The Battle Chef Brigade Deluxe update is almost here! If you’re a member of the Brigade, a follower on Twitter, or a denizen of the Discord, you know that we have been teasing and working on this for a long, long time. We’re excited to release on PS4 next week, but we’re just as excited to provide the Deluxe update for FREE to every Battle Chef Brigade player everywhere. Below are the notes for the upcoming Deluxe update that will be arriving on Steam and other platforms on August 28. If you'd like to share in our excitement, join our official Discord at http://discord.gg/battlechefbrigade. Vive la Brigade!

New Content - Local Multiplayer!

• Added Local Split-screen Multiplayer!
• Play with a friend, loved one, or eternal rival to prove who the best chef in the house really is.
• Choose your character and loadout with every item in the game available for you to  create the perfect multiplayer build.
• Customize every aspect of the match including number of judges, time, key ingredient, map, mutations, and chef vs. chef damage multiplier.  
• Custom multiplayer maps let players enter the Arena from their own side of the Kitchen Colosseum.
• Knock out your opponent in the Arena to steal their ingredients.
• Players who lose all their health in the Arena will respawn back in the kitchen.
• The Player with the highest total score from the judges wins the match!

New Character - Ziggy!

• Ziggy, the Undead Chef, added as a playable chef in all non-story modes!

• Standing: A fast standing kick combo.
• Down: Breakdancing crouch kick combo because Ziggy’s got style.
• While Running Attack: A quick slash attack that leads into his standing combo.
• Up: A Spinning uppercut that moves at a slight diagonal.
• Down Air: The Ziggy Divekick. Patented year unknown.
• Slide: Slide continuously down hills or across ground. Makes Ziggy briefly invincible.
• Magic Skill 1: Magic Bomb throw with randomized rare projectiles.
• Magic Skill 2: Summon Shooty - A demon that shoots homing energy orbs.
• Magic Skill 3: Summon Skelly - A slow sous skeleton that does massive damage.
• Magic Skill 4: Summon Stabby - A goofy imp that’ll poke monsters and teleport the ingredients to Ziggy’s Pantry.

• Super Slide: Keep sliding up hills and slow enemies in the way.
• Big Hitter: Skelly damage and range increase.
• Devouring Abyss: Shooty's energy orb pulls monsters into it before exploding.
• Exploding Imps: Stabby explodes when the summoning magic wears off.
• Flamboyant Grill: Continuously adds combo fuses to a dish's bottom row.
• Quick Clean Pot: Match 2 but only for Poison and Bone.  
• Carnivore Master Expertise: Bonus for serving a dish containing no plant ingredients, other than the Theme Ingredient.
• Bony Tongs: Prevents Poison from popping when stirred.
• A Dollop of Ambrosia: 1 Large Promote sauce.
• Added Break the Dishes levels for Ziggy.

New Content - Survival Mode

• Added Survival Mode!
• Start with nothing but your chosen character, Dull Pan, and Cutting Board.
• When you run out of health or time, the run ends.
• Monsters start to mutate as the rounds progress.
• Breakable health pack chests can be found to regenerate much-needed health..
• Each round ends when you satisfy the dish score and ingredient requirements for the round.
• At the end of a round you can choose two out of six randomized upgrades to carry with you for the rest of your run.
• Compare your score to that of the world or your friends on the Survival Mode leaderboards.

New Content - Free Play Mode!

• Added Free Play Mode!
• Battle against any of the NPC chefs in a duel whenever you want.
• Fully customizable match rules and loadouts similar to multiplayer options.
• Hone your chef skills without the pressure of Dailies or live-human opponents.

New Content - Gallery

• Added the Gallery!
• Illustrations are unlocked based on Brigade Rank.
• See concept art, character iterations, and a few gorgeous marketing pieces.
• When you unlock every item in the gallery some players may feel a great sense of accomplishment. Results will vary per player.

Quality of Life Improvements

• Added Color Blind Mode to the options menu.
• Players can now fast-forward through duel intro and outro sequences by holding  the continue button.
• Changed the default background of already-purchased shop items to green instead of red so that it doesn't appear that they are unaffordable.
• Sun Hat Tomatoes and Nochi Fruit are easier to knock down.
• Removed the restriction on controller triggers being rebound.
• Fragile gem state is now much clearer.
• Added support for Simplified Chinese.

Daily Cook-Off Improvements

• Now shows the character used in for a Daily Cook-Off entry next to the score on the leaderboard.
• Now shows judges for Daily Cook-Offin pre-gameplay UI.
• Now always draws an Expertise for the Daily Cook-Off and number of items randomly given in Daily Cook-Offs now increased to 6.
• Butcher Expertise no longer appears if the required ingredient is a plant (i.e. only drops one type of ingredient).
• Dull Pan is no longer included in the Daily Cook-Off possibilities, as pulling it meant that you'd only get two containers, which is boring.
• The number of ingredients that spawn from Treasure Chests has been made consistent for the day's challenge.

