Levelhead is a community game at its heart. The thing that makes it special isn't just the game - it's the unique collection of people who play it.

Today we'd like to cast a special spotlight on some select members of the Levelhead community, as we congratulate them for being the first cohort of Levelhead Paragons. You may have seen their names in previous spotlights - and for good reason!


A Paragon is a model of excellence. As Levelhead has grown since the start of Early Access, there have been several community members whose contributions to both the game and the community have gone above and beyond anything we anticipated. And, on top of that, they've been enduring sources of positivity for the community as a whole.

Beginning today, the following community members have been given a special role as Paragons on Discord, displaying their radness for all to see.

• Quantum Anomaly - for streaming to the Steam store page during our launch weekend and for pushing the boundaries of Levelhead's creative tools such that his creations have inspired others.
  
• 9joao6 - for pushing us, as a team, to further embrace the Contraption aspect of Levelhead, and providing us memorable highlight material in the form of Pokemon, an Arcade, and the first Levelhead Calculator
  
• RetrophileTV - for creating the Speedrunner's Guild and evolving it over time with deeper systems and a sustainable community-run model. May you ever be fleet of foot.
  
• Popdonk Baggycool - for creating the one and only Levelhead level review site and guiding new level creators in making better and better levels. Butterscotchrecommends
  
• Cprice - for starting the Levelcup community building competition (first challenge is still accepting levels) and pushing the dev team toward an open API for Levelhead.
  
• Trillionaire - for creating video of all campaign levels and keeping them up to date amidst all the changes of Early Access.

Thanks to all of you for making the Levelhead community what it is. We seriously can't wait to grow the game alongside you and see who else joins you in the hallowed halls of the Paragons!




Y'all have been suggesting we try out Parsec with Levelhead to see if it works well for online play. WELL, I'm pumped to say that we gave it a whirl from our homes last night and found it worked beautifully. For those who want to play Levelhead co-op but don't have someone nearby, grab Parsec and hop in the discord to fish up a friend to play with! (This has also been added to the Steam FAQ)


This week the community closed in on over 3 months of playtime on user-created levels, and more than 1500 levels published! We've got a handful of level highlights that made us go WOAAAAAAH, including our first Co-Op level highlight!




Using Parsec, Seth and I dove into this cave (bookmark)as a pair of rascals and emerged as a pint-sized Seal Team 6. It requires teamwork, precision, and very few mistakes. Kudos to MarioBoo for making such a solid co-op level. Grab a friendo and go for it!

BG's level playthrough is straight-up exhilarating to watch. You can bookmark it here: https://lvlhd.co/+jh5fcxd




In the spirit of Trap Adventure, Sephy created Unfortunate Adventure (bookmark). This one had me busting up in stitches as every single move I made was instantly rebuffed by a surprising, painful death. It's a troll level, but one that is remarkably sticky and fun to stumble through.




Recreating the Mission Impossible (bookmark) theme using boomboxes is impressive enough, but designing an entire level to feel like you're pulling off a heist - complete with slow descent package-grab - put this level by Stratonian over the top.




Contraptions are one of our favorite parts of Levelhead. Using the randomness generated by portals, TalkGibberish managed to recreate the classic memory game Simon Says as Vacrat See, Vacrat Do (bookmark)! Each run presents a different memory challenge, and the finale lets you do a fly-by of the off-screen logic required to make the contraption go.

It's been a whirlwind of a week over here, with more levels, more players, and more updates in the works. Thanks for playing and have a great weekend!

It's been a BOMBASTIC week here at Bscotch HQ! We have some big features cooking, but we still managed to squeeze in one or two teeny tiny changes into the game this week. Nothing major. You know... no big deal. Our focus for this patch was to give players more control over the general mood of their levels, and to take care of some higher-leverage things that we've been wanting to take care of for a long time. Let's dive in!


Have you ever thought, "Oh dang, it'd be great if I could make the music in my level get really intense during a boss fight!" Or, "I wish I could make this part of my level more relaxed"? Well, now you can, with the power of the JUKEBOX! Just drop this little buddy in your level, and activate it at any time using a switch for a dramatic mood shift!



You can have as many Jukeboxes in your level as you want. We've also made two new songs available through the Jukebox: "Disaster Manager" and "Death Executive". These songs are pretty intense, so... use them sparingly. Or just go crazy. It's your level, you can do what you want!


Along with the ability to control the music in your level, we wanted to give you more control over the visuals of your level as well. So this week, we are releasing the weather options for the Tree of Maarla biome (Rain) and the Aquadunes biome (Snow).



Between this and the Jukebox, we're pumped to see a FLOOD of new levels with cool and interesting vibes!


YEP. You didn't misread that. It's a thing.



ALL RIGHT. This one will take some explaining. Our number one player request since the Early Access launch has been the ability to unpublish or delete levels that you have published. We pushed back against this, because we are planning out some features that will essentially cease to function if we can't count on levels... you know... existing.

For example, one feature we're hoping to implement down the road is something called "Playlists." The idea is to allow players to compile levels together into playlists, and share those playlists with each other. However, if you made a playlist, and then half the levels in your playlist just vanished (because their creators unpublished them), then the Playlist feature is essentially broken.

However, we realized that we could solve this problem by taking advantage of the fact that levels spend the first part of their lives in the Marketing Department. If we allow you to unpublish a level only if it's in the Marketing Department, then we can integrate all of these future features -- features that rely on your level being permanent -- into the Tower. So, another way to think of it is, the Marketing Department is a pretty volatile place, where levels are popping in and out, while the Tower is a permanent archive.

A fair warning, though: If you Revert a level back to the Workshop and then republish it, it is effectively a brand-new level.


It's graduation week! And you know what that means. It means it's time to do a BETTER JOB of celebrating your levels when they graduate to the tower! Or at least, saying something about it.



Now, in the "My Levels" tab of the Marketing Department, you can see a list of your five most recent levels that have graduated to the Tower. You can even copy their share codes from there, in case you want to pass them around to your buddies!


We've got a whole bunch of other great improvements this week, all in the patch notes below! Oh, and be sure to read the part about Cromblers. That's going to be... something.




See the full patchnotes.

New Features

Workshop

• You can now revert your Marketing Department levels back to the Workshop, by visiting the "My Levels" tab. Any level reverted to the Workshop will be unpublished. All of its Exposure Bucks will lost, its stats and records will be lost, and its Lookup Code will cease to function. Effectively, the next time you publish it, it is a new level. Alternatively, you can just delete the level once it has been reverted into your Workshop, using the normal Workshop level deletion method. Once a level graduates to the Tower, it can no longer be reverted.

New Item

• Introducing the JUKEBOX! You can use it to change the music in the middle of a level. Jukeboxes are invisible during gameplay (like camera anchors), and they require being activated by a switch.

Improvements

Campaign

• Campaign levels with Bumpers have been updated to fit with the new Bumper physics a little better.
  
• New Badge "Hyper Reactive" in the forest region. This badge contains the Jukebox, the song "Disaster Manager" (for the Jukebox), and the Proximity Switch, which has been moved up from later in the campaign.
  
• New Badge "Downpour" in the forest region. This badge contains rain.
  
• New badge "Leadership Training" is now available after achieving 100% on Nope Cart. This badge contains the song "Death Executive" for the Jukebox.
  
• The badge "True Grit" has been renamed "Wind Chill," which gives the Snowstorm weather effect for Aquadunes levels.
  
