Streaks now come with a trigger

Until today a killstreak in the Public Room was a number next to your name. It looked nice and it did nothing. Now it arms you.

Three abilities, one key

Stay alive, keep killing, and abilities unlock underneath you. Press F to fire the best one you have earned.

• Five kills: Airstrike. Bombs rain down on random open tiles across the arena. You do not aim it, you drop it, and the whole room has to move
• Ten kills: Seeker Bomb. A bomb lobbed straight over the walls onto the tile of the nearest enemy. Walls do not save them
• Twenty five kills: Nuke. The whole arena goes up in flames. Everyone dies. You do not

The Airstrike and the Seeker Bomb you can keep using, with a ten second cooldown between them. The Nuke is once per streak -- fire it and it is gone until you earn twenty five kills again.

Dying resets everything. Your streak drops to zero and your abilities go with it. That is the whole trade: the longer you survive, the more the rest of the room has to worry about you.

About that nuke

Getting wiped out by something you never saw coming would be miserable, so it announces itself. The screen turns red for about a second and a half before the fire falls. That is your window. It is not much of one, but it is there.

Players who are still under spawn protection walk away unharmed. Respawning straight into an instant death is not a fair way to lose a life.

The arena finally hits back

The other half of this update is paint. Every bomb you have ever placed appeared out of thin air. Every brick just vanished. Every kill was a number in a list.

None of this touches the rules. No effect gives an advantage, no effect hides information, and nothing that was fair yesterday is unfair today.

• Bombs land. A puff of dust, a short squash as it hits the floor, and then it sits there ticking. You do this a thousand times a match, so it is the change you will feel most
• Explosions flash. A white burst at the centre and sparks that fly out and fall to the ground
• Bricks shatter. Debris flies in the direction the fire came from, and smoke hangs there for a second and a half
• Power-ups confirm. A coloured ring rises off the tile, so you know you actually got it
• Kills land. A shockwave across the tile and a small shake of the screen. Not the full jolt of an explosion, just enough to feel it
• Respawns materialise. A ring of light closes in on you, which also makes your spawn protection visible for the first time
• Killstreaks burn. From five kills up, a glow sits under your feet and grows brighter the longer you stay alive. Now it means something
• Levelling up sets off fireworks above your head, and everyone in the room sees them

Want none of it? Options has a new switch called Battle Effects. It is separate from Particles, so turning the effects off does not take away the aura you bought.

One screen for how you look

Your appearance used to be scattered: skin and gear in the bar at the bottom, avatar and calling card on your profile, and titles and name colours nowhere at all because they did not exist.

There is now a Character button in the hub. One screen, two halves. On the left, what other players see on the battlefield. On the right, what shows up next to your name. A live preview at the top shows exactly what everyone else sees.

New things to spend BomberCoins on

• Avatars show in chat, in the hub and on your profile
• Titles sit behind your name. Twelve to start with, from Rookie to Bombsaland Elite
• Name colours change your name in chat, on your profile and above your head in game. Ten of them, and the rare ones are gradients
• Calling cards are the background of your score card

Cards you earned from achievements and cards you bought now sit in the same box, because only one can be worn at a time. Pick either, the other comes off.

Skins are changing

Skins can now carry a price in real money, in BomberCoins, or both. Everything you already own stays yours and nothing was taken away. The new cosmetics above are BomberCoins only, so there is still plenty to play for.

The hub is now the lobby

The old lobby page is gone and everything on it moved into the hub. The welcome window shows it all on one screen: game modes with the chat right under them, news and community links on the side.

There is also a Hall of Fame window with the leaderboard, the latest 1v1 duels, Mystery Wheel wins and community killcams.

Poker got readable

The biggest complaint about the poker table was that showdowns flew by. Now the five cards that make the winning hand stay lit while everything else dims, and the hand stays on screen for six seconds instead of two and a half.

The action buttons moved into the corner of the table with a gold slider that shows how far you are from all-in. Miss your clock twice in a row and you are set to sit out with a button to sit back in. Sit out for five minutes and the seat is released, with your chips back on your balance.

Fixes worth naming

• Typing in the lobby chat no longer walked your character around the hub, and Enter finally sends your message
• Your name no longer flashes below your character when you join a room
• The playfield no longer stretches wider than the arena when a long chat message arrives
• The bomb skin chooser is no longer cut off to a single row
• The homepage shows every live tournament, not just the first one

Found something broken? Tell us on Discord.