Thrash Balance and Fixes

• Thrash's Berserk timer can now overfill the bar when Consuming.
• Adjusted Thrash basic slash Interrupts to be a bit earlier.
• Reduced Thrash's Homing Flamebreath initial search area.
• Increased Thrash's base Fireball duration.
• Increased Thrash's attack speed when Berserk.
• Thrash's Counter improvements and FX updates.
• Thrash Berserk FX upgrades.

Balance and Improvements:

• Armarock spin duration has been reduced slightly.
• Lupir in the Caverns has a tell before attacking.
• Skylands creatures no longer hit each other.
• Reduced Rixal duel difficulty slightly.
• Bumped up Iceberg Turnip's Water quality.
• Purifying Oven now converts poison and bone to their respective match reward (Poison yields a combo fuse and Bone becomes a Rainbow Gem)
• Bumped Explorer (aka Region) expertise up to Journeyman value from Apprentice.
• Improved Dragon and Big Hydra ingredients so they contain some Supers.
• Changed Hydra Lungs' Fragile modifier to be applied to a Super taste gem.
• Changed Dragon to always spawn 3 ingredients instead of occasionally 4.
• Dragon now does slightly less damage on Hard Mode.
• Reduced Mutated Dragon additional damage.
• Changed tracking of "containers-used" stat such that it only counts if you trigger "the effect" for a container. Now you have to actually trigger a Match 3, or an Oven Promote, or cut out a gem to have that cookware count towards the expertise.
• Balanced the total value of ingredients available at round start across Forest, Skyland, and Caverns.
• Sped up Wart's Spatula since it would take a while for fully-fragile ingredients.
• Feedback for when the dominant taste changes - a ring appears around the Super gems matching the new dominant taste.
• Chopping no longer uses two separate controls and no longer ignores some inputs.
• Slowed down the speed of the Crystallizer Oven considerably.
• Improved logic for culling mid-air entities so that monsters aren't left hanging, literally.

Art and UI

• Added Battle Chef Brigade Deluxe intro video on game start.
• Polished up the Bull's charge dirt/rock particles.
• Updated the recipe poof effect.
• Smoothed gem bobbing curves a little.
• Updated Belchior puzzle user interface.
• Updated input prompt banners and improved positioning per controller type.
• Moved the anchor for objectives when Loadout is open down to center of the screen so that it doesn't obscure the category widgets at the top.
• Promote gems now also trigger "points increased" stars so that it's easier to tell something has changed.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug where Rixal was invisible in the finale.
• Fixed a bug where soft lock could occur if you completed an ingredient hunt successfully on the same frame that the clock ran out.
• Fixed a reset prompt not appearing in Thrash Campaign Day 5.
• Fixed Armarocks launching into the air randomly meaning the Armarock’s spines could be deflected while still attached to its shell.
• Fixed an issue where you could be killed during Weiz’s health-regaining death-preventing kiss and forced to respawn. Chefs are now invincible while Weiz is regenerating them.
• Fixed an issue where adding a bone to a container after it had already displayed another, different dish would fail to trigger an update for the complexity widget. As a result the bone would appear as whatever the last dish's value was.
• Fixed a bug where the pick-up widget could appear on top of the Duel judgment UI.
• Fixed a bug where Mina could dash through some characters' talk hitboxes when they were intended to trigger automatically.
• Fixed a bug where saucing a dish with a part from the required entity wouldn't immediately turn the dish’s point widget blue.
• Fixed a bug where Non-Steam PC platform scores wouldn't have ranks.
• Fixed the red ‘hurt vignette’ around screen edge so that it appears consistently.
• Fixed Thrash's Berserk bar sometimes being out of sync with the number of ingredients absorbed.
• Fixed a bug where you could start stirring gems if the Cook button was mashed while starting to use a cutting board.
• Mina is now invincible during the dialogue after Rixal is caught so she doesn't die from any remaining Yoku whirlwinds.
• Fixed Thrash sometimes being unchallengeable on the Practice Day after deleting saves.
• Fixed NPC sprite facing direction in a variety of challenges.
• Swapped Hazgil and Akebo's order in Day 2B so the "our next judge" line comes at the right time.
• Fixed a bug where Verskit could eat ingredients that should not be collectible.
• Fixed an issue where category widgets in the Panel Loadout wouldn't report "New" state ever (banners were never being updated).
• Fixed issues with Big Hydra spawning and hiding.
• Fixed exit hotkey shown in shop.
• Added at least one Easter Egg :P