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Turnbound X Gambit Digital - Co-Publishing

A new chapter begins for Turnbound
[p][/p][p]Hey Spirits,[/p][p]We wanted to share a quick update with you all and then hand the mic back to the community.[/p][p][/p][h2]Co-publishing partnership[/h2][p]We’re excited to officially say it: Gambit Digital is now co-publishing Turnbound with us.
They’ll be supporting the game as we head into Early Access on January 22, and helping us keep Turnbound growing long-term alongside all of you.[/p][p][/p][h2]About Gambit Digital[/h2][p]Gambit Digital is a publisher focused on supporting innovative, community-driven games, working closely with developers to bring distinctive experiences to players worldwide.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][h2]Duels Mode is live, now it’s your turn[/h2][p]Duels Mode is now fully live for everyone, and we’re already loving the builds and challenges popping up.[/p][p]If you haven’t tried it yet:[/p]
  • [p]Save one of your builds[/p]
  • [p]Share your code[/p]
  • [p]And challenge a friend (or a total stranger)
    [/p]
[p][/p][p]We’d love to see what you’re coming up with! Share your build codes, post screenshots of your boards and tell us which builds you’re proud of (or which ones completely broke your brain)[/p][p]Drop them here, on Discord, or wherever you hang out, we’re watching and taking notes![/p][p]
[/p][h2]Early Access is the next step[/h2][p]Early Access launches January 22, and Duels is just the beginning. More systems, progression, content, and experiments are coming as we continue building the game together.[/p][p]Thanks for playing, testing, breaking builds, and sharing feedback with us.
Follow us here to stay updated:[/p][p]May your builds be strong,[/p][p]The 1TK Team and Gambit Digital![/p][p]
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Duels Mode is live : challenge your friends’ builds!

Duels Mode is live, challenge your friends' builds!
[p][/p][p]Hello Spirits,[/p][p]Today’s update brings one of the most requested features to Turnbound: Duels Mode is officially live![/p][p]Duels let you challenge a specific build by entering a simple code.[/p][p]You can now:[/p]
  • [p]Share your own builds with a unique code[/p]
  • [p]Test yourself against a friend’s strategy[/p]
  • [p]Compete directly instead of battling spirits asynchronously[/p]
  • [p]Try curated creator builds added for this update![/p]
[p]It’s fast, chaotic, strategic and the perfect way to prove once and for all whose tile brain actually reigns supreme.[/p][p][/p][p][/p]
A festive holiday skin
[p]To wrap up the year, we’re adding a cozy holiday skin filled with warm lights, sparkles and winter charm.[/p][p]A little seasonal cheer… inside our spooky little board game world.[/p][p][/p][p][/p]
Onto the patch notes:
[p]Extra:[/p]
  • [p]Controller support with shortcuts on the button which support it[/p]
  • [p]Display poison damage in tooltips and floating texts in battle[/p]
[p]Balance changes:[/p]
  • [p]Mad Hatter's Hat damage increased to 2-3-5[/p]
  • [p]Haunted Harpoon Ammo increased from 1 to 2[/p]
  • [p]Bloodlust Mixture Uses on Level 2 and 3 increased from1 to 2[/p]
  • [p]Kinetic Energy Suit Health increased from 6 to 7[/p]
  • [p]Resonance Rifle Ammo increased from 1 to 2 on all levels[/p]
  • [p]Phantom Mask Confusion increased from 2 to 3[/p]
  • [p]Vulture 9000 bonuses decreased from 3-6-12 to 3-5-8[/p]
  • [p]Finesse Bracers bonuses decreased from 2-4-8 to 2-3-5[/p]
  • [p]Mirror Mirror Thorns bonus increased from 2-4-8 to 3-5-8[/p]
  • [p]Explosive Pinata now deals less damage to your own Tiles[/p]
  • [p]Wukong Dragon Ultimate damage increased from 10 to 15 and 5 to 7[/p]
  • [p]Queens Cards bonuses decreased from 2-3-5- to 1-2-3[/p]
  • [p]Wukong Out of Thin Hair first use price increased from 0 to 2 [/p]
[p]Bugs:[/p]
  • [p]Pocket Watch description is now correct[/p]
[p][/p]
Early Access is coming next -January 22
[p]Today’s update sets the stage for the next milestone: Early access - and will be our last major update until then.
[/p][p]Turnbound enters Early Access on 22 January 2026. Early Access will include:[/p]
  • [p]New character and new core mechanics[/p]
  • [p]20+ new tiles, new trinkets & abilities[/p]
  • [p]Leaderboards and Steam achievements[/p]
  • [p]A deeper progression system[/p]
  • [p]A new challenge system & new cosmetics[/p]
  • [p]And more throughout 2026[/p]
[p]More details coming soon… but for now, we hope you enjoy Duels Mode and the rest of today’s update![/p][p][/p][p][/p]
Wishlist to join us at launch
[p]If you haven’t already, a wishlist and follow helps us enormously as a small indie team.[/p][p]Thank you as always for your support! Follow us here to stay updated:[/p][p]Stay spooky,[/p][p]The 1TK Team[/p]

