Dodging while charging - dashing now cancels the charged punch. The dash still happens, the charge is lost. Charging used to cost nothing: you could dash in circles, invulnerable, while it filled, and that made the charged punch free.

Charged spin - keep holding the charged punch and the spin speeds up with every turn. The damage is the same; it just looks like it means it.

Parry window - the attack marker's edge is thin now, and it triples in width when the parry window opens, so the moment to press stands out by contrast. Earlier entries said nothing told you when to press; the edge was always there, it just didn't stand out.

Parry or block - a parry used to look almost exactly like a block: the same gold underline under the word, the same short flash on the chicken. Now PARRY comes up bigger and wider spaced, in white over a bone underline, and the chicken's body stays lit more than twice as long as it does on a block. Gold still means you blocked; bone means you beat the attack.

Learning the engine - I am learning s&box while making this game, and most of this update is what I learned about where the work should happen. A lot of what the game used to build while you played is now prepared in the editor or loaded before the title: the waves and the sardines' swimming moved to the graphics card, the attack markers are drawn by a shader, and the sardines that fill the stands when a boss falls arrive in small steps instead of all in one frame. The game already ran well. What you should notice is that the moments that used to stutter, a boss falling, an attack being announced for the first time, a sound playing for the first time, don't anymore.

Hit stop - a hit now slows the world down instead of freezing it.

Boxing bell - 8 dB quieter, and now it sits under the music. It rings at the start of every round, when a boss gets back up, on every unlock and on the win, and a player's review said it was too loud. It was. Everything else is 2 dB quieter too, evenly.

Loading - the game no longer does all its warm-up work in one frame. Everything that has to be prepared before the first punch is now spread out, a little per frame, so the hitch you could feel while the title was up is gone. Nothing about the fight changed; it just gets there more smoothly.

Queen Mermati - now keeps you at more than twice the distance, 130 instead of 60. She plants herself far away and sings from there. Getting close to her is now the fight. Try it and tell us.

Queen Mermati - sings sooner and over a smaller area, and gets back up with more health. Less time to leave, less distance to cover.

Retriever Seal - its pounce reaches twice as far, starts from closer, and is now its favourite move by a wide margin. It is, after all, a retriever. It also slides twice as far when you hit it, and gets back up in half the time.

Orca Nostra - no longer gets knocked back when you hit her at all. Same update, same number, opposite ends: the seal skids and the orca is nailed to the floor. You will notice.

Thinking - Queen Mermati, Officer Javier Miguel and Orca Nostra decide what to do next a fifth to a quarter faster.

Big attacks - the bosses pick them about twice as often, and they come back sooner: the tackle, the breach, the torpedo and Queen Mermati's wave wait a third to a half less between uses.

Orca Nostra's torpedo - you used to see it coming from across the ring. It now comes twice as often, and it no longer needs the distance: it can start right on top of you. That is not a bug. It is Orca Nostra. The same goes for Officer Javier Miguel's tackle.

Combo - takes 20% less time from the first kick to the last spin.

Dash - covers twice the distance. It was a step; now it gets you out.

Charged punch - 65 to 81 damage. Once the combo got faster, mashing paid better than charging, and the charged punch is the big, still bet of someone who won't dance. It should pay like one.

Top speed - at the top of the score ladder the whole fight ran at triple speed. It is 2.4 now: still fast, but you can see what is hitting you.

Parry sound - a short frying-pan hit. The parry on a red attack, the hardest read in the game, used to sound lower and duller than the one on a gold attack, and both cut off mid-ring. Now the red one is the hit as it is and the gold one sits three semitones lower, so the harder read sounds sharper. The tail stops at 0.22s so no metallic note is left hanging.

Sardine jump - you can dodge it now. From take-off to landing it took 0.41s; reacting takes about a quarter of a second and the dash needs 0.18 more to get you out, so it asked for 0.43. It now takes 0.46. The warning before the jump starts exactly where it did. The jump also flies slower, 217 units per second instead of 242, so you can actually see the arc.

Score and fight text - the score is bigger, and PARRY, HIT, the boss's name and its health read clearly over the sand and the sea.

Sardine school – opens with 164,500 instead of 282,000, since only bosses from the last lap add to it now

Framerate – the game ran at 36 FPS from round 5 onward, on every PC. The sea is now read once per frame instead of ~46,000 times: 29.3 ms per frame down to 18.6

Guarding – no longer freezes the game on every hit. Getting hit freezes half as long; the parry still freezes longest

Sardine jump – ring sardines leap to where you were standing and land there. They don't steer in the air, so moving makes them miss

Standing still – punching in place no longer swats every sardine mid-jump

Combo – takes 20% less time from the first kick to the last spin

Dash – covers twice the distance. It was a step; now it gets you out

Charged punch – 65 to 81 damage. The big, still bet should pay like one

Repeat bosses – bosses that come back re-emerge, reset their pose and AI, and in rounds 9–12 spawn already risen

Sardine school – no longer bites or charges while a boss is entering or while you're reviving