• "Sandstorm" weather is now available after beating Dune Doom Dream.
  
• Firefall is now an Aquadunes-biome level.
  
• The Jukebox system for changing music mid-level has been integrated into more campaign levels, including Mad Vacrat Nest, Be Sneaky, Swoopadoop Gulch, The Way is Through, A Quick Delivery, Pow Pow Magic, and That's an Incredible Gr-18.

Gameplay

• Updated physics of wall jumping and bumpers to be more responsive to your control inputs, so you don't "drift" in midair when you don't want to.
  
• Bumpers now knock targets away in 8 directions (45 degree increments) instead of down to the single degree. This should make Bumpers more predictable and easier to play with.
  
• Cromblers now trigger pressure plates. (thanks to QuantumAnomaly)
  
• Pressure plates have had their detection width increased slightly, so they should detect blocks and objects toward their edges more easily.

Editor

• Added new words to the Name Combobulator: Sky, Space, Star, Hear, Arcade, Game, Listen, Deep, Change, Spend, Buy, Sell, Win, Lose, Forget, Trigger, Boom, Plateau, Island, Cavern, Cliff, Rain, Storm, Thunder, Blizzard, Blues, Play, Little, Bail
  
• Added the verb "Stop" to the name combobulator.
  
• Sproings can now be placed inside Brittle Rock, Prize Blocks, Enemies, and Hard Clay. (thanks to QuantumAnomaly)
  
• Cromblers can now be given a Receiving Channel, so they can listen to switches. (thanks to QuantumAnomaly)
  
• Cromblers can now have their cooldown customized in their properties.
  
• The minimum cooldown on Cannons and Lookannons has been reduced to 0.5 seconds, down from 1 second.

Web

• Logging in to Rumpus clears all previous timestamps for web operations, so you should be able to sync data more reliably after a login.
  
• Your Stolen Crowns now come in more reliably from the web, so you will be notified in-game fairly quickly after someone steals one of your crowns. Under the previous system, many stolen crowns were falling through the cracks. This change is not reverse-compatible, so you may end up seeing some different levels in your stolen crowns list than were there before, while others may be missing. Don't be alarmed! We're just cinching things up.
  
• Created a notifications checker system that will be able to more reliably pull down stolen crowns, and will know when levels you have made have graduated to the tower.

Workshop

• The Daily Build level list now shows all of the most recently-published Daily Build levels, instead of only the levels published that match today's build.
  
• There is no longer a limit on how many levels you can have in your workshop.

UI

• When you hover over a Rumpus lookup code on a player's profile page, it now changes color to indicate that you can click on it.
  
• Added a section to the "My Levels" part of the Marketing Department, to list your most recently-graduated levels that have been moved the tower.
  
• The number of coins in a level is now displayed in the top-right corner of the screen, even on player-made levels. (thanks to OneOfThreeNames)

Fixes

Gameplay

• Fixed an issue where if you pressed jump right after coming off of a wall slide, your wall jump would send you straight up instead of off the wall.
  
• When you are hanging on a ceiling but going super fast (like after being shot out of a Blaster), it should now be much easier to get your speed under control. (thanks to Cammymoop Mowvary)
  
• You can now acquire coins and other pickups while inside a Blaster. (thanks to Egietje)
  
• Gently placing an object down on the ground will now put that object at your center, instead of weirdly off to the side.
  
• If a guided missile cannon was attached to a switch and was active right at the start of a level, the first missile would always shoot to the right. This has been fixed.
  
• Fixed some issues with collision detection of invisible Prize Blocks.
  
• The package will now trigger invisible prize blocks when it hits them from the correct angle.
  
• If you grab a Flingo after being fired out of a Blaster, you will regain control of your character.
  
• When Cromblers attached to switches start in an "On" state at the beginning of a level, they should no longer have a weird smear frame on their eyeball while the level is starting.

UI

• Fixed an issue where the marketing department would continue to flash to notify you that you have a new graduated level, even if you've already seen the level.
  
• Choosing tags no longer resets your sorting and filtering dropdown menu selections in the Tower.
  
• Fixed the display of the Joystick Deadzone setting to always show percentages.
  
• Fixed an issue where the name of a recent level graduate could overlap with the plays counter.
  
• Fixed an issue where the marketing department would keep telling you that you had a recently-graduated level, even though you've already seen it.
  
• You can now skip the Made with Game Maker splash screen with a controller by pressing Start.

Web

• Updated cooldown for notifications checking to 3 minutes.
  
• Made level reversion more robust and less prone to errors.
  
• Made the level publisher system more robust, to avoid problems with uploading stages and catch more failure cases.
  
• When you go to change your name, the game will load in your Levelhead alias instead of your Rumpus alias as the default.
  
• Made the save syncer more reliable in the event that you have to log back in after your credentials expire.

Editor

• Fixed some issues with entering numbers outside of bounds on the item properties Numpad. You can now enter whatever you want, but in the properties window it will be bounded by the min and the max.

Controls

• You now have to move the mouse 2 pixels or more to switch from Gamepad mode to Mouse mode, instead of 1 pixel. Some users have misbehaving mice that wiggle by a pixel every now and then, and this was pulling them out of Controller mode.

Loading

• Fixed an issue with loading of files containing non-ASCII characters, that would result in odd results being shown in search results from time to time.

It's the building competition to end all building competitions! The Levelcup is a community-run creative competition, wherein players build levels, submit them to the contest, and can then win prizes.

WHO IS TO BLAME FOR THIS? Cprice, of course. He dug into the API that powers Levelhead and reverse-engineered it to be able to scrape level data from our servers. After a quick chat with us to make sure he wasn't going to get himself permabanned for his cleverness, we decided this is pretty rad and something we'd love to support, if only in a technical capacity. While we don't yet have an open API, which would make constructing things like this easier in the future, this has placed that target steadily on our radar.

If you want to participate, go check it out!




Youtuber Ceave, known for his exploration of the finer mechanics of Super Mario Maker, took our title for a spin and compiled a video of the 5 things Super Mario Maker can learn from Levelhead. Seeing someone who so thoroughly got what we're trying to do was great to see... and it brought a fresh wave of players into the game, making us hit our highest concurrent player count ever! WAHOOO!




I saw The Danger Swing bookmark in the discord, stared at it for a few minutes, and couldn't fathom how the heck it worked. It turns out that if you put multiple Spike Chainers on a path, then set the path to STOP when objects reach the end, you can stack them up and make intricate, horrfiying designs. Thanks for teaching me something, Cammymoop!

P.S. - if you see this in the campaign you all know who to blame




Every so often we see a bug that makes us think - is that really a bug, or is it just an accidental feature? In GR-18 the Light Machine bookmark, Anihilator uses batteries and the power of Valhalla to make us feel like Thor. The old Thor though, not the one from Avengers: End Game.




The Path Style can be used not just for paths, but also for decor! In Popjaw City Rush bookmark, Pure Knickers builds a great feeling city, complete with a cable bridge.

• The Speedrunner's Guild, run by RetrophileTV, got some process improvements with a form for submitting levels for consideration, and a Season concept to bracket out the runs. Get involved over on the discord!
  
• Popdonk's level review blog completed its first Weekly Challenge - dig in and bookmark levels till you burst!
  
• In an homage to arcade games of old, Bmiclock's Blopfush Bop 4 bookmark had us thinking about quarters and game tickets.
  
