That's right, today marks 5 years since the launch of Just Shapes & Beats. So much has changed since then, and yet were we are, and here you are, and we're so appreciative for that.
Now of course we know what you really want. It would be hard not to, since every single tweet, post, message, and image has been followed by at least one person asking about updates.
We don't like even slightly announcing things until we're really ready to talk about them, that's just how we roll as a studio. We know that'll be annoying for some, but it's important to us to work like that, so we hope you understand.
So on this day of celebration, our beloved Lachhh had some words to share with the fans of the game in a tweet thread:
For those of you who are terrified of clicking links I can do you a favor and drop it here:
So hopefully that'll let you know that we're still working on stuff for Just Shapes & Beats, and the fact that we aren't always talking about it doesn't mean it's not happening.
Thanks for sticking with us, and we're looking forward to the future!
-Berzerk Team
You can now 100% play JS&B on the go with Steamdeck!
Ahoy, long time no post!
We finally got around to getting the game working tip top on the Steamdeck, so we figured we'd fix a few bugs while we at it; probably introduce some new ones too, this is the way.
============= 1.6.50 release notes =============
- Steam Deck compatibility - Steam Deck floating keyboard support for Community Rooms (also for Big Picture mode) - Apple Silicon native support for Mac - Linux build now uses IL2CPP - Players Beat Points are now synchronized in real-time when playing online - You can now get huge BP coins when waiting in an online lobby - Moved to Unity 2020.3.32f1. - Added Spider Dance to Story Boss list, for the achievement. - Minor bug fixes
As always, if there's issues do reach out to troublemakeitdouble@justshapesandbeats.com and we'll fix you right up!
-Your pals The JS&B Team
Lost Chapter + Patch 1.6.30
BETTER LATE THAN NEVER
The once lost to time chapter has now been found, experience the story as it was meant to be told through five brand new tracks including a new boss battle:
You can play this new chapter once you have completed the Story mode, and if you've already done that, well, it's somewhere in there, I'm sure you can figure it out.
These tracks can also now be found in the wild in both of their forms in Challenge runs and in Playlist/Party mode once completed in the Story Mode.
THINK YOU'RE HOT STUFF?
Story mode is for babies? Well, put your proverbial money where your pie hole is, because this update also bring Hardcore to the Story Mode!
THREE YEARS
No matter what difficulty you choose, we hope you enjoy the completion of our little story that took us a whole three years to tell.
The passion y'all have for our game is what drives us to do more, we couldn't ask for a better community of rad people.
Cheers and to three more!
- The JS&B team
HI MIKE FROM THE FUTURE HERE WITH PATCH NOTES
Yeah it's been a few months since the actual Lost Chapter update, does seem like I forgot to hit submit after saving this, technology is hard my dudes.
Anyway, here's the release notes for the mostest currentest bestest build that was launched in the wild today, its a lot of under the hood improvements and a couple of fixes to the recently-ish introduced stages. Also below it is the changelog for the previous update!
============= 1.6.30 release notes =============
Fixed issue where at the start of the cavern elevator sequence, the animation could glitch
Fixed issue where the player could mess up the end transition of the cavern elevator
Fixed memory leak that could occur in levels with the 'water' waves
Keyboard layout option has been moved to Controls panel
Added text to the story end popup to point to the Lost Chapter and Hardcore difficulty in Story mode
Fixed issue with rotating teeth in Boss in 'New Game'
Fixed issue with collision on some walls (mostly in 'Interlaced')
Fixed issue with invisible collision in 'Cool Friends'
Fixed some rewind issues in 'Born Survivor'
Fixed massive memory leaks in low-level systems
Fixed issue with un-pausing by clicking the 'Esc' button
New fallback to WEBm videos if playback of MP4s fails on Windows
3 new languages: Polish, Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese
You can now play the Story mode on Hardcore difficulty
You can now navigate all menus in one-hand mode
Reorganized controls menu (to better explain one-hand mode)
Added collisions in Helicopter sequence to better message the path to take
New rendering optimizations for better performance
Added sound effect when jumping between chapters in Chapter Select menu
Improved support for photosensitive mode in ‘Unlocked’
Changed the requirements for the last party levels to 30 S ranks each (instead of all tracks)
Reduced some requirements regarding the number of friends to rescue and challenges to play
Improved font visual quality for Japanese, Korean, Chinese S&T, Russian
Increased darkness of interfaces background, for better readability
Fixed issue with invisible collisions in Helicopter sequence
Fixed issue with white flashes on beams appearing too soon
Fixed issue with collisions in ‘Tokyo Skies’ during warning states
Fixed issue with skipping story levels using challenge mode game over states
Fixed issue with collisions on respawn in ‘Paper Dolls’
Fixed issue with camera movement after rewind in ‘Flowers of Antimony’
Fixed issue with player footprint on island during boat sequence
Fixed spawning issue in ‘Strike the Earth!’
