Beastieball News

This is the 2nd Milestone Update out of 10 planned.

For this update, we focused on wrapping up animation on Beasties found in Amberstone. We also brought a new animator onto the team to help us work through the mountain of work a bit faster - please welcome Manuela Escolar Gonzalez to the team! :)


• Wormask: Animation COMPLETE!
  
• Plumask: Animation COMPLETE!
  
• Supassum: Animation COMPLETE!
  
• Supilero: Animation COMPLETE! *With some minor design modifications
• Woollie: Animation COMPLETE!
  
• Fetcham: Animation COMPLETE!
  
• Servace: Animation COMPLETE!
  
• Garood: Animation COMPLETE!
  
• Platypulse: Animation COMPLETE!
  
• Kaleidarn: Animation COMPLETE!
  
  
  The number of Beasties marked as complete has gone from 27 to 37.
  

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

• RANK DEFENSE MODE
  • This new challenge mode is unlocked for every player upon completing the main story
    
  • Other players' teams will visit your hometown Beastieball stadium and challenge you every day! Defeat them for glory and for SP!
    
  • Build your own Ranked Team, design their strategy, and enjoy as they challenge other players on their own. You'll passively earn SP anytime they score a win!
    
  
• NEW STORY CONTENT
  • You can now max out your hearts with Riven.
  • A new recurring character has been added: Riley's Dad. He's located in Rutile (along with the cafe/store family business he runs) and has various dialogue/interactions throughout the story.
    
• Environmental improvements
  • Additional environmental details have been added around Rutile and Quartz Canyon
  
• Approx. 50 new unlockable Team Titles added!
  • After you've unlocked bonus Team Titles from post-game challenges, a counter of your total unlocked Team Titles will appear in the Team Title menu
    
• MUSIC UPDATES
  
  [previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
  
  • NEW TRACKS: VS. Rival & VS. Reese
    • These track have been added for certain story encounters
      
    • Players who have already passed their point the story will have the new songs available in Music Setup.
  • The OST is now available on Steam!
  • The new tracks have also been added to the OST on Bandcamp!
  
  
  
  📰 Other News
  BIGMOON BASH: CATS vs DOGS vs BIRDS!
  A Bigmoon Bash is coming next weekend! This one is a contest between cats, dogs and birds. Jump into the game next weekend and challenge coaches around the world to help your favorite Beastie win the Bash!

Another BIGMOON BASH is beginning soon in Beastieball! During Bigmoon Bashes, coaches can challenge each other in open matchmaking for a limited time. During the event you'll have a Bash Rank, which will improve based on your performance. After it's over, you'll receive in-game rewards based on your participation, such as Social Battery and Sports Points.

When: Friday, September 19 @ 4PM PST to Sunday, September 21 @ 4PM PST (equivalent to September 20, 2025 00:00 UTC to September 22, 2025 00:00 UTC) Guild Beasties: Servitt (+Servace), Woollie (+Fetcham), and Rookee (+Garood)!

This Bash will be a contest between Cats (Servace), Dogs (Fetcham) and Birds (Garood)! To compete in the Bash, coaches must have exactly one of these Beasties on their team. Your games will count towards that team's score, and after the Bash a winning Beastie will be crowned! If you aren't confident in your own Beastie team, you can use a randomly generated one instead - just go to Team Setup and set "Random Team" as your current team.

Players of all skill level are invited! All you need to do to participate is to play the game on that day and join the Bash on SportNet! SportNet is typically unlocked within the first 2 hours of your adventure, after beating your first Ranked boss.
[h3]Official Game Rules:[/h3]

• First to 2 Points wins
  
• Standard time limit on move selection
  
• No Undos allowed
  
• No duplicate Beastie species allowed
  
• Relationship Combos are disabled
  
• All Beasties are set to Level 50
  

[h3]Note: Balance Changes are imminent![/h3]
As of this posting, we have experimental balance changes live and available for testing in the game's experimental branch on PC. These changes will migrate to the game's main build as part of our next major Milestone Update on Saturday, September 13 at roughly 8AM PST. Aside from balance changes, that update will include a bunch of new animation and content, so please look forward to it!

If you're dreaming up a new team for this Bash, I recommend you consider the upcoming changes! They are mostly small tweaks and anything you build now will likely work just as well in the next patch, but a few things are changing you may want to take into account, including alterations to common plays such as Dig and modifications to universal game mechanics, most notably Blocking.

% = Changed in patch on 09/05 @ = Changed in patch on 09/01 # = Changed in patch on 08/28 & = Changed in patch on 08/27 ^ = Changed in patch on 08/26 * = Changed in quick patch on the same day

*This experimental update is currently built using a new version of our game engine, GameMaker. This engine update has allowed us to greatly optimize the game's texture usage, meaning a big boost to framerate AND a big reduction in memory usage, meaning fewer unexpected crashes during long sessions. This engine update also means anything in the game may be ever-so-slightly different in ways we can't anticipate, so we'll be looking for bug reports related to this!

After our pause on balance updates, the next one is (finally?!) on its way! By allowing for more time between changes, we were able to collect a lot more data and see more clearly how different Beasties stacked up; it also helped us to identify more subtle underlying problems that only became clear after sifting through the noise.

