New Year News

Good day ballers!

We’ve got a lot to catch you up on. From Blaze updates on all platforms, the DLC release status, latest merchandise, events and last but not least: News on Bomb Rush Cyberfunk. So let’s get started!


Blazing Consoles

All console versions have received a major patch, briefly bringing them on par with Steam for a few weeks! Here is the full list of changes and new features:

  • Gameplay
    • Grid can now bunt out of special
    • Candyman’s special meter maxes out at 1 during a candy chain
    • Candyballs now match the Candyman outfit
    • Jet can hover with taunt at any jump height
    • Ashes is faster and easier to control
    • Ashes travels further when activated from the air
    • Ashes has a new grounded down angle
    • Added special activation effect to Nitro
    • Latch now has momentum when releasing from the wall
    • Fixed all first wall attach frames ignoring action inputs
    • Toxic attaches to the wall more easily
    • Removed hitbox from placing a Toxic tag on the wall
    • The Toxic tag no longer disappears when her parry is grabbed
    • Removed ability to special a ball remotely
    • Parries no longer turn invisible from an online rollback
    • Pivots are now performed with up instead of down
    • The first run stop frame no longer ignores direction input
  • New Options
    • Competitive mode in private lobbies using default 1 on 1 rules
    • HP options (off, 50%, 75%, 100%, 125%, 150%, 175%, 200%)
    • Powerup option to select an individual powerup to play with
    • Video option to stop camera movement
  • Stages
    • Pyrotechnics are further away in the Paradise Field stadium
    • All the Retro stages are available online
    • The Retro stages after City Streets are easier to unlock
    • New random retro stage option to unlock
    • All visual issues on Retro stages are fixed

With that patch live it’s a good time for you to share or update your feedback.


DLC Status

It’s not long now before we have released DLC outfits for every character. Only two more to reveal on Steam. And the ones left for consoles should start rolling out at a faster pace as well.

Here is an overview of where we are at and what order outfits will release in:


Blazing Steam

Among lots of balance changes and fixes, the latest update on Steam also brought a new ball type: the gravity ball!

e54d96a7e0ddac845f174ce7cb125588e24ae726.png (833×1196)
comic by KF2AT

Did I say one new ball type? There is a secret second one. You can find it at the end of the arcade mode or using SRSCRDL.


Apparel Update

Our latest merch additions are on both eightysixed and whatsneu:
A Doombox tee, two undead long sleeved Jerseys, new masks and new hats.


Tournaments

Leading up to and over the holidays the Lethal League community has grown noticeably! If you want to take part in it, here are two upcoming events standing out:

The third New Player Challenge (January 30)
(entry limited to sub 200 hour players on Steam)

And the third Quarantined Rapport (February 20)
(look out for console tournaments hosted on the same weekend!)

If you wanna partake in either of these or other tournaments,
pop into our discord server:


BRC News

The game has fresh new title art by @dyinginkyoto
and you may find a new character in this gif:

But these two are old news by now! What about that second teaser?

All scenes for it are now drafted start to finish, set to a brand new track.
And it’s about twice as long as the first one!

TeaserTease.png (1078×732)

Blazing On!

We are not done with Lethal League Blaze just yet! But before we go into what comes next, a recap on what happened the past months.

At the end of September we had a community vote, which DLC outfit among Nitro, Grid and Switch would get released next. And Switch won by a landslide! This is his story:

One hot summer Switch was fed up with cruising the same old streets and decided to go on a skating roadtrip. Of course, he first made a quick detour to go pick up some spare parts at the Citynetics factory. Immediately after entering a server room Switch tripped, fell and short circuited his motherboard into a full-on robo-hallucination trip. As the ‘Mechranger’ he travelled many worlds and saw the true name of things. He recounted his tales to Raptor and told him how Rex is the founder of citynetics and turned Latch into a cyborg. Raptor responded “What are you even talking about you can of beans?”.

In October the community celebrated the second Blaze anniversary with a tournament sporting the largest prize pool in Lethal League history (just over $2000)! You can watch it back here.