Fixed issue with first appearing flowers in ‘Final Boss’
Fixed issue with small ‘dot’ in ‘Final Boss’ sprite
Fixed issue with last hexagon despawning in ‘Spectra’ after a rewind
Fixed issue with ‘triangle shoot’ spawn sometimes not shooting entire clip of bullets (as seen in ‘Chronos’)
Fixed issue with players getting hit during transitions of tutorial
Fixed crash in tutorial level
Fixed issue with some spawns not playing their warning and hit animations when pooled
Fixed issue in ‘Vindicate Me’ with a Wall warning moving with the camera
Fixed issue with Square Appear spawn glitching because of reusing pooled spawns in same line
Fixed issue with challenge result screen player cards overlapping sometimes
Fixed issue with level continuing without players when disconnecting controllers while P1 was dead
Fixed issue in ‘Vindicate Me’ with misaligned pistons spawning
Fixed issue in ‘Core’ where you could get hit after a rewind
Fixed issue in ‘Core’ where the cross pattern could spawn off-centered after a rewind
Fixed issue in ‘Strike the Earth!’ where the shovels in the Hardcore difficulty were slower than Normal
Fixed issue in Helicopter sequence where the Helicopter could flip on the X axis if hit by a piston
Fixed issue in Helicopter sequence where the animation when hitting something was always right-facing
Fixed issue in Helicopter sequence where the Helicopter could disappear for a long time when hit
Fixed safe zone issue in ‘Milky Ways’
Fixed credits typo for ‘LETS BE FRIENDS - FTW’
Fixed random spawns appearing in ’Sevcon’
Fixed delayed wall attack on the right in ‘Clash’
Fixed size issue with lasers in ‘Granite’
Fixed issue with darkness texture not appearing when going back to Island map before beating ‘Barracuda’
Fixed issue regarding offset for enemies spawned after a rewind
Fixed random spike balls appearing in ‘Legacy’
Fixed missing squares in ‘New Game’ when the Boss punches the ground
Fixed collision issue during warnings in ‘Granite’
Fixed syncing issue in ‘Hype’
Fixed explosions consistency in ‘Core’
Fixed issue with wall warnings turning black on rewinds with Photosensitive mode enabled
Fixed visible lines in ‘Crystal Tokyo’
Fixed issue with players sometimes moving weirdly
Fixed text in French not being conjugated correctly (‘Playlist Terminée’)
Fixed flash before level rotation in ‘Close to Me’
Fixed collision issues with shovels in ’Strike the Earth!’
Fixed issues with teleporting shovels in ‘Strike the Earth!’
Fixed translation for ‘Shovel Knight’ in Simplified Chinese
Fixed issue with coloured backgrounds when going to the chapter selection menu
Fixed issue with rewinding during volcano elevator sequence
Fixed issue with mouse overs states for buttons in chapter select menu
Fixed issue with clicking 'back' in the pause/option menu
Fixed issue with visible 'clipping' mountains textures in Island map
Fixed issue with non-moving spikes in 'On the Run'
Fixed weird lag at the end of tutorial level in Story mode
Fixed issue where borders 'Try This' could sometimes not reappear after a rewind
Support for Discord ‘Ask to Join’
Support for DualSense controller
Added profanity checks for community room names and passwords
Added support for monitor switching in settings
If player 1’s controller gets disconnected, a popup will now appear
Fixed issue with camera scaling when switching resolutions with different aspect ratiosFixed small freeze when switching between resolutions
Fixed mouse navigation in settings menu
Fixed issue with sometimes the videos not playing (Berzerk intro and story ending)
Fixed some camera transitions in the cavern
Fixed animation glitch in paradise entry
Fixed overflowing text in Casual mode popup in certain languages
Fixed data caching error that could break party mode if left running
Fixed visual alignment in the Tower map
Fixed issue where sometimes the camera movement would not start in 'Vindicate Me' on Hardcore difficulty
As always, if there's anything wrong, please do email us at troublemakeitdouble@justshapesandbeats.com and we'll do our very best to answer you asap!
1.5.54 Release notes
Eyo
Quick emergency patch to fix people not finding games online, sorry bout that pals.
1.5.54 Release notes
Added support on Windows for Vulkan, OpenGL ES, Open GL Core
Fixed some characters alignment for the Russian font
Fixed localization issues
Fixed issue with Beams warning visual animation
Improved Lycanthropy in Photosensitive mode
Fixed issue with non 16:9 aspect ratios
Fixed issue with Steam public matchmaking (distance filtering)
Fixed issue with some elements duplicating in memory on rewinds
Fixed issue with UI animating when paused
It should be all gucci now but if it ain't, poke us at troublemakeitdouble@justshapesandbeats.com and we'll see what can be done.