• SleetSdf93's Puzzle Escape bookmark level is a beautifully short puzzle that'll have you scratching your noggin'
  
• Sarcastrophe's Ouch, That Wild Tower bookmark restored karmic balance to the world by making me play a Dune Doom Dream-like level
  
• Enzonaki's Bomba Do Suco De Maracujoia bookmark teaches a new mechanic - lateral bomb jumps!

Until next week!

-Sam

It's been a busy week! Sam ran off gallivanting in San Diego, leaving the rest of us to fend for ourselves while he basked in the gray skies and luscious rainstorms. Without his guidance, we had to just make up a bunch of stuff and hope for the best. Is this how you game dev?


This week we're introducing the LECTROSHIELD as a new workshop item! When you touch it, lightning surges through your body, and any enemies you touch -- even bosses -- are instantly sent to a farm upstate. It's really far away. You know what? Don't even worry about that part.




Now, we wouldn't be so stingy as to give you a new Lectroshield without giving you a seemingly endless number of enemies to use it on. The time was right, so alongside the Lectroshield, we're introducing the ROBO FACTORY! It's a spawner that can summon different types and sizes of enemies. It can even be hooked up to switches and paths!



We're a little uncomfortable pondering what kinds of horrifying contraptions people are going to make with these, so we just won't!


We have a TON of optimizations for the editor this week. In our tests, we saw extremely large and complex levels go from 15 frames per second in the editor to over 200 frames per second. Building giant levels has never been easier! Just kidding, it's just as hard as it ever was. But now it's smooth!


This is fine. Frame-rate wise. Morally, it is not fine.


See the thing is, we got this Item Properties window. You can use it to tweak all kinds of stuff. Want to point a blaster somewhere? How about setting a portal color? We got you! At least, we had you. Right up until your fingers went numb from clicking a billion arrows a billion times.

When you've got numb fingers, you need numb solutions! Introducing the NUMB PAD!



Now you can click on the numbers for certain properties to summon a Numpad, and type exactly the value you want. Aside from being much faster to use, this also makes it possible to set values that were previously unreachable. For example, you can now tell a blaster to spin at 3 degrees per second, where previously, you could only change it in 90 degree increments.

We also squeezed in some extra quality of life features to the properties window, including visual dividers so you can better parse what you're looking at, and Receiver/Sender numbers that gray out when they aren't connected to anything. IT'S MAGICAL!


That's all we've got this week! OH WAIT... No it's not. Patch notes below!



See the full patchnotes.

New Features

New Item

• You can now use the "Robo Factory" in the workshop once you unlock it in the campaign. The Robo Factory is an enemy generator object that can continue respawning enemies, and can be attached to switches and paths.
  
• You can now use the "Lectroshield" in the workshop once you unlock it in the campaign. The Lectroshield is a temporary powerup that causes you to become electrified. While electrified, you are impervious to damage from direct contact with enemies, and any enemy you touch is instantly blasted into oblivion with powerful lightning bolts.

Campaign

• New levels have been added to the campaign to unlock the Lectroshield and the Robo Factory.

Controls

• Added a new setting where you can change the deadzone of your controller's joystick. By default it is 20% (which is what it was), but you can now set it between 10% and 80%. (thanks to Morrison)

Editor

• You can now manually edit the values of some item properties. Available properties have a button next to their number. Clicking the button will pop open a numpad, which you can use your controller or mouse to click, or you can type numbers using your keyboard. This is the first iteration of this feature, so it is subject to change quite a lot (functionally and visually), but we wanted to get it into people's hands early to get feedback. This will also allow you to give values to some item properties that were previously not possible. For example, you can now tell a blaster to rotate at 13 degrees per second, where previously you could only change it in 90 degree/second intervals.

Improvements

UI

• The tower no longer has "Past Day" filters, but instead has "Past Week", "Past Month", and "All Time". It defaults to "Past Month."
  
• The Tower now defaults to sorting levels by "Newest" instead of "Most Played." Having a Most Played list is great for finding good content, but bad for finding fresh content. Sorting by "Most Played" is still an option in the dropdown.
  
• Added new sort options to the Tower: Least Played, Most Played, Easiest, Hardest, and Spicy. What are Spicy levels? They are levels that have a lot of spice.
  
• Updated the "Claim guest save" prompt to have it better explain how claiming a save works. (thanks to rednos)
  
• Updated the Level Creation interface to better match the Workshop interface.

Web

• Newly-published levels will store their size and weather in their metadata, for future uses.
  
• Added logging to failed login attempts. Logs will be output to a text file for easier debugging.
  
• Updated the daily build checker to have a 10-minute cooldown, so it doesn't check too frequently.

Editor

• Added faded divider lines between rows in the Item Properties window, to more easily connect properties to values at a glance.
  
• When you enter values into the Properties Window numpad, it will now auto-update the item's property value in real time, instead of requiring you to press "OK". if you enter values outside the min or the max, the value will shake and will not be accepted.
  
• When assigning Sending/Receiving Channels in the Item Properties window, the channel ID will be greyed out if there is no current connection in that channel.
  
• Added color-coding to the "Any/All Active/Inactive" text in the item properties window, to make it easier to parse.
  
• Renamed "Switch ID" to "Sending Channel" and "Receiver ID" to "Receiving Channel" to make it more clear what is happening.
  
• Removed the numpad spawning buttons that were in between the arrows. Instead, you can just click on the number to summon the numpad (where applicable). The buttons everywhere were messing with horizontal alignment, making it hard to visually parse values.
  
• When you place a portal, it now takes on the color of the highest-ID portal, as well as auto-incrementing the ID.
  
• The Editor will now remember your zoom state between plays. (thanks to Choyawp Cehappy)
  
• Added words to the Name Combobulator: Shop, Market, Awe, Thrilling, Operation, Almost, Barely, Methodical, Revenge, Thaw
  
• Added the ampersand ("&") symbol to the puncuation list in the Name Combobulator. (thanks to QuantumAnomaly)
  
• Added "Choice" tag to the editor, for levels that feature some kind of meaningful decision the player must make. (thanks to ThePatchWorkHoax)
  
• Renamed "Container Block" to "Prize Block", because... it's destiny. (thanks to RetrophileTV)
  
• Massively optimized numerous items in the editor. Levels that contain large numbers of these items will see frame rate boosts in the editor by 5x-15x. Items optimized: Spike Trap, Trigblaster, Blaster, Powered Gate, Camera Anchor, Whizblade, Battle Switch, Burny Whirler, Spike Chainer, Boombox, Package Cam, Purge Gate, Sky Wiggler, Charge Switch, Clockswitch, Flippy Longswitch, Jem Gate, Flingo, Jem Switch, Blopfush, Lookannon, Bumper, Swoopadoop, Eye Switch, Spinny Platform, Crombler, Cannon, Balloog, and Regret Gate.
  
• Updated how the editor handles wall-mounted items, to behave in a far more optimzed fashion. You should see the editor's performance improved on levels with a large number of Spike Traps, Levers, Lockswitches, Clockswitches, and Battery Switches.
  
• The Editor numpad now allows you to input "-" as the first character to type out a negative, instead of just having "-" invert the currently displayed number.
  
• Some visual improvements to the placement of buttons in the properties window with the new Numpad.
  
• Expanded the width of the properties window a bit on Full-Bodied UI mode, to give the text more breathing room.

Campaign

• Pow Pow Magic's arrows are now better placed to guide the player's first charge-jumps.
  
• Dang Sky Wiggler's final jump has been reworked to be less punishing.