And right after that we dropped the next DLC outfit alongside a big list of changes addressing your feedback survey input:
(as usual you can still add to and update your feedback)

  • improved Dust and Ashes special
    • can be used at lower speeds without buffer
    • can pick Ashes direction earlier
    • can control Dust during Ashes drop
    • Ashes moves further the higher up you activate
    • Ashes moves faster on the ground
    • Ashes is smarter about bunting towards Dust
    • steeper grounded down angle for Ashes
    • special can no longer get stuck on a corpse
  • improved movement
    • pivot input is now up instead of down
    • first run stop frame no longer ignores movement input
    • Latch wall climb now has momentum on release
    • Toxic attaches to the wall more easily
  • first wall attach frames now accept action inputs (Latch, Raptor, Switch, Toxic)
  • removed swing hitbox from placing a Toxic tag on the wall
  • Toxic tag no longer disappears when her parry is grabbed
  • added looping special activation effect to Nitro
  • parries no longer turn invisible from online rollbacks
  • removed ability to special a ball remotely
  • Dust and Toxic deobfuscated for modding
  • Corrected fixed camera setting for story mode comics

Fitting for Halloween, the latest DLC outfit is the Ivory Puppet: Killer. This one is for Latch, but it isn’t Latch himself!

High up in a seemingly abandoned skyscraper, on an empty floor without entrance there stands a single large closet. In that closet hangs a contraption, something from a time Toxic would rather not think about. Using the data she had found on Latch, she delved into questionable arts and created an ivory automaton. As a product of her mindstate at the time it turned erratic and hostile. Now it’s sealed away, set to activate if Toxic would ever be captured by the Shine City Police.

Console catch-up

The DLC release schedule for consoles is moving on. Not as fast as we’d like, but it’s moving!

So far the Late Stage Illmatic Outfit for Dice has arrived on all 3 consoles and the Nuclear Nourishment Outfit for Toxic has landed on Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and the Japanese region for Nintendo Switch.

What happened to the other regions? The submission for a major patch got in the way of that process and now has to go through first.

The upside to this is that the Switch should receive a patch including everything up to the most recent changes from the Steam version before the other platforms!

SHOWDOWN

Grid and Nitro will have a final showdown on the last November weekend. Keep an eye on our social media channels and vote for the one you want to be released next. The stakes are high! The loser will be last in line after Candyman and Jet.

And the winning outfit releases next together with new quality of life features for lobbies.

DLC Outfit for Sonata & Bomb Rush Cyberfunk progress

The DLC outfit Stereo Overdrive Arachnida for Sonata is up on steam. But that’s not all. The Doombox Gigahertz Visualizer is now available separately as well. And you can get both these music powered outfits in a bundle together with the soundtrack.

During a hefty Lethal League Match between Doombox and Sonata, Doombox suddenly transformed back into his Boombox form and spit out an indescribable entity. Sonata was taken aback at the way it crept towards her when it suddenly leaped at her. Sonata’s vision faded and her mind spiralled out of consciousness… When she came to, she could feel the beat of her boomhammer flow through her veins. This is not bad at all…

The alternate version of the Stereo Overdrive Arachnida outfit is the Midnight Tinnitus:

BRC Fanart

Onto Bomb Rush Cyberfunk! We’ve been quite blown away by the amount of fanart already out there and even more so by how quickly it’s being made.

@TR_Dion: I swear they are sitting with pen and paper ready for when the ‘Dion tweets a character’ siren starts sounding

Here are some of our favourites, keep ’em coming!

from top left to bottom right: @Tikifaceart @SMACKDILLYDOO @ChemUnderdose @resaliputra @SH0R0KEN @CasualRad @java_finch @koma5me_ppt @RealMean90

Bomb Rush Cyberfunk progress

With more content leaks seeping through from the team, we’ve got some of our own work to share too!

First up: A raw, unedited Dutch interview with Dion … and you are NOT allowed to use google translate on it(?!). Proceed at your own risk.

