s&box

0.3

27 July 2026

Waves have developed personalities. From wave 10 they arrive SWARM, ARMOURED or FRENZIED, and from wave 45 they have started turning up in pairs, which the health and safety board has been notified about.
SPLITTING waves join at wave 20, once you have had a chance to get used to the idea of enemies at all. Splitting enemies divide when killed, because that is what division means, and they do it exactly once, because the alternative does not bear thinking about.
Bosses are now four separate individuals rather than one very large individual wearing different waves. Meet COLOSSON, THE DUPLICANT (halves itself, twice), THE BULWARK (a wall with opinions) and THE HARRIER (fast, armed, rude).
DODGERS have joined the roster. From wave 8, certain enemies have learned that standing still while being shot is a choice, and they have chosen otherwise. Your bullet arrives, they step sideways, and the arena prints MISS at you in a tone you will grow to resent.
THE VAULT has opened. Rebirthing now mints Wangs, a permanent currency that survives everything short of a hard reset, and the vault spends them on eight upgrades that never go away: head starts, ability points, better XP, harder numbers, thicker skin, richer rebirths, fatter dividends and luckier draws.
Rebirthing now unlocks things instead of only multiplying things. Tier 1 puts KEYSTONE nodes on the board — one node that scales damage, health, speed and XP at once. Tier 2 adds DIVIDEND nodes that pay out in Wangs. Every tier also lifts the value of every node you roll and quietly improves your ability draws.
Offline progress. Close the game and the numbers keep going without you, up to eight hours' worth, at a quarter of the rate you would have managed in person. The announcer will tell you what you missed.
An entirely new soundtrack, generated from nothing but arithmetic and regret. The menu drifts, the arena drives, and the boss theme is the arena theme after something has happened to it. No two notes were purchased from anybody.
Every sound effect has been rebuilt out of studio equipment. Shots are calculator keys, purchases are split-flap boards, warnings are relays, and levelling up is the sound a very old television makes when it is pleased with you.
THE WANGOPEDIA has been compiled. Every number, board node, opponent, champion, wave state and vault upgrade now has a file, and the files fill themselves in as you meet their subjects in person. Entries you have not encountered sit behind the static, refusing to comment.
Wangopedia files keep your personal record against their subject — how many times a number has been offered to you, how many of an opponent you have met, how many times a champion has been faced. Anything discovered since you last read the section wears a NEW chip until you have had a look at it.
SOUND controls have appeared on the MORE page. Music and effects are now separate dials, each with five settings and an OFF, so you may silence the studio computer without silencing yourself.

The board no longer goes quiet after wave 24. It has been made to keep introducing itself.
AUTO BUY has stopped hoarding. It was buying the cheapest node it could find, and since the four innermost rings all cost the same single point, it would fill all sixty-four of them before it would consider spending a second point on anything further out — where the numbers are, at time of writing, roughly twenty-five thousand times larger. It now works its way outward, buying breadth as it goes. Players who pressed the button were being quietly punished for it, which the studio regrets.
Auto-buy also explains itself. With a filter set and nothing matching next to you, it used to pocket your points in silence; it now says which filter is the problem, out loud, in front of everyone.
The tab bar is a row of proper illuminated console buttons rather than words painted on a strip, and the powerup counter now sits beside the word POWERUPS instead of hovering between two tabs claiming allegiance to neither.
The opening waves have been made survivable by an ordinary person holding an ordinary number. Previously wave 1 required approximately eleven seconds to defeat and approximately four seconds to lose to, which the mathematics department has confirmed is the wrong way round.
Losing to a boss now teaches you something. Whatever damage you managed to do is paid out as XP, so a wall you cannot yet climb becomes a wall you are visibly climbing, rather than a wall you are standing next to for the rest of your life.
Sentry Digit no longer stops at four. Each additional copy raises the cap by two, up to twelve, and they now arrange themselves in tidy rows either side of you and fire out of step so it sounds like a workforce rather than a single very loud one.

The old combat ambience has been retired. It has been replaced by actual music, which it had been impersonating for some time.