Cheers!
1.5.52 release notes
YO
Smallish update for y'all today. Nothing too fancy on your end, but a lotta things behind the hood.
Of note: you can now play with a single hand and we did a major overhaul of the photosensitive mode.
Also, Italian and Spanish fans rejoice, we translated the like, 100 words we had to your native language; let us know if there's any problem with it!
Cheers!
Full release notes:
- Added Spanish & Italian support - Moved to Unity 2019.4 - Major change to rendering system, now using Unity’s Universal Render Pipeline - Windows and Mac builds now built using IL2CPP - Added One-hand mode (Dash with triggers, move with both analog sticks) - Vastly improved photosensitive mode - New menu for reassigning controllers (Options > Controls > Reassign controllers) - Added new popup to ask the player to activate photosensitive mode - Major changes to management of async call in matchmaking code - Changed Steamworks plugin to use Facepunch.Steamworks - Now using Steam Rich Presence - Implemented level loading syncing logic for online - When controller gets disconnected while playing online, user has now 60 seconds to reconnect one (instead of getting kicked) - Fixed online issues with joining players - Fixed issue with the exit button on main menu when Party is selected - Fixed issue with ‘New Game’ not unlocking after playing it in story mode - Fixed issue with particles in ‘Final Boss’ hitting the players when too small - Fixed issue with fade-to-black during the Party credits (ending of Story mode) not covering the texts - Fixed issue with track previews sometimes stopping playing when moving fast during voting in Challenge mode - Fixed issue with water waves accelerating when hitting it with the player multiple times
1.4.15 Hotfixes
Yoooo
We're pushing a quick update to fix a few design issues introduced with Mixtape #3 that should make them a lot more enjoyable, along with Rich presence stuff that we had not touched since launch.
HAVE FUUUUN
Full release notes:
- Fixed issue with misaligned warnings in Lightspeed - Reduced requirement for Granite to ‘Rescue 350 friends’ - Added small walls with falling enemies in Lightspeed (Hardcore) - Removed a bunch of circles in Lightspeed (Normal) - Aligned bottom square corners with top ones in Deadlocked (Hardcore) - Added Steam launch parameters to manage save data (mainly for customer support) - Fixed issue with main menu fireworks not working even if party level was previously unlocked - Fixed issue with track previews sometimes stopping during the vote of Challenge mode - Added Discord Rich Presence support for macOS - Added difficulty setting in Discord Rich Presence - Fixed issue with double inputs in Community Rooms textfields - Fixed issue with triggering Join/Leave while typing in Community Rooms textfields - Fixed missing letters in album name in Playlist when in lower resolutions - You can now use the mouse to click the Ok button on the single option popups (like error messages) - Fixed collision issue in Granite (Hardcore) with the small beams - Fixed collision with big hexagon in Katana Blaster (Hardcore) (not perfect, but better) - Removed ability to change text size and other properties through html tags in username
MIXTAPE #3 IS HERE
HELLO MY DUDES AND DUDETTES
People have been asking when the new mixtape would be, welp, the new mixtape should be out around half an hour ago EYOOOOO.
This new update contains tracks from some of our favorite collaborators, and from two new comers:
Big Giant Circles - Katana Blaster
F-777 - Deadlocked
MDK & Sterrezo - Lightspeed
Rainbowdragoneyes - Creatures ov Deception
Shirobon - Granite
Along with a bunch of bug fixes, full changelog at the bottom of this post!
This update also marks our 2nd anniversary, who could have foreseen that a little game about shapes and beats would still be around after two ding danged years. Not us, but we're insanely happy that you all are still enjoying our antics, from the bottom of our hearts, thank you for making this all worth it!
But yeah, it's Sunday and we got stuff to do, so I'll drop all the mushy feely words and just let y'all enjoy the new tracks, hope you like them, because I can't get 'em out of my head now.