Next is a preview of what the flip phone for navigation and messaging looks like:

And last but not least: A new environment, billboard and penguin illustrations and a new character!

Toxic: Nuclear Nourishment and the Medical Mashup

The Medical Mashup update for Lethal League Blaze is on Steam!
And along with it the DLC outfits for Toxic.

This is how she came upon her new equipment:

Seeing the potential in Dust & Ashes, Toxic took on an odd-job in the West Shine City Hospital to find out more about the person Dust was before his amnesia. Having found no trace of such a patient while going through the records, she instead found out about certain classified medical experiments. She didn’t care much about the subject as she did for the high tech equipment they had made for it that was supposedly stashed away in an underground South Shine City facility. In between vats filled with spinal cords that didn’t seem human, she found what she was looking for. Gear for a special occasion.

The pack has two variants:

  • The Nuclear Nourishment colorway. A dark nurse themed outfit with a biohazard spinal fluid injection arm.
  • The N. N. Second Opinion colorway. A cute twist on the Nuclear Nourishment outfit, but the needles go just as deep.

Get it on Steam here!

The Medical Mashup

This update brings character tweaks and a whole bunch of new options and settings!
For the full change list, see our recent announcement on steam.

Unlock all retro stages to get a new random option just for them!

Latch Plush

And the latest addition to our set of Merchandise is none other than Latch himself. There are only 500 of these. Get one while they’re hot!

More Merchandise & Medical Mashup Beta Round 2

We’ve got more new material at whatsneu, including some first-ever Megabyte Punch merchandise!

Patch for Megabyte Punch Switch version

On launch we received some reports about Megabyte Punch crashing on the Nintendo Switch. We have found the issue and fixed it. The patch for that and a few other minor tweaks is on the way!

This funky bug is caused by using the Shield Engine Arm or leaving one of your own mines hanging around upon going through a door. So you can avoid it for now by not using these parts:

  • Shield Engine Arm
  • Bomba Head
  • Zylin Chest
  • Zomzom Hip
  • Toxi Hoodi
  • Khepriogram Core

Blaze 1.19 Beta Round 2

The Medical Mashup update for Lethal League Blaze on Steam is nearing completion and it’s time to give the beta another whirl.

Here is the full list of goodies updated since the previous beta:

  • corpses don’t become invisible on Grid bunt special
  • Candyballs now match the Candyman outfit
  • Jet can taunt hover sooner after each jump
  • Jet hover stops vertical movement faster
  • you will no longer jump out of a taunt hover
  • retro stages only appear in competitive/ranked, if both players select one
  • new random retro stage option unlock
  • retro city streets no longer has glitchy red outlines
  • the pyrotechnics have moved further away from the stadium cage
  • new HP option working correctly now
  • new powerup options working correctly now
  • new video option for camera movement

To participate, bring up your game Properties…, head over to the BETAS tab and select public-beta from the drop down.

Want to give us feedback or test it together with others?
Join our discord and head over to the #public-beta channel.

More upcoming online tournaments!

Lots of them!

  • A North America only one by Dair Productions with a $50 prize pool
  • A second Quarantined Rapport with a European and North American bracket
  • Dedicated console tournaments
  • and more!

All of these are also happening in our reptile hideout discord server.

New Merchandise

You’re already decked out with shirts from Eighty Sixed?
But they just ain’t giving you the real ESPORTS vibe cursing through your veins?

NEU is joining the lineup to give you some PRO GAMER Jerseys and Candyman themed hats!

You can even get your custom GAMERTAG printed onto the Lethal League Blaze Pro Jersey for the full experience: https://whatsneu.gg/collections/team-reptile

Want to win one of these Jerseys?

We have a giveaway running on twitter that ends 7 April 2020 18:00 CEST!

Dropping the Dice

The Dice DLC outfits are on steam!