Fixes

Editor

• The Editor now is instantly zoomed to the correct level when you exit play mode, instead of starting zoomed in and then zooming out.
  
• The enemy generator was allowing players to spawn enemies they hadn't unlocked yet in the campaign. This has been fixed!
  
• The numpad now goes away when the properties window goes away, such as when you open the Level Details page.
  
• Boombox sharps no longer move position in the item properties window when you change instruments.
  
• When you have a numpad open but click a modifier for a different property on the same item, the numpad will no longer get confused and update the wrong property.

Gameplay

• Turned off the gamepad rumble from Blasters, since they are currently the only thing in the game that uses rumble. Rumble will be added back in later!
  
• It should now seriously be impossible to get stuck in the space between two closed doors that are adjacent to each other. This will now lead to GR18's death, for real this time.
  
• Enemy drops should now properly restore at checkpoints, instead of always turning into Blopsacks when you pick them up after a checkpoint respawn. (thanks to Retro Banana Man NL)
  
• Lizumis will now only bounce violently off a wall if they have their spikes out.
  
• Extended the cooldown on re-entering the same blaster by 1 frame. In some cases, players were re-entering the blaster they were fired from right as they exited it, trapping them... forever.
  
• Fixed an issue where collision masks of Rifts were larger than apprpriate, and offset to the side somewhat.
  
• Fixed an issue with throw blocks now being 1 pixel too tall.

Web

• Fixed YET ANOTHER issue with retrieving page 2 and beyond of stored lists in your profile!
  
• Pages 2 and beyond in your Favorites and Bookmarks lists should now properly display their contents. (thanks to Popdonk Baggycool, Zivix)
  
• The searcher should more accurately restore your bookmarks list when you return to it after playing a level inside it.
  
• The Daily Build updater should now stay up-to-date more reliably with the day's build. It shouldn't ever be more than a half-hour out of sync. (thanks to Reallyzamma Etkayuppa)
  
• Fixed an issue where, in rare cases, Rumpus would think an old file is up-to-date when it isn't, and then not download. (thanks to Retro Banana Man NL)

Visuals

• Removed the 1px gap that sometimes appears when GR18 is standing on top of a package.

Campaign

• The Armor in "That's a New Crisis" should now appear at the correct time.

UI

• You will no longer see multiple columns of levels in the Marketing Department if you are using an ultrawide monitor. (thanks to ROUS)

Developer

• It is no longer possible to publish levels on the public server that contain work-in-progress items.

Data

• Fixed a problem with saving/loading of the player save file that was causing the Beaten Levels list to load improperly, which was making save syncs not function.

It's been another week in Levelhead land, and things are GETTING WEIRD over here. This week saw the release of the Daily Build feature, which has already spawned a cascade of wacky levels.



Right out of the gate, Popdonk Baggycool (@6rad6u) took it upon himself to turn the Daily Build into a COMMUNITY CHALLENGE! Popdonk's challenge: Utilize the Daily Build to create a level that is themed around the adverb "Reasonably."

This challenge will last until Sunday, when levels will be submitted into a poll to be voted on by the community for favorite level. At the end of the voting phase the community favorite will receive a highlight on the Popdonk Blog, alongside another level that Popdonk recommends.

Want to participate? Submit your levels in the Bscotch Discord channel levelhead-sharecodes or in the Levelhead Subreddit Weekly Build Challenge thread. So git on out there and get building!


Do you want to be... the very best? Now you can, thanks to Joe Ah Oh's (@2x7lcg) level Pocket Buddy!



This level simulates a battle in the style of the early Pokemon games, using Levelhead objects to create health bars, a creature selection screen, and a real turn-based battle system. As is common in a Joe Ah Oh contraption, Joe left an opening at the end of the level so you can inspect how the machine works. Let's peek behind the curtain!



A combination of balloogs, throw blocks, switches, and rifts allow for the battle buddy selection.



Crates on conveyor belts hit pressure plates to manage the battle options.

Although we could go on about the intricacies of this incredible level ALL DANG DAY, you can just check it out for yourself! And if you've been interested in making music in Levelhead, Joe even managed to recreate the battle music using Boomboxes!




Get that ancient ruins heist feel without leaving your house, in the level "Explore the Hidden Temple" (qbxn1z9)! This level is a suitable challenge for all skill levels, with a bit of treasure hunting, falling traps, and puzzles. With almost 24 full hours of playtime generated across 1400 attempts, this level is bound to become a classic. Bookmark the level here, and be sure to give Sjosz (@rswljz) a subscribe!




Short, simple, and forgiving! Moogthedog (@26kmgd) throws together a variety of interesting elements in "Bad Jump? No Problem!" (zq9rkjt) without punishing the player. It’s almost as if... you must throw yourself onto the spikes to progress... but we’re not fooling anyone here. We died on the spikes even without even trying!


The early days of Levelhead saw the birth of the Speedrunners Guild led by RetrophileTV. Not to be outdone, Quantum Anomaly (@ya0lqh) has taken up the mantle and formed the very first Levelhead Builders Guild! Members of the Bscotch Discord have declared their allegiances via carefully-selected emojis tacked on to the end of their names.



What guild will we see next? Speed-builders? Campaign trotters? Slow-slappers? The Emoji Wars... have begun.


BUT WAIT! Before you go... Here are some of the highlight levels of the week!


ngspr55 | "Waylay Temple Of Spike Block" by spooderdooder @0kqn33 | Precarious, Waylay, Paths


n0h9n3j | " 6 Golden Gate Hurtle" by Ant @k1bhyn | Beginner-Friendly, Switch-Heavy, Well-Paced

d7061lq | "Just Move The Flyblock" by Misery @5djb5j | Puzzling, Complex, Switch-Heavy

gvx2gxc | "A Small Bumper Run" by Shaggath @4mgftc | Casual, Powerups, Quick

cm6q0dw | "A Mysterious Puzzle Box?" by Cammymoop @cgm03g | Puzzling, Secrets, Complex

b9c23gg | "Squad Level Episode 1" by spooderdooder @0kqn33 | Complex, Powerups, Secrets


This week's Community Spotlight was compiled by Christine Schaper and edited by Seth Coster.

Hey, Levelheads! Seth the Game Programmer here, bringing you another week of SEISMIC CHANGES!

As we've been lurking around the community, listening to player feedback, and hoovering up player reports like a supercharged Roomba, our focus shifted this week to some of the broader game systems, integrating them together better, and building out new web features. Let's get in there!


The HOT NEW FEATURE coming down the pipe today is the DAILY BUILD!



The Daily Build is a recurring event where our wild internet robot picks 5-9 random items as the "Featured Items" of the day. When you create a Daily Build level, you can use only the featured items, plus a default set of level elements. The featured items will be usable in the Daily Build even if you haven't unlocked them in the campaign.

The Daily Build is a fun exercise for veteran level builders to operate under a new set of constraints, and it also allows newer players to toy around with level elements they may not have unlocked yet. It's a win for everyone!


One of the ways musicians learn to play new songs is to simply slow the song down and practice it at a more manageable pace.

Playing Levelhead is a lot like playing an instrument. There are a lot of nuances to learn over time, and you have to develop muscle memory to get really good at it. But for a lot of people, playing the song at full speed right out of the gate might not be feasible. We need to slow the song down a bit. So we added two tiers of accessibility modes!

Now, you can slow the game speed down by 10% or 20% if you need a little extra edge to get past a particularly daunting level or chunk of a level. You can even do this on player-made levels!



