s&box

0.5

23 October 2026

Areas

13 changes in this update

Sardine counter - the HUD now counts the sardines you have beaten. It used to count the ones left, and a number that drops to zero reads like a countdown, so it never made it onto the screen. Now it only goes up. It shows from round 5, when the school gets into the ring, and steps aside in the final round.

Loading screen - the game now loads behind a loading screen with a progress bar, and the title only comes up once everything is ready. The four bosses' sounds load there too; before, each one loaded the first time it played, in the middle of a fight.

Gameplay

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.

Under the hood

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.

Gameplay

Charged punch on a gamepad - the heavy button now counts as charging from the moment you press it. For the first fifth of a second the ring already showed it charging, but a dodge didn't cancel it.
Stacked sardines - sardines that piled up on each other in the ring never came apart, and the pile followed the chicken around. Now a pile that gets too tall comes apart on its own, spilling into the free spots next to it without chasing you, and never onto a spot an attack marker covers. With the ring full a few piles still form close to the chicken, far fewer than before.

Visuals

Sardines out of step - the whole school in the ring hopped up and down in perfect unison, like one animal. Each sardine now keeps its own rhythm, the way the stands already did. And when the chicken gets hit, the stands' cheer, the wave and the jump, now runs through the crowd instead of going off all at once.
Marks in the sand - when the Retriever Seal and Orca Nostra slam the sand, the hit leaves a mark now, right where the blow lands. It was meant to be there from the start and never showed up.

Bosses

Orca Nostra's breach - she used to land well away from the red circle that announces where she will fall, so the warning didn't help you dodge. Now she flies to the marked spot in the last stretch of the wind-up and lands in the middle of it, and the damage, the sand and the mark all come from that point. If she jumps twice in a row, each jump aims at where you were when that jump was announced.
Orca Nostra's turn - most of her jumps already left facing the spot she was aiming at, but now and then one took off sideways. Now she turns toward the red circle while she is still on the sand, and turns faster on her second phase so she doesn't run out of time. Turning doesn't move the circle, the moment to dodge or the damage.

Learning the Ropes