Explain the Build: FatMouse

[p]Hello spirits, new and old! We have another Explain The Build article coming fresh off the press, ready for you all! But, what is “Explain The Build”? You may be asking yourself. It's a series of articles showcasing combinations and interactions of different tiles you can achieve or inspire in your next run![/p][p][/p][h3]Prefer to watch?[/h3][p]Visit our YouTube channel, where we have put together a quick video with Donald explaining his FatMouse build.[/p][previewyoutube][/previewyoutube][p]This build revolves around destroyed effects and consumables, creating a large HP mouse to protect our board.[/p][p] [/p][p][/p][p]So, the first, and one of the most essential accessories on our board is the harbinger Toy. This gives taunts to adjacent tiles with destroyed effects, one of which, in this case, is the pearlcracker, which is what we will be using to enable the creation of our mouse with a large HP pool.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]Pearlcracker, on death, deals one damage to all tiles on both our own and our opponents' board, which at a glance, is not a lot; however, that is precisely why we are using it, because the mouse only has 2 health, which means when it takes the one damage from the pearlcracker, its hp is halved.[/p][p][/p][p]Why is that important, though? Well, most consumables trigger when an adjacent tile has its HP reduced to half health, meaning that once the mouse gets hit by the pearlcracker, all of the consumables we have lined up next to it get triggered and create the powerhouse mouse tank. ( a set of three words i never expected to say!)[/p][p][/p][p]Once we have this tanky mouse, not only does it have some reflect that will weaken or destroy those that attack it, but it will give time for our weapons and hero to destroy our opponent.[/p][p][/p][p]One thing to note, though, is that there are ways for players to remove taunt from opponent tiles, or they may actually get powered up through the damage taken from our Pearlcracker.[/p][p][/p][p]Finally, there are ways to make this build stronger by adding more consumables, using clever accessories, or utilising trinkets such as double delight, which triggers consumables an additional time.[/p][p][/p][p][/p][p]Do you have any builds or combinations that you have found to be either a lot of fun or powerful as you play?[/p][p][/p][h2]That’s all for now[/h2][p]Thank you again for following us on this journey so far! Be sure to follow and join our social channels for more info:[/p][p]Stay spooky and safe[/p][p]The 1TK team.[/p][p][/p]

Duels Mode and seasonal content arrive December 15

[p][/p]
Turnbound enters Early Access on January 22 and Duels Mode arrives next week
[p][/p][p]Hello Spirits,[/p][p]Women-Led Games starts today, and as a women-led team, we’re incredibly proud to be part of this year’s celebration with a new trailer![/p][p][/p][previewyoutube][/previewyoutube][p][/p][p]To mark the event, we’re excited to share what’s coming soon to Turnbound![/p][p][/p]
Duels Mode arrives December 15
[p][/p][p]One of our most requested features is almost here![/p][p]Duels let you challenge specific players directly instead of battling spirits asynchronously.[/p][p]It’s fast, chaotic, strategic and perfect for testing builds with friends or settling once and for all who has the superior tile brain.[/p][p]Duels will launch with pre-loaded builds from some of Turnbounds regular creators![/p][p][/p][p][/p][p][/p]
Early Access launches January 22
[p][/p][p]And of course… the big one.[/p][p]Turnbound enters Early Access on January 22, bringing new systems, new ways to play, and continued content throughout 2025.[/p][p]Your feedback from the demo shaped so much of what’s coming next, so from the bottom of our hearts, thank you. 💛[/p][p][/p]
Women-Led Games: a meaningful moment for our team
[p][/p][p]These announcements coincide with Women-Led Games, a celebration we’re proud to be part of as a women-led team.[/p][p]It’s a moment that highlights the voices and creativity behind Turnbound and many other indie titles.[/p][p][/p][p][/p]
A special holiday skin (also on December 15)
[p][/p][p]To bring a bit of warmth into our spooky board game world, a festive holiday skin will be available starting December 15, full of lights, sparkle and winter cheer.[/p][p][/p][p][/p]
Wishlist to join us at launch
[p][/p][p]Early Access begins January 22, and wishlisting helps us enormously as a small indie team. [/p][p][dynamiclink][/dynamiclink][/p][p]Thank you as always for your support! Be sure to follow us in any of these places to stay up-to-date with the latest news:[/p][p][/p][p]Stay spooky,[/p][p]The 1TK Team[/p]

