Howdy all, Phew, what a mad couple of months it has been for me. Both physically and mentally a lot to tackle, but I'm doing well. I hope you've all had a good holiday season thus far. Well, it's about time I fixed a bunch of things as well as introduce some new ways to play and delicious new artwork! NEW MATCH TYPES There's now THREE new ways to play ZONERS in Match Maker! When you go to make a custom match ruleset, select the Match Type button and flick through the options to try these out. Block Break: Break your opponents regenerating blocks to score the points shown on them
Defender: Try and break all of your opponents blocks before they break yours!
Bomb Pass: The ball is now a bomb and will explode after a random amount of time has passed. Try to keep it on your opponent's side of the field. This one is particularly chaotic with multiple balls.
I've also made the Zone Breaker match type unlocked from the start. Full details on these new game types are in the Patch Notes below. New Artwork Amazing new art work of the characters by the End Card artist Kevin Butler has been put to good use for an amazing new title screen and lovely animations when triggering hyper moves. I've also used these to update all the Steam capsule assets etc. I think these encapsulate the flashy quality of the game nicely!

What's Next? The next update should come sometime in January. I'm hoping to add the update new updated Credits assets I've just received & a new Power Ups custom match option that will spawn random power ups during the middle of the match for even more unnecessary chaos! Further Ahead... Looking further ahead, I think it's time I accept that some of the content I was hoping to get into v1.0 might need to be pushed back to free post launch content if the game does OK sales wise. Development has taken much longer than I initially anticipated, and this is ignoring the huge amounts of time I devoted before EA launch. My life has changed dramatically in some ways, whilst also being stuck. I absolutely refuse to leave the game in an incomplete state, and I hope you can see from recent updates how much you can mess about with it as I continue to expand the ways you can play. I'll keep you all updated on the new targets when they get locked in, but I think the most likely thing that will be pushed back are some of the additional characters due to the sheer amount of work each one adds. Conclusion Well, there's a lot more in this update than I talked about above, so make sure to read through the patch notes. Have a great holiday period, however you do it, and I look forward to absolutely smashing the rest of this game out in the new year for you! Peace & Love, Paris ZONERS v0.36 Patch Notes ADDITIONS

• Added new Block Break match type to custom match settings - A column of blocks sits at the back of each player's side of the field. Hitting an opponents block with a ball scores you the amount of points on the block. The middle block scores the highest and the ones closest to the edges the least. Blocks disappear after being hit but respawn in line with the goal shield times
• Added new Defender match type to custom match settings - 15 blocks in 3 columns of 5 sit at the back of each player's side of the field (in default settings). Every time a block is hit by a ball it's destroyed for good, reducing your total by 1. If all of a player's blocks are destroyed they lose. Try to be the last one standing!
• Added Bomb Pass match type to custom match settings - The ball is a bomb! Once hit, a timer will be set and it'll begin counting down. If the bomb hits a back wall, 3 seconds are taken off its timer. If it's on your opponent's side when it explodes you'll score a point! First to a score of your choosing wins
• A brand new titlescreen has been added
• New animated character portraits based on the new titlescreen art displays when triggering hyper moves

• Piro shot no longer shrinks over lifetime and life span changed from 60 to 75 frames
• Fixed Clawcade crash introduced after changes for 2v2
• Updated ball gravity to be effected by custom ball speeds
• Fixed ball gravity variables getting messed up after Crabhammers hyper move
• During instant replays, the ball now correctly shows the effects and sounds for scoring a goal every time
• Fixed issue in clash tutorial where doing a melee straight after winning a clash would count towards the objective
• During King match, when King does Pet Turret and Shield move, sfx now play when the shield takes damage
• When using keyboard and mouse controls, the mouse cursor updates position to follow character's speed during active portion of melee move
• Fixed issue where game would freeze when completing matches of 2 rounds or more with infinite time
• Improved AI's ability to respond to attacks from close to the middle point
• Fixed bug where if you dashed the same frame you started the active part of a melee your hitbox would still be active
• When playing with more than 1 ball active and the multi balls are started again, all balls will set off with the same speed as intended

• Zone Breaker match type is now unlocked to use from the start and associated unlock milestones have been replaced with bonus money
• When changing match type a description of the match type is shown at the bottom
• When changing match type some settings update to a default value for that match type
• When choosing whether to load or save a template, the name of the template no longer is visible
• When saving a new template a new digital keyboard is displayed for name input with a gamepad
• Max template name length has been increased from 10 to 15 characters
• Fixed text scroll display in CSS when choosing mode other than Time or Score
• Updated the profile name input to a virtual keyboard for gamepads that matches the one used in custom match template name inputting
• Improved the "Outline Playfield" accessibility option
• Fixed issue introduced in last patch where you couldn't choose your profile in the Academy menus properly
• Fixed issue introduced in last patch where you couldn't navigate or leave the cup registration menus
• Fixed crash during cup dialogue introduced from last patch
• Fixed crash introduced in last patch that happened on some menu transitions
• Fixed crash when retrying Clash Tutorial
• Fixed crash in shop when buying certain character colours and going from the bottom to the top of the list
• Fixed Special Items menu from having a blank spot at the bottom
• Removed achievements associated with unlocking additional match types

• Urnest now does a silhouette like every other character on Core Castle stage during the background transition
• Princess' last colour palette cloak effect altered slightly
• Princess' cloak effect now properly displays on alternative palettes for her moves and end of match victory
• King's theme now correctly stops playing if you skip the pre-match dialogue
• Tons of small other fixes