We welcome your thoughts, your feedback, and your playtesting! I encourage dedicated coaches to join us in our Discord community to discuss these changes live with other players. Please note these changes are currently live on PC only for now.

This past weekend there was a BIGMOON BASH, where Beasties got fired up to play and coaches around the world could challenge each other for a limited time!

During this Bash we banned the Beasties who got the most community complaints, resulting in a perfectly fair and balanced bash beloved by everyone. Let's see who fared the best in this new mini-meta!

[h2]👑 Top-Scoring Players[/h2]

1. Satoros (The Diamond Ducks) | Bash Score: 3120
2. Bolimar (The Crimson Angels) | Bash Score: 3052
3. Parranah Phi (The Cosmic Friends) | Bash Score: 3036
4. Arc Tech (The Arcane Machines) | Bash Score: 3024
5. Kaz (The Raging Blazes) | Bash Score: 2996
6. Zonk (The Exploding Enigmas) | Bash Score: 2972
7. Darc Tech (The Arcane Robots) | Bash Score: 2892
8. Rosery (The Roaring Knights) | Bash Score: 2860
9. Boolerex (The Big Flowers) | Bash Score: 2832
10. Charge (The Crimson Kings) | Bash Score: 2828
11. Theta (The Cosmic Cryptids) | Bash Score: 2796
12. Sabrewoif (The Diamond Dinosaurs) | Bash Score: 2744
13. Kyyg (The Wacky Worms) | Bash Score: 2736
14. Stardust (The Starbound Dinosaurs) | Bash Score: 2728
15. HP (The Jolly Jokers) | Bash Score: 2684
16. Ket (The Stellar Scoundrels) | Bash Score: 2680
17. Byrd (The Garbage Guardians) | Bash Score: 2644
18. Pix (The Galaxy Drums) | Bash Score: 2632
19. Dino (The Wrong Anglers) | Bash Score: 2608
20. Astra (The Tiny Girls) | Bash Score: 2568
21. Kaybee (The Shining Wings) | Bash Score: 2556

Congratulations to the top-scoring players!

The median Bash Score this time was 1888.

[h2]📊 Beastie Usage Stats![/h2]
As has become tradition, we've collected a ton of data on Beastie usage during this event and we're happy to share that data with you for further investigation! This time it's extra fun to see which Beasties got to shine while some of the biggest public enemies were in jail.
[h3]> Check out the STATS here![/h3]

Bandicraft and Bongus being near the top of usage is par for the course - but we didn't expect to see such a meteoric rise for off-brand Beasties like Zefyre and Kaleidarn! Since the bans this Bash included staple spirit attackers Hopra and Surgus, maybe more players felt forced to use Zefyre as their "Surgus at home." Zefyre appeared even more often in the top 50% of players' teams, so it must have been an effective substitution!

[h2]🔧 Incoming Balance Changes![/h2]
Hours from now, we'll be uploading a new PC build to the experimental branch alongside a pretty huge balance patch to test out. We're eagerly looking forward to your feedback on our new changes and ideas. We think we might be able to make it all work without deleting any Beasties!

[h2]🙇 Thank you!!![/h2]

Another BIGMOON BASH is beginning soon in Beastieball! During Bigmoon Bashes, coaches can challenge each other in open matchmaking for a limited time. During the event you'll have a Bash Rank, which will improve based on your performance. After it's over, you'll receive in-game rewards based on your participation, such as Social Battery and Sports Points.

When: August 23, 2025 00:00 UTC to August 25, 2025 00:00 UTC (equivalent to Friday, August 22 @ 4PM PST to Sunday, August 24 @ 4PM PST) BANNED Beasties: Riplash, Maraptor, Albrax, Hopra and Surgus!

Players of all skill level are invited! All you need to do to participate is to play the game on that day and join the Bash on SportNet! SportNet is typically unlocked within the first 2 hours of your adventure, after beating your first Ranked boss. And if you aren't confident in your own Beastie team, you can use a randomly generated one instead - just go to Team Setup and set "Random Team" as your current team.

[h3]Official Game Rules:[/h3]

• First to 2 Points wins
  
• Standard time limit on move selection
  
• No Undos allowed
  
• No duplicate Beastie species allowed
  
• Relationship Combos are disabled
  
• All Beasties are set to Level 50
  

[h3]Why are THESE Beasties in jail?[/h3]
During the previous Bash, we ran a bit of a science experiment. We captured the public discussion we could find in Beastieball-focused spaces over the course of the Bash and then ran an algorithm on it to count how many messages were sent about each Beastie specie. This also accounted for nicknames and lingo, like saying "shark" or "sharp" to refer to Riplash. Here are the results of that!

As you can see, we've simply jailed the 5 most-discussed Beasties. (Something fun to note: although fewer individual messages were sent that mentioned Albrax, the total wordcount of those messages was the highest of the bunch by far. Albrax seems to draw more long-form essay-like complaints than other Beasties!) 🤓

With this rule in effect, we're confident there will be no more complaints about PvP balance in Beastieball. We look forward to the calm discussion that is sure to emerge from this upcoming, perfectly calibrated Bigmoon Bash.

[h3]I still have complaints about balance![/h3]
I don't see how that's possible, but if it makes you feel any better, we're well underway on a large balance patch which will be coming to the game soon! After this Bash is over, we'll begin testing the new changes in the Experimental branch, so please look forward to that update.