug where friends connected to you would feel a delay in their inputs getting sent to the server is now fixed. It should feel smoother as a joiner now.
• Smoother late-game sieges — the wall-breaking enemies no longer re-scan the entire battlefield every tick to pick their target. In big waves with lots of turrets and walls up, the server does far less redundant work, so the action stays fluid when it used to bog down.
• Less rubber-banding near your base — your local movement now matches the server exactly around damaged structures. A wall clinging to its last sliver of health is no longer mistaken for passable wreckage, so you won't get snapped back after walking into something that "looked" broken.
• Cleaner movement through rubble — destroyed structures no longer falsely block your predicted movement, killing a source of stutter and mis-prediction when pushing through a wrecked defensive line.

🐝 Smarter Enemies

• Burrowers dig straight under your walls — instead of awkwardly tunneling around your defenses, they now beeline for their target and dive under the shell the moment a wall gets in the way.
• Gnawers hunt your turrets — they route around walls to find an opening and go for your turrets first, only chewing through a wall as a last resort when your defenses are fully boxed in.
• Late-game breach assault — from the deep waves, the Hive sends its wall-breakers in first to crack your fortress open, then floods the fast rushers in behind them. Turtling all game no longer makes you a spectator.
• Anti-turtle waves play fair — the Hive's pressure logic no longer gives up on a well-defended, stationary fortress.

🎛️ Quality of Life

• Sell whole stacks — shift-click a tile in the armory to sell the entire stack at once.
• Consumable wheel fixed — opening the quick-wheel no longer accidentally fires your weapon.
• Tidier consumable bar — the quickbar now always stays on a single row.
• Accurate damage recap — the end-of-run breakdown tooltips now track your cursor correctly at every UI scale.

👹 Visual Polish

• Removed a harsh white flash that washed over Necromancers when they cast.
• Cleaned up the Necrarch boss's face for a sharper, more menacing look.

🖥️ Desktop

• The free Playtest now keeps its own separate save data, so it no longer bleeds settings and progress into the full game.