What got him wrapped up like that? Read on:

When Dice was caught by the Shine City Police in the Sewage Facility he was forced to make his escape by dropping straight down into the pipes. Now, the Sewage Facility doesn’t just contain simple waste water. Full of unspeakable toxins and experimental bacteria, Dice soon lost consciousness. Some time passed and in a stroke of luck, Latch detected his lifeless body on his Robo-Sub’s sonar. While in Latch’s care, Dice bandaged his own diseased skin and quickly fled into the darkness as if possessed by some primal instinct. He was spotted destroying his long time rival Doombox in a match not long after.

The alternate ‘cursed’ version of the Late Stage Illmatic is the Lethal Infection colorway:

Tournaments

The signups for Michigan Masters are well underway and we will have some player profile interviews of participants to share!

But, MIMAS2020 is not the only local tournament that weekend. If you can’t make it to Michigan, VOLAN in Knoxville is featuring Lethal League Blaze as well! It has both a singles and doubles bracket scheduled and we are chiming in with the Dice DLC as a prize for every winner. (one for the singles winner, two for the winning team)

WHERE?
1502 Cumberland Ave, Knoxville, TN 37916
UTK Student Union – Ballroom (map)

WHEN?
March 28th-29th 2020
Follow @utkesports to be notified about the exact schedule.

REGISTRATION
The venue itself is free!
Singles are $5
Doubles are $3

Sign up here and join their discord for more information

Native Linux!

And last but not least, the native Linux build finally arrives on the scene.

PERFECT VISION

We are sponsoring Lethal League Blaze as a main event at MICHIGAN MASTERS 2020: PERFECT VISIONand dropping a $300 pot bonus on it!

The prize pot will be further fueled by the event registration fee of $10 from every participant.

WHERE?
31500 Wick Rd, Romulus, MI 48174, USA
Right next to the Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport!

WHEN?
March 27th-29th 2020
Follow @MIMastersFGC to be notified about the exact schedule.

REGISTRATION
The $55 venue registration ends on March 1st!
It goes up to $65 for late registrations and $80 at the door.

Dice Wrappings!

The ‘Late Stage Illmatic’ and ‘Lethal Infection’ DLC outfits for Dice will come to Steam on February 21st.

Community Survey

We’ve been polling you on your opinions of Lethal League Blaze and character balance for over a year now. It’s time to share some results!

Since community opinions aren’t unanimous and the generated tier list has become even more crowded than before, we picked a format that reflects just how much agreement each placement has.

Normal distribution peaks for each characters placement between best and worst, cropped to the relevant range of good and average — the higher and sharper the peak, the more agreement there is!

What’s the verdict? As numbers alone don’t paint the whole picture, we looked through all text submissions as well (you can read some public responses here) and have already decided on two balance changes for an upcoming patch:

  • Grid is getting his bunt out of special back
  • Candyman will only gain 1 special bar from chaining the candyball

There are other changes to come. Expect more info when the Dice outfits are released!

As a bonus, this is the same chart using data from a year ago.

Dust and Ashes are on consoles!

The wait is over!

The Shadow Surge has arrived on consoles, including Dust and Ashes unlockable outfits ‘Secret King ‑ Iron Grip’ and ‘Anonymous Emperor’. And if that just ain’t enough, the DLC outfits ‘Master of the Mountain’ and ‘Master of the Plains’ are available for purchase as well.

Stay tuned for more!

Raptor: Heavyduty R. Evolution

Rev your engine!

The next DLC outfit is here!

And it comes with a story:

In an attempt to find out more about his past, Raptor tracked a piece of Rex Works equipment back to Citynetics, Shine City’s biggest construction company. After infiltrating the Citynetics factory with the help of Switch, he locked himself in one of the higher offices. Scrambling through some important documents, he noticed the names of the board directors. Reginald, Edgar and Xavier Saur. A loud bang erupted from the door. The guards had him cornered. Having lost his bat along the way, Raptor grabbed what gear he could find and mowed himself through the door.

As usual the pack has two variants:

  • The Heavyduty R. Evolution colorway. A bright overall with warning sign colors.
  • The Nightmare Survivalist colorway. A fever dream inspired monster look.

Get it on Steam here!