Opening Night

Everything that has to be there before anyone can play. Teo, the roofs, the Don’s men coming up the stairs, and something to chase after the K.O.

Added

• The Story. Four acts, each opened by Nina’s texts, and the Don keeps sending men. It is endless and scored, and your best wave is kept. (It is now called the Gauntlet.)
• Practice. Three or five waves, nothing kept, for trying things out.
• New roofs. Every second wave is a new rooftop with its own skyline, sun or moon, and six kinds of layout, built fresh for each run and always climbable. Wave one opens on the stairwell door, with the ambush waiting.
• A health bar for Teo. The hit that empties it is the hit that sends him, so the bar never lies. It shows in the corner and, for a moment after each hit, over his head.
• Strings and secrets. Punch J J J J for a jab, a cross, a hook and a smash. Down and J is a body blow into an uppercut. Named combos pay a bonus, and four secret moves are waiting to be found: the Rising Dragon, the Comet Fist, the Hundred Fists and the Meteor.
• Two specials. Stomp Rush from the air, down and K, and the Giant Swing, dash and then K. Each has a cooldown, and the whole world waits while one plays out.
• Emotes on T. A direction picks which. Any input or hit cancels one.
• A career rank. Every Story run pays Rep, and Rep climbs from Rookie I through seven titles of three steps to Legend, then stars. While you fight, the Rep the run would pay shows hatched after what you have banked. The style multiplier now sits by the hit counter, as what it is.
• Marks and gear. Win Marks, spend them in Customise. Pick to wear, pick twice to buy. Ink is the first gear that shows: Fluoro pink, Federal blue and Teal re-ink the whole print.
• Sign in with Google. Your Marks, gear and rank follow your account, and the world board lists the ten best runs. Every Story run is checked: the server plays your run again before it counts.
• Rebinding. Settings has a Controls page: two keys per action, press to capture, Reset for the defaults. On a phone, a floating stick appears wherever your thumb lands.
• A menu to come home to. A little room with Teo doing push-ups and pull-ups, taping his hands, reading Nina’s note. The men you beat lie on the floor, and more of them as your best wave grows. It has its own music, and each act has a track of its own.
• Settings: music and effects volume, screen shake, reduce flashes, gore off, vibration.

Changed

• Hits sound different every time. Round-robin variants, limb and zone layers, grunts from whoever took it, and a pitch that climbs along a string.
• A charge pulls the air in. A whirlpool behind the loaded fist or foot, wind lines and a flickering aura. Teo is printed with a paper outline so a crowd never swallows him, and he wears fingerless gloves and canvas sneakers.
• Getting hit shows. A red halftone bleeds in from the edges of the frame when you are hit, on heavy impacts, in the finisher’s slow motion, when you charge, and with low health. Reduce flashes tones it down.
• No more moonwalking. A long retreat turns and runs. A short one is a slow, guarded backpedal.
• Phones. Starting a fight goes full screen and sideways, with the controls drawn over the arena and a pause button in the corner.