Patch Notes: Recent Balance Changes and Bug Fixes
A lot has happened behind the scenes over the past couple of weeks. This roundup covers Phantom Shift difficulty rebalancing, the massive Nutopia Republica v2.0 overhaul, a complete Battlegrounds visual upgrade, critical online status fixes, and the new site-wide light/dark theme system. Here's everything that changed.
Balance Changes
Balance Phantom Shift
- Hard difficulty recharge time reduced from 12 seconds to 5 seconds. The previous 12-second recharge window on hard mode was punishingly long, especially with faster enemy speeds. Cutting it to 5 seconds keeps hard mode challenging without making the shift ability feel useless.
- Player speed reduced from 4.0 to 3.5. This brings player movement more in line with the game's pacing. At 4.0, experienced players could outrun enemies without needing to shift at all, which defeated the core mechanic.
- Teleport range now scales with cell size. Previously, the shift range was a fixed pixel distance regardless of maze density. Higher-level mazes with smaller cells made shifts overpowered (clearing 3–4 cells at once). Range now scales proportionally so each shift covers a consistent number of cells.
Balance Nutopia Republica v2.0
- Tiered scoring enabled. NP rewards now use the full tier system: Newcomer (100 NP) through El Presidente (5,000 NP), based on your final score. Previously all completions awarded a flat amount.
- Four difficulty modes added. Sandbox, Easy, Standard, and Hard each adjust the starting conditions and challenge level. This replaces the one-size-fits-all difficulty that made the game either too easy or too hard depending on play style.
- Win condition defined. A proper win check now requires score > 0 with at least 1 election win. Previously the game had no formal win condition in the scoring system.
Phantom Shift Difficulty Reference
Easy: 3 shift charges, 7s recharge, 120s time limit. Medium: 2 charges, 9s recharge, 90s time limit. Hard: 1 charge, 5s recharge (was 12s), 75s time limit. Enemy speed scales from 0.66 (easy) to 0.95 (hard).
Major Updates
New Nutopia Republica v2.0 — Complete Overhaul
- 14 custom 3D building models replaced the old placeholder box geometry. Houses, apartments, farms, factories, schools, hospitals, police stations, parks, stadiums, town halls, and more now have distinct Three.js silhouettes.
- Day/night cycle adds visual atmosphere as your city evolves over in-game time.
- Policies and edicts system lets you make government-level decisions that affect your city's growth, happiness, and treasury.
- Adjacency bonuses reward strategic building placement — grouping compatible buildings gives production and happiness boosts.
- Milestones track major city achievements, from your first 10 buildings to reaching 1,000 citizens.
New Battlegrounds Visual Overhaul
- Perspective arena floor with CSS 3D depth, grid lines, atmospheric haze, and ambient particles for an immersive battle environment.
- Screen shake on damage and critical hits (normal: 0.35s, heavy: 0.45s).
- Impact particles burst from the target on hit — 8 to 14 particles per strike, color-matched to the attacking element type across all 25 element types.
- Victory confetti with 60 animated pieces on win, animated reward counters that count up from zero, and staggered reward entrance animations.
- Battle entry animation for 1v1 mode: companions slide in from opposite sides with elastic bounce, VS indicator flashes.
- Turn banner sweeps across screen for "YOUR TURN" / "ENEMY TURN" transitions.
New Light/Dark Theme System
- 63+ pages updated with a full light/dark theme toggle. Sun/moon button in the header for desktop, integrated into the hamburger menu on mobile.
- Three-tier CSS variable system in
styles.css: 45 shared brand colors, 25 dark-mode defaults, 25 light-mode overrides. Every component respects your theme choice. - Persistence via localStorage with system preference fallback. Your theme follows you across sessions and pages.
Bug Fixes
Bug Fix Online Status System
- Fixed beacon endpoint using wrong cookie name. The offline-detection beacon checked for
nupalz_tokenbut the auth system setsnupetz_token. SincesendBeaconcan't send Authorization headers, the cookie fallback was the only path — and it always failed silently. Users were never marked offline when closing their browser. - Added token-in-body authentication as a third auth path (header → body → cookie) so offline detection works reliably even when cookies are unavailable.
- Added 150-second stale presence detection. If a user's last heartbeat exceeds 150 seconds (2.5 missed intervals), they're automatically corrected to "offline." This catches browser crashes and network failures.
- Fixed logout not updating presence. The logout route now properly marks users offline instead of leaving them in an "online" ghost state.
- Fixed heartbeat recovery. If a user's status was stuck on "offline" but heartbeats were still arriving, the system now promotes them back to "online."
Bug Fix Battlegrounds: Copper Ore Icon
- Copper Ore drops now display the correct
fa-cubesicon instead of the genericfa-cube. Added a dedicatedgetLootIcon()function with specific icon mappings for 12 material types. - Common rarity icon color brightened from
#9ca3afto#c0c8d4with a subtle glow for better visibility.
Bug Fix Nutopia Republica v2.0.1
- Tutorial rewritten from a blocking modal overlay to a non-blocking spotlight system that highlights UI elements without preventing interaction.
- Road center-line orientation fixed — road markings now render correctly regardless of road direction.
- Three.js rendering fixes for building model display edge cases.
Quality-of-Life Improvements
QoL Practice Mode Removed
- Practice mode has been fully removed from all games. Every game now uses the standard 10 free submissions per day system. Need more plays? Extra submissions cost 1 PP each, charged at submit time.
QoL Website & Navigation
- Footer completely redesigned. Collapsed bar now has 8 quick links covering every area of the site (Battlegrounds, Companions, Dashboard, Marketplace, Community, About, Contact, Subscribe). Expanded footer restructured into 4 balanced columns: Play, Collect, Connect, and Legal.
- New pages: About, Contact, and Cookie & Storage Policy pages added.
- Legal pages fixed: Canonical URLs corrected, specialized contact emails added (legal@, privacy@, support@), and header/sidebar scripts properly loaded.
- Homepage cinematic enhancements: Staggered bounce-in animations, scroll-triggered reveals, animated stat counters, shooting star effects, and rainbow section glow separators. All animations respect
prefers-reduced-motion.
Change Summary
| Area | Change | Type |
|---|---|---|
| Phantom Shift | Hard recharge 12s → 5s | Balance |
| Phantom Shift | Player speed 4.0 → 3.5 | Balance |
| Phantom Shift | Teleport range scales with cell size | Balance |
| Nutopia Republica | v2.0: 14 3D models, day/night, policies | Major Update |
| Nutopia Republica | 4 difficulty modes + tiered scoring | Balance |
| Battlegrounds | Arena depth, particles, shake, confetti | Visual |
| Online Status | Beacon auth + stale detection fixed | Bug Fix |
| Theme System | Light/dark toggle across 63+ pages | New Feature |
| All Games | Practice mode fully removed | QoL |
| Website | Footer, about, contact, cookies pages | QoL |
What's Next
We're continuing to refine game balance and polish the overall experience. If something feels off or could be better, that feedback helps shape what we work on next. Every update gets us closer to the platform we're building.
Jump Back In
All changes are live now. Check out the new Nutopia Republica, try Phantom Shift on hard mode, or just toggle to light theme and see the difference.
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