Dev Log #3: Wukong Gameplay Design

[p]Welcome, spirits, new and old, to the third of our dev logs. This time, we are going back and talking about Wukong and his gameplay design.[/p][p][/p][h3]Prefer to watch?[/h3][p]Join the team as they talk about Wukong and his gameplay design in the video below:[/p][previewyoutube][/previewyoutube][p]As previously mentioned during the character design dev log, he is a character of worldwide popularity with many stories surrounding him, meaning we had to make him feel like the character you know. This meant we had to make gameplay feel like he had the traits you would expect of him, and use those as our inspiration for designing the hero's gameplay.

To begin with, we wanted to showcase him as the master fighter he is, with an arsenal of weapons at his disposal. The idea was to build him to scale damage, hit hard, and be durable enough to take a good hit or two.[/p][p]To do this, we knew we wanted to focus on accessories, either to scale damage or health. When these are connected to the Hero Tile, Wukong himself, it would increase his health, which can help you survive those early rounds. His character tiles encourage chain attack abilities, or, in the case of Seven Star Sword, begin with a chain attack. These abilities combine well with specific accessories to provide that scaling health and damage throughout a fight to make you feel like Wukong is this master fighter who gets stronger the longer a fight goes on.[/p][p][/p][p]Another trait that he has is the ability to revive and potentially even become stronger because of that, so, we thought of a way to try and bring that into the game itself through tiles and trinkets that provide revives, and accessories that buff items dependant on tiles being revived, so you have this master warrior who can, if played correctly, get stronger through tiles being destroyed and revived over and over again![/p][p]At the same time, he’s known to be a bit of a trickster, which you could argue is something that is quite hard to bring into a game like ours, but, we think we’ve brought a little of that into his game design by creating a keyword called confusion, meaning, when you apply confusion to an attack tile, that tile will hit a completely random tile. It could hit yourself, or your opponent or even itself, which can lead to amusing situations where, through confusion, the opponent's hero tile attacks itself, bringing them to 0 hp and you winning! [/p][h3]The Ultimates. [/h3][p]Wukong can also shapeshift, which is another trait we wanted to bring into the game. The best we thought of was using it as one of his ultimates - where he turns into a dragon and hits the battlefield. Not only is this impactful, especially early on, but we also knew we had to get the VFX right for it. For this, we needed to make the dragon look almost 3d, so we had the dragon come out and do a little loop-de-loop on the way to its target.[/p][p][/p][p]Another thing Wukong has been known to do, which is where we drew the inspiration from, is a technique called “Cloud Somersault” where he can travel vast distances in a single leap, in our version, we decided that this act would allow him to steal charges from his opponents tiles and power up his own, meaning not only did we reference one of his abilities but also eluded to his trickster ways![/p][p][/p][h3]Abilities[/h3][p]Another direction we decided to take, at least for the first and third of his shop abilities, is the fact that he can also clone; in the myth, it was primarily himself. Still, we decided it would be fun to allow players to duplicate items on their board, or, in the future, be able to clone weapons that your opponent has, which would allow you to steal a weapon that you usually would not have access to!

And finally, the second ability is a reference to his journey to gain wisdom, which we decided to add into our game as an ability where you receive a scroll of wisdom, which, in turn, when used correctly, can empower attack tiles that require charges, allowing them to act quicker.
[/p][h2]That’s all for now[/h2][p]Thank you again for following us on this journey so far! Be sure to follow and join our social channels for more info:[/p][p]Stay spooky and safe[/p][p]The 1TK team.[/p][p][/p]