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Changelog
What's new in Boat Game.
Gameplay
- Hull-aware recoil — boat resists sideways push from keel, full recoil backward, reduced forward
- Visual recoil lean — hull rocks away from heavy weapon fire (blunderbuss, cannon, .50 cal, sustained minigun)
- Recoil lean scales naturally with weapon strength — minigun accumulates over sustained fire
Visual
- Turret shifts with hull lean so boat and turret rock together
- Spring-damper smoothing on recoil lean for fluid 60fps motion
- Smoother projectile rendering — swarm warheads and minigun trails
Gameplay
- New loot decay system — tiered safe zone protects your first dollars, rich players lose more
- Loot gauge with safety stripe shows exactly what you'll keep
- Decay is slower and smoother now
UI
- Redesigned death screen with 12 stats across 3 columns
- Per-life stats: assists, mines detonated, buoys and crates destroyed, coins collected
- Favorite weapon, peak bounty, and spending tracked
- Buoy kills now show "wrecked by Buoy" instead of "Unknown"
- No gauge shown when you have $0 — clean death screen
- New button layout: DOWNLOAD, SHARE, RESPAWN
- Share image downloads as "boatgame.io - [your name].png"
- Redesigned customization screen — tabbed layout for hull color, pattern, and pennant
- Consistent button and panel styling across all screens
Fixes
- Assists now count properly when AI boats are killed
- Fish and creatures flee from boats correctly near world edges
- Creatures no longer clip through obstacles
- Dismiss in customization now properly reverts hull color preview
- Fixed memory leak from stale boat animation state
Under the Hood
- 54 gameplay values moved to config for easier tuning
- Centralized CSS design system with shared tokens and components
- Removed 27 dead config values and 21 duplicated code patterns
Gameplay
- Better boat collisions — hulls bounce off each other properly now
- Tips for new players — shows up when you need it, not before
- Lifetime loot counter on death screen — every dollar ever earned, by everyone
- Crates slide when you push them
- Steam from hot barrels
AI
- Bots stop ramming into each other head-on
- Bots keep more distance from each other
UI
- 288 unique share images — different poses, weather, and scenes
- Smoother animations across the board
- New sound toggle — small icon in the top-left corner, works on start screen and in-game
- Collapsible leaderboard — click [-] to hide it, [+] to bring it back
- Translucent minimap background
- Changelog page
- HUD hidden on death screen
- Cosmetic unlocks free during beta
Infrastructure
- Live at boatgame.io
- Analytics
- Auto-reconnect if your connection drops
Gameplay
- Blunderbuss rework — fires fast, overheats fast. Two shots safe, three is risky
- Buy back the default gun from the shop for $400
- Respawn faster to keep more of your loot
- Click to respawn (no more auto-respawn)
- Buoys explode with debris now
- Wrecks sink in the color of the destroyed boat
World
- Bots don't ram each other to death anymore
- Islands and shipwrecks no longer spawn on top of each other
- Fish actually swim away from you
UI
- New start screen with controls diagram
- New customize screen
- Reload gauges match actual cooldowns
- $ on all bounty numbers
Infrastructure
- Reconnect if your connection drops (30s window)
- Server remembers your boat through restarts
- Anti-cheat basics
- boatgame.io with HTTPS
- First multiplayer release
- 10 weapons
- 28 ranks, 12 traits
- Shields, weather, maelstroms
- Loot crates and bounty economy
- 60 boats per room
- Procedural audio