Bear in mind, though, that even though you can slow the gameplay down, the score timer will continue to run at normal speed. Just as how you wouldn't play a concert at 20% reduced speed, you won't be competitive for Scoreboards and Speed Boards with the game slowed down.


When you publish a level, after it has been played a bit in the Marketing Department, it graduates to The Tower. We originally envisioned the Tower as the place where you can find and search for high-quality levels of all kinds. It would be a place where you can always find the kinds of levels you want to play -- a sort of permanent archive of our players' Greatest Hits.



Our original design used "difficulty" as the primary categorization between levels. We divided levels up into "Floors" of the tower, and as you went up each floor, you found higher and higher difficulty of levels. This created one major problem: it became very hard to find what you wanted.

What if you want to find weird contraptions? Do you care what the difficulty rating is? Probably not! What if you want to find 2-player levels? Again, you may not care what the difficulty rating is. You may just want to see all of the 2-player levels, and shop around from there. Or maybe you want interesting levels that are built around the use of bombs, or a certain powerup. If you can only look at "Easy Bomb Levels" or "Hard Bomb Levels", but not just "Bomb Levels", then you're going to miss all kinds of great stuff!

In other words, our "divide up the levels by difficulty" concept was making the Tower almost useless. So we went back to the drawing board!

Now, when you visit the Tower, you will see all levels in the Tower by default (except unbeaten ones, which still have their own area). From there, you can choose to filter them down by difficulty, or by tags, or by number of players, or however else you want! You can also sort them by "Newest" or "Most Played", so you can look at the fresh stuff, or the greatest hits!



Overall, this should make the Tower far more useful, and the levels that live in the Tower should get a lot more attention.


Aside from the above, we packed in a bunch of quality of life improvements that we've been wanting to do for a long time. Here are the top three!


This one has been requested many times over, and with good reason. People want to be able to glance at a list of levels and know which ones they've beaten, so they can focus their efforts on the ones they haven't. This is a fair request, and we only put it off this long because... Well, people play a lot of levels. Storing thousands and thousands of levels that each player has beaten could turn out to be a huge problem for the game's stability. But, we thought, maybe there's a middle ground! We don't need to store every level you've beaten. Just the ones that matter right now!

So now, we store up to 200 of your most-recently-beaten levels, and we show this on the play button of the levels you're looking at.



Happy hunting!


We wanted to make it easier for creators with lots of subscribers to get their levels played. SO WE DID!

Now, when one of your Favorite Creators publishes a level, your profile icon will flash on the main menu. When you go to the Feed inside your profile, all the new levels from your Favorite Creators will have a glowy, purple border around them, as if to say, "Hey, buddy... Hey... I'm fresh. I'm exciting. Look. Look at my purple border. LOOK AT IT."




Our previous design didn't do a good job of letting players know precisely what they have to do to unlock certain things in the campaign. Sometimes you just have to beat a level, while other times you have to get all the coins. Sometimes you have to 100% multiple levels to unlock a thing. But if we aren't telling you that you have to do those things, you have to resort to just doing everything and hoping that one of those things unlocks that new item.

Well... NO MORE! At least, for the most part.



We've added SPACE LOCKS to the Badges that require something extra before they become available. Now, for any item you can see on your campaign map, you should have a much better sense of what is needed to get it. There are still plenty of secrets scattered around to keep things fresh, but this should help alleviate much of the confusion in the campaign.


We've got a WHOOOOLE bunch of changes, but I don't want to get carpal tunnel going through ALL of them. I've got a game to program! So check out the patch notes below, and we'll see you next week!




See the full patchnotes.

New Features

Web

• Added "Daily Builds Completed" stat to player profiles.

Accessibility

• There is now a setting that allows you to slow the game speed down to 80% or 90% of normal, for those who have difficulty with fast-twitch gameplay. Score times will still progress at normal speed, however, so if you want to be competitive on leaderboards, you will need to play at full speed.

UI

• We now store which levels you have beaten, and show this by displaying a check mark on the play button of the level. We store the 200 most recently-beaten levels, and we also infer which levels you have beaten if you are on the speed board or score board for those levels, or if you are the creator of the level. So there may be scenarios where you see a level that you beat a long time ago (over 200 beaten levels ago) that appears unbeaten, but that is only because it has fallen off your list and you don't hold any records on it. We can only store SO MUCH DATA! But this is a good start.
  
• The main menu UI will now do a better job of letting you know when new levels have been created by people you have subscribed to. When creators you are subscribed to make new levels, your profile button will flash on and off, letting you know that there's new stuff in your profile page. When you visit your feed, new levels that weren't there the last time you saw your feed will have a slight purple glow around them.

Editor

• There is a new setting that allows you to disable the default behavior of paths spawning a Flyblock at their starting node. (thanks to QuantumAnomaly)
  
• You can now use sharps for the Boomboxes. For those less acquainted with music, this means moving the note's pitch up a little bit, instead of all the way up to the next note. Bear in mind that not every note can be sharped, so a few of the notes will sound the same when you "sharp" them. The boombox will display a sharp symbol on it if the note is being sharped.

Campaign

• Campaign nodes that require you to earn 100% Jems, collect the GR-17, or collect all the bug pieces before they unlock, will now display this fact inside a housing that wraps around the locked node. The housing shows icons representing the things you need to obtain from the connected levels. Previously, we only had "purple paths" which indicated that you needed Jems, GR-17, or bug pieces, but it wasn't clear what combination of those things you needed. Now, it should be quite obvious!

Daily Build

• There is a new experimental feature in the Workshop called the Daily Build! Once per day, a small number of items are selected to be featured for the Daily Build. Creating a Daily Build level will restrict you to a set of basic items, plus the featured items of the day, for that level. You can use the featured items even if you have not unlocked them in the campaign. The goal of this system is to allow level-building veterans a chance to flex their creative muscles under a new set of constraints, and to allow new players to tinker with items that they may be a little ways off from unlocking yet.
  
• When you go to the Daily Build page, you will see a list of the most recent levels published for today's Daily Build.
  
• Levels published as part of the Daily Build will have a "Daily Build" icon permanently stamped on the level's card.
  
• The Daily Build featured items reset every day at 8AM UTC.

Improvements

Campaign

• Kronkrete Legend now has an additional checkpoint after the spikechainer farm (thanks to Beekie Boppaboop)
  
• Ice Therapy, Pow Pow Magic, and That's a New Crisis have been given a single piece of armor.
  
• Updated path colors in the campaign to make less confusing -- most notable, the "Red" path that stays red even after you've unlocked it.
  
• Several of the very early levels of the campaign have been tweaked to be more instructional and to reduce the chance of brand-new player getting lost.

Editor

• Added words to the Name Combobulator: Battle, Enemy, What.
  
• Dramatically improved performance in the editor when using a large number of coins and/or portals.
  
• Optimized saving of item properties in the editor, cutting down processing time by over 95% in most cases.
  
• Updated "Town" tag to "Shop", and added "Explore" tag.
  
• Added "Raceway" and "Town" tags for levels, inspired by the player levels "Traveler Town Trial" and "Ramshackle Race Way", which pushed the game in interesting new directions. (thanks to QuantumAnomaly, RetrophileTV)

UI

• Updated the Daily Build UI to be able to accommodate any number of items without having them go off the sides of the screen.
  
• Added rainbow color cycling visuals to the filigree surrounding the header in the tower.
  
• Added a sine wave animation to the Jems embedded in the Tower.
  
• Collapsed all floors of the tower into one room. It was too hard to find the levels you wanted, since they were split across all floors of the tower. Now, you just click on "The Tower" instead of the individual floor you want. While inside, you can filter by difficulty if you like, or you can look at levels of all difficulties, and then filter them down by tags, number of players, etc... This change should make it far easier to find levels of a certain type once they have graduated to the tower. This change also necessitated the removal of the "Best" sorting mechanism in the Tower, because it biased toward harder levels. Instead, levels are now sorted by "Most Played" in the Tower by default (which means play time generated), and you can also choose to sort by "Newest."
  
• Updated the name of "Parallax Backgrounds" in the settings page to "High Quality Backgrounds", to better convey what the setting is doing.
  
• Added a note at the bottom of the Feedback page explaining that your default HTML viewer should be set to your browser to report feedback.
  
• Updated the message displayed by the searcher on the Daily Build page if it returns no results.
  
• Updated the icon for play history to look like a history icon instead of a "Refresh" icon.

Web

• Removed some redundant web calls. Should reduce the number of saves per minute and web requests per minute.

Gameplay

• You now inherit the horizontal speed of Flingos if you fling yourself up or down off a Flingo that is on a moving path. This should make the level Nope Cart far more manageable. (thanks to Misery)

Audio

• Updated sound of armor being picked up, to have its own unique sound instead of just re-using the "Select Armor in Editor" sound effect.
  
• Increased the volume on enemy damage sounds, so you can hear the enemies' unique vocals when they take damage or are defeated.

Visuals

• Bombs now have a much more obvious visual state change when they are about to blow up.

Fixes

Crash

• Fixed a crash caused by the changes to the tower.

Web

• Levels can no longer have negative favorites.
  
• Fixed an issue that would cause the game to not download the daily build on time.
  
• Cleaned up some syncing logic for tracking new subscriber levels.
  
• Added some extra double checking layers to the daily build download, to ensure it gets downloaded properly and updated properly.

UI

• Updated some spacing in the Marketing Department and the tower to keep text from overlapping with other things.
  
• The slug for the most recent level you played will now properly display a glowing border in all UI scales.
  
• Temporarily deactivated glowing levelcard borders in full-bodied UI mode, since they're broken!

Gameplay

• Expanded the widths of the hitbox of the Package and Throw Blocks by 2 pixels. This should help in situations where you drop a box down a hole and want to hit a horizontal pressure plate.
  
• Your armor now gets purged when you beat a level, so you don't end up with armor stuck in front of your face while going through the victory sequence.
  
• The cooldown for re-entering the same blaster has been dramatically reduced, so it is possible to bounce off of a bumper that is 2 grid spaces from a blaster and go right back into the same blaster, instead of passing through it.
  
• Blaster behavior has been improved for when you have clusters of blasters next to each other. Shooting out of a blaster should no longer put you into another blaster that is off to the side or behind (but still touching) your current one.
  
• If you bounce from a bumper into a blaster and then got launched, this would sometimes kill your speed while flying. This should now be fixed. (thanks to Inept)
  
• Boomboxes should now properly play their sharped notes during gameplay.
  
• Fixed an issue where the Waylay would charge shorter distances on the ground in certain circumstances.
  
• Your grappler will now properly respond to your input direction after being flung out of a blaster. (thanks to cprice)
  
• It should no longer be possible to get stuck between two doors that close simultaneously by ending up in the 1-pixel border between them when they close. From now on, this situation will cause you to die. (thanks to one dead saint)
  
• Fixed an issue where in some cases, depending on the slope and loop of a path, objects on a path would end up in the wrong position at the start of a level. (thanks to Joe Ah Oh)
  
• Fixed an issue where springs could get stuck in walls if you kicked them JUUUST right. (thanks to jajdp)

Editor

• Bumpers no longer try to knock enemies around while inside the editor.
  
• If you use the "Insert Path Node" tool on a closed path, but after the "End Node" of the path, it will now add nodes to the end of the path, rather than weirdly inserting nodes before the last one.
  
• The trash button should now properly toggle "Delete" mode in the editor. (thanks to QuantumAnomaly)

Today we're bringing you a pipin' hot community spotlight. We've got levels for you to bookmark, creators for you to follow, and players for you to be inspired by. LET'S A GO!




RetrophileTV, the leader of the Speedrunner's guild mentioned in last week's spotlight, has just created a new level genre. Termed, Race Ways, these levels have the player doing laps to beat a best time and involve all manner of hilarious slow-down/speed-up mechanics. And if that wasn't fun enough, Retrophile compiled a list of them in the discord for rapid bookmarking, so we've gone ahead and brought it over here. Remember that you can click on the lvlhd.co links to bookmark these levels for your next play of Levelhead, and you can see all the creator levels by clicking their names, too.

Race Way levels to bookmark

• "Ramshackle Race Way" by RetrophileTV | https://lvlhd.co/+wfbxsk7
  
• "Icy Moop Race Way!" by QuantumAnomaly | https://lvlhd.co/+r370s65
  
• "Super Race Way Booster" by Ps7cho | https://lvlhd.co/+0057xdz

In a twist beyond anything we could have imagined, a player going by the moniker [Popdonk Baggycool](6rad6u) has created a review site for levels created in Levelhead. Players have been sending him feedback requests in the community discord, seeking to get that coveted Popdonk Recommends badge. You can read up on all the best levels there and bookmark them for later!




Trillionaire is doing the work of a saint by playing through each of Levelhead's challenging campaign levels and posting the 100% runs to youtube. If you're finding yourself stuck on a level, hop on over to the youtube playlist and get yourself some HELP. But don't be mad when you find spoilers.




Levelhead tracks how much playtime your levels have created for the community. This week we had our first creator cross into 5 days of playtime generated. Quantum's latest level turned Levelhead into an RPG-like experience, complete with a shoppe, fast travel system, and multiple ways to beat it, nearly all of which take at least 40 minutes. It was an inspiring hoot for us to play through and stands as an incredible example of the power of Levelhead's editor. Bookmark it for later here: https://lvlhd.co/+p5zj01c

• Ps7cho's Bomb Away! Bomb Away!, for turning the game into a bombing run | https://lvlhd.co/+52d6kj4
  
• Moogthedog's Super Bomb Fun Fling, for brain twisting uses of bombs and puzzle action | https://lvlhd.co/+r3fjj6c
  
• Beevall's Lizumi Thorn Life Line, for turning Levelhead into a shooting gallery | https://lvlhd.co/+vt46xnv
  
• Joe Ah Oh's Great Flingo Canyon, for making flingos even more horrifying to play with https://lvlhd.co/+rxz4z6h
  
• Ouusou's Labyrinthe series, for turning Levelhead into a maze. https://lvlhd.co/+k3fv95b

It's been a wild two weeks already, and we're just getting started :D

Since our launch into Early Access 2 weeks ago, our players have died over a million times in Levelhead. We saw this number and thought, "We need to do something about this. This isn't even two million deaths." Well, NEVER FEAR! We've got a new baddie coming that will cause substantially more chaos: The Flipwip!

We've introduced a few new levels to the campaign that introduce the Flipwip and allow players to unlock the Flipwip for their workshops, so you'll start seeing this baddie appear in player-made levels, too!




All right, we gotta own this one.

When we first started working on Levelhead, we thought it'd be interesting to tweak the concept of Checkpoints to add some tension to certain encounters. We made it so that level creators could set how many "uses" a checkpoint would get. So you could declare that a player gets 3 tries to beat a boss (for example), and if they run out of checkpoint respawns, they have to start the level over.

On paper this is interesting, because it means more is at stake when you are respawning at a limited-life checkpoint. But in reality, it just makes things frustrating. Because when you have to start a whole level over even though you had previously gotten to a checkpoint, now you have to beat a whole bunch of stuff that you've already beaten. It doesnt' really add to the challenge of a level in terms of difficulty -- it just makes it more work. That's no fun!

So we thought, "Are limited life checkpoints just a universal... negative?" We dug into our telemetry to see if the data backs this up. We tracked the number of complaints we got about which levels were "frustrating" or caused people to rage quit, and it turns out, the difficulty of the level wasn't the thing that caused people to quit. In fact, we got the most complaints and the most quits out of some of the easier levels in the campaign, in terms of clear rates. The one thing that all the "rage quit" levels shared in common: limited life checkpoints. We couldn't find a single scenario where limited-life checkpoints didn't cause a spike in "quits" on a given level.

So now, all checkpoints in Levelhead have infinite respawns. This retroactively applies to all levels in the game. So if there was a particular campaign level or player-made level that was causing you grief due to the limited checkpoints, now is the time to get back in there!


When you publish a level in Levelhead, the level gets a unique string called a "Share Code." You can send these codes to other players, and they can then paste the code in-game to go directly to your level.

We've had a lot of folks in our community discord and subreddit posting share codes all over the place, but we noticed something really important. If you send someone your share code and they aren't playing levelhead right now, then they'll have to remember the share code for later. So you might send someone your share code, and they have the full intent to play your level, but then... they just forget!

We saw this, and we thought, "Too many great levels are falling through the cracks!" So we whipped out our INTERNET-POWERED HOT GLUE GUN and sealed those cracks right up!

Now, when you copy a level sharecode in-game, a Share Code URL gets dropped into your clipboard, which you can share with other people. If someone visits your Share Code URL in their web browser, they can bookmark your level, and the level will be delivered to them the next time they boot up Levelhead.

You can also turn any sharecode link into a web URLyourself, like this!

• p5zj01c (Normal share code)
  
• https://lvlhd.co/+p5zj01c (Share code turned into a URL)

This even works for people who don't yet own Levelhead. They can bookmark levels while logged into Rumpus, and when they finally get around to purchasing a copy of Levelhead, any bookmarked levels will be there waiting for them. BY THE MAGIC POWER OF THE INTERNET!




Rifts! We love them. You love them. They let you get instantly from one place in your level to another. You can kick stuff through them. Sometimes, bad things come out of them. But you know what's not great about Rifts? If you have a lot of Rifts in your level, your players might get confused about which rift leads where.

So we took a step toward fixing that usability problem, by allowing level creators to color-code their rifts. We now have four unique Rift colors, and you can set them however you like!


We've got a hefty dose of bug fixes and general improvements this week. Check out the patch notes below!


See the full patchnotes.

• A new set of levels have been added to the end of the campaign to introduce and unlock a new enemy: the Flipwip!

• You can now choose the colors of Rifts.

• When in multiplayer, the base model of GR18 (without powerups) will have a different colored face glow depending on which player you are. (thanks to jajdp)

• Level ShareCodes copied to the clipboard now come with a second line that includes a web URL. Visiting this URL takes you to a web page with information about the level, and you have the option to "Bookmark" the level. Bookmarked levels will automatically appear in the newly-added "Bookmarks" tab in your profile in-game. With this system, if someone shares a level code with you but you are away from the game, you will still easily be able to play the level whenever you get around to logging in to the game, without needing to memorize or write down the share code. You can store up to 50 bookmarks in your profile at a time.

• GR-18, Meet the Flipwhip - The boss flipwip should no longer get stuck on the burny whirlers. Additional coins added to draw player to wall jumping, and a few blocks removed to make waylay charge jump less frustrating to execute. (thanks to Retro Banana Man NL)
  
• An Unusual Time's checkpoints have been moved to act as a quicksave point.
  
• Leap Through Time's first bomb jump has been made more clear, and its second barrel-shot has been given extra guidance to assist with accuracy. (thanks to Inept)
  
• Go Go Rumble's GR17 is hinted at harder, and the checkpoint before the autocam should no longer create a soft-lock for the player. (thanks to cprice)
  
• Chamber of Magic now has a spooky entrance and a package cam to assist with level flow. (thanks to cprice)
  
• Do Not Open now does some more fun stuff with prize blocks. (thanks to cprice)
  
• Clockswitch Tower has an additional checkpoint prior to the final trap-run. (thanks to Beekie Boppaboop)
  
• Vacrat Country - Secret changes that I can't even mention, and the first checkpoint will no longer let you be spawned onto an enemy and enter the cycle of death infinitely. (thanks to Boilylump Hoppygreat)
  
• Be Sneaky, GR-18 - all side objectives have been untangled from one another, so getting each one is its own challenge rather than one mega challenge.
  
• Hollow Mountain Hike - redesigned to be more about handling stationary burnywhirlers while riding spinning platforms. should induce less rage.

• You can now set sign icons to be an image of a Jem.
  
• New words added to the name combobulator: Mechanical, Code, Memory, Castle, Fort, Fortress.
  
• Added new words to the level name combobulator: quest, mission, objective, victory, impossible, possible, probable, improbable, boolean, gadget, machine, imaginary, navigate, need, want, observe, see. These words are not yet localized, but they are still available to other languages regardless.
  
• You can now put Arrow Holograms on paths.
  
• You can now put an icon on signs that shows a picture of BUDD-E. (thanks to Retro Banana Man NL)
  
• It is now much easier to click on the little ball to move a slider if the ball is at the very edge of the slider's limits.
  
• Added words to the Name Combobulator: Arena, With, Endless, Runner, Jogger, Diver, Sprinter, Zoom, Pal, Instant, Sudden, and Stadium.

• In multiplayer, when one player enters a rift, all players now get teleported to the destination rift. (thanks to jajdp)
  
• If a Jem is chasing you because you passed right next to it, the Jem will auto-collect when you touch the goal. (thanks to bamhm182)
  
• All checkpoints now have infinite respawns. Limited-life checkpoints have all been retroactively converted into unlimited-life checkpoints.

• Buttons on the profile page now change color when you hover over them with your cursor.
  
• Your most-recently-played level will now have a glowing border when you see it in various UIs. This should make it easier to identify where to drop your exposure bucks if you want to tip the level's creator after you leave.
  
• Updated the Buddy List icon to look like buddies, instead of an eyeball.

• Fixed an issue with sharecode links generating an incorrect URL.
  
• Retrieval and sending of String Sets (such as your bookmarks) will no longer be attempted unless you are logged in and online.
  
• Retrieval of String Sets (such as bookmarks) will no longer be attempted unless you are online.

• Checkpoints were sometimes restoring projectiles with an incorrect collision mask, causing them to explode randomly. This should now be fixed.
  
• If the package is sitting on a Flippy Longswitch when you touch a checkpoint, the package won't re-flip the Flippy Longswitch when you respawn at the checkpoint. (thanks to challosis)
  
• Spike traps that are not attached to switches should no longer start extended when you first begin a level, and they should now restore themselves properly when you respawn at a checkpoint. (thanks to Loudypop Powturn)
  
• Doors will now restore their states properly upon checkpoint respawns, instead of replaying their open or close animation every time you respawn them.
  