OH BTW WE'RE ON SALE FOR TWO DAYS IF YOU'RE STILL ON THE FENCE NOWS A GOOD TIME JUST SAYING KTHXBYYYYE
Changelog:
When leaving a playlist in progress, when you get back to the playlist menu the last played song is automatically selected (works for Party mode playlist too)
Added a small time of invincibility after rewinding a level
Changed USK rating to USK 12
Fixed issue with collision calculations between rectangles and circles
Fixed issue where sometimes the buttons highlight would randomly stop working
Fixed issue where the song preview in the Playlist menu would play over the Beatpoints animation
Fixed issue where you would receive a ‘hit’ when starting a new online run
Optimized the way object trails are generated (such as in Creatures ov Deception, Clash)
Fixed issue where you could get stuck in Pause/Option menu when pressing ‘Confirm’ and ‘Back’ at the same time
Fixed small issue with Wall camera shakes
Fixed issues when pausing in LLTNF, Art of War, Flowers of Antimony
Fixed issue with collisions in the last part of Houston, getting hit by invisible stuff
Fixed issue where some parts of the Annihilate boss would move randomly in the end section
Fixed issues with animations and collision in Mortal Kombat
Fixed issue with Beam’s collisions scale
Fixed issue with feats description text size getting smaller
Various small performance optimizations
You can now use the mouse cursor to click UI elements in the Chapter Select menu
The Auto-save icon is now displayed
Fixed issue where joining the same online game you are in from invitations would create double menus and a wrong error message
Fixed issue with clicking the ‘Invite’ button in the lobby that would start the game instead
Fixed issue with controls menu not displaying the correct controller used for the last input
v1.3.19
Yoooo quick patch note for y'all, nothing super crazy, just finally obliterated some lingering bugs that escaped us over the years.
1.3.19 Steam Release Notes - Fixed issue where menus could stack over gameplay - Fixed typo for ‘Till It’s Over’ in the credits - Added the possibility of getting 5 and 25 Beat Points coins while waiting in the Lobby of a public online challenge - Removed unused DLLs from the build - Fixed issue with error management when joining an online challenge from a Steam invitation - Fixed issue with some scripts not being updated using the correct method
Cheers and happy 2020!
Mixtape #2 :: Just Shovels & Knights
Mixtape #2: Just Shovels & Knights
Our buddies over at Yacht Club Games are releasing a bunch of new Shovel Knight things so we thought "hey what if we tried to do Shovel Knight tracks for Just Shapes & Beats, that could be raaaaad." and so we did.
These new tracks are *exclusive* remixes from some of our favorite composers, and are based on the blue knight and his nemeses... nemesii?.. nemesiseses?... based on Plague Knight, Specter Knight and King Knight!
Danimal Cannon - Strike the Earth! (remix)
Rainbowdragoneyes - Flowers of Antimony (remix)
Kubbi - In the Halls of the Usurper (remix)
Shirobon - La Danse Macabre (remix) <--- BRAND NEW BOSS
You can play these tracks randomly over in Challenge mode and unlock them in in the Playlist with Beat Points.
It's been a blast to work with such iconic music, we're HUGE fans at the studio... as in we like Shovel Knight a lot... not that we're like... huge, I mean I work out but I wouldn't... where was I going with this...
WE REALLY LIKE SHOVEL KNIGHT AND WE HOPE YOU LIKE OUR TRIBUTE TO IT KTHXBYE
1.3.17
As per tradition, we just pushed a small patch that fixed a few things, and broke others, as we do. Here's the full list, if that's your thing.
Fixed issue where faster refresh rates monitor could not use Vsync, and accelerated the animations.
Added a ‘vsync’ option in the settings, enabled by default.
Fixed issue in Strike the Earth (Hardcore) where some squares were missing from rotating lines
Fixed issue with a random circle appearing in La Danse Macabre (Normal)
Fixed issue with duplicated circles in La Danse Macabre (Hardcore)
Fixed issue with missing lasers in In the Halls of the Usurper (Normal)
Fixed issue with walls warnings not appearing sometimes
Created performance issues when scrolling quickly through the Playlist menu
Fixed said performance issue when scrolling quickly through the Playlist menu
HOLIDAY WISHES AND SALE AND STUFF
Already wrote too many words, so I'll TL;DR for you
<3
-Your pals, the Berzerk crew
THANKS FOR AN AWESOME 2019
We're super happy to announce that our Mixtape #2, "Just Shovels & Knights" is coming right into your eyeballs and eardrums for freeeeee next week! For those who haven't been following the things we do, it will be a cross event between the blue shovel person and his band of merry antagonists, well, in the ways of music, not like, the characters themselves... you know dang well what I meant.
I'll go in more deets on launch day, but yeah, the new tracks are ab-so-lu-tely insane, they are classics from Shovel Knight's Jake Kaufman, but remixed by JSB contributing artists, I'm crazy hyped for y'all to hear them!
That accidentally ties in pretty nicely with the Steam Awards announcement from yesterday, but I'll play this like it was planned all along. If you think we've been doing a good job at doing the things we do, it would be AWESOME of you if you'd nominate us for Labor of Love!
Lastly, if you or one of your friends have been on the fence about buying the game, now's a good time to do so, as we're on saaaaaaaaaale, buy it, gift it, wishlist it if you can't, or don't, as one cannot always get what one desires, but if you can't, we'd appreciate if you'd at least take a minute to click that button up there, that's free, like our love.