• Dense Fog now properly remembers its state when you recover at a checkpoint.
  
• Swoopadoops and Blopfush should now much more reliably have their states restored via checkpoints, including Blopfush and Swoopadoops that are on paths. (thanks to Popdonk Baggycool)
  
• Bumpers now cancel your powerup active state (stealth or punching) but no longer reset the cooldowns for those abilities.
  
• Cromblers are no longer affected by rifts. (thanks to Retro Banana Man NL)
  
• Instant-blast Blasters no longer turn invisible if you enter them via teleporting with the Zipper. (thanks to Bupajie Impycloud)
  
• If you have a temporary buff (like the D-bot), it will get purged when you beat a level, to prevent graphical weirdness during the victory screen.
  
• Batteries and keys on paths will not activate things unless they are active (not invisible).
  
• Fixed some final issues with ground detection that would cause odd sound resets while running in slow motion, and would cause sprint to take longer to activate during slurb juice.
  
• Fixed some issues with detecting whether you were on the edge of a platform.
  
• You can no longer indefinitely hang on ceilings with the Tiptow by exploiting a bug. (thanks to RetrophileTV)
  
• Fixed an issue caused by a change to ground detection that would cause Flapjacks to get stuck on the ground.

• The package will no longer pick up coins that are immediately below it inside the editor.
  
• The Golden Key and Batteries should now properly display their "faded" state in the editor when attached to switches.

• Rain as a weather option should no longer be unlocked by default.

• Subscribing/Unsubscribing and Buddy Listing/Delisting users should now display the correct icon in your popup message.

HELLOOOOOOOOOoooOOO!

This is the weekly Levelhead community spotlight, wherein we highlight a few of the incredible things the community has been up to JUST THIS WEEK and highlight some levels the devs found inspiring.




Levelhead's discord is home to a growing speedrunners community - but how does a speedrunners group get bigger... FASTER?! By offering well-structured challenge, of course! RetrophileTV@d29oze has created a daily speedrunners challenge for all those interested in growing their shoe collection. Check out the spreadsheet and compare your times with other runners in the discord - you can catch up on any of the previous challenges at any time.




Popdonk Baggycool 6rad6u created the first "shoppe" in Levelhead, wherein players trade golden keys for items. Not to be outdone, Quantum_x_Anomaly ya0lqh is now creating a more granular shoppe system that uses batteries. You can check out this incredible idea in Popdonk's currently available level, "Golden Key Get Thing Easily?" 038ss10




Every time we release a new item into the game, the community instantly finds some way to use it that only an elite player would ever discover. These moves, "tech" as they're called, are extremely difficult to master. But now, thanks to Jhall 4nf0vx, there's a level that teaches you these techniques! From the creator - "The Hero Lesson Temple... Ten rooms, ten challenging elements and elite techniques to master and train with. Learn the basics of elite Levelhead play and start wrecking those 4 and 5 star levels in no time!" Grab it with this code: q27fzbt


Here are a handful of creations that we found especially compelling this week. Check them out next time you take Levelhead for a spin!

Bmiclock's (smqp4f) "The Steel Forest Factory", for it's sense of story and metroidvania vibes. c0tkc0s

Block's (n0bhv6) "Musical Clock Switch", for turning Levelhead into a rhythm platformer. f840x02

Rominoob's (046c70) "Funky Funky Jackpot", for building a pinball machine inside Levelhead 5bhr9qz

Hey, everyone! Seth, the Bscotch Game Programmer here, coming to you LIVE in this patch breakdown. At least, it was live when I wrote it, which is now.

It's the first week of Levelhead early access, and we're blazing forth on the path toward a brighter future! A future where your goods will be delivered real good, on time, every time, most of the time. Our community has been pumping feedback into our brain lobes at what some would call an "unhealthy" rate, and we've been working our robot buns off to address the issues of the day.

Our current plan going forward is to have a patch drop every Wednesday throughout Early Access, and Patch 0.2.2 is the first of those patches. Every week, we'll try to have a good mix of bug fixes, new features, improvements, and polish wherever we can. Thanks to everyone who submitted feedback!

Now... On to the HIGHLIGHTS!


This patch introduces a whole new item: the Flingo! Flingos are little electromagnetic nodes that GR-18 can latch onto with its grappler to fling itself across great distances. There's even a little bit of elasticity in there -- if you grapple from farther away, you'll get a bigger fling!



Flingos can be placed on paths so they can move about the level, and they can be activated and deactivated with switches, for supreme trolling I MEAN... LEVEL DESIGN.


Our community pointed out that Burny Whirlers, though plenty whirly, [cur]could[/cur] be more burny. That's why we beefed up the number of available fire chains from one, to FOUR!



Anyone got barbecue sauce? These roasted GR-18's are super dry.


One of the core problems with being shot by cannons, aside from the death part, is that you can see that cannonball coming from a mile away. But who wants to meet their imminent demise HEAD-ON? HAH! Certainly not me! In this patch, we took care of the problem of "knowing when your life will end" by allowing projectiles of all kinds (homing missiles, fireballs, steel, etc) to pass through Rifts.



What's coming through that Rift? Is it a package? A powerup? A key? NOPE IT'S A FIREBALL. Problem solved!


We fixed a whole suite of bugs, added accessibility settings (such as toning down weather and removing screen shake), improved boomboxes, and did some other things too. It's all listed in GREAT-ISH detail below, so... I'M OUT! Thanks for reading, and we'll see you next week!


*Showing changes since v0.1.64. Want to see older patches? Check the full patchnotes. The full patchnotes link also includes credit to the community members who provided feedback that directly led to game improvements. Thanks, everyone!*

New Features

Campaign

• 3 new levels added to the end of the campaign: Flingo Swing, Fire Fall, and 4 Point Plunge.
  
• The campaign's main path is now thicker, to give a subtle bit of landmarking to your location.

New Item

• Introducing a new item: the Flingo! Flingos are little nodes that you can grapple to launch yourself in the direction of your grappler. Flingos can go onto paths, and they can be given switch IDs to be activated or deactivated.

Editor

• Sandstorms are now able to be unlocked as a weather option, by beating the new Flingo-based level "Fire Fall" in the campaign.

Settings

• You can now turn down the potency of weather effects. This should help for those players whose machines were slowing down during intense weather.
  
• Added "Vsync" option to the settings menu. Toggling this may improve performance on some machines.
  
• You can now turn off screen shake in the settings.

Gameplay

• Projectiles are now affected by Rifts.

Audio

• New sound effects for picking up the bug pieces in the campaign, as well as the bug display on the ending scoreboard in campaign levels.
  
• GR-18 now makes a sound when it goes into idle mode.
  
• GR-17 now has its own sound effects.
  
• Enemies now make subtle, unique sounds when injured but not defeated.
  
• There is now a sound effect when an item respawns after being thrown off a cliff.

UI

• The scoreboard on published levels now shows the top 3 spots for score and speed, so you get a better sense of where you rank, who you displaced, and by how much.
  
• When you are playing a published level, you will see its lookup code next to its name on the interface. You can also now copy its lookup code directly from the pause menu.

Improvements

Campaign

• Calculated Risk - Checkpoint added, burnywhirlers updated with double chains, and fewer dumb death zones.
  
• Vacrat Country - Focuses more on the skill of bouncing off vacrats to avoid spikes and less on spike deaths generally. One checkpoint added, overall difficulty considerably reduced.
  
• Ice Therapy - difficulty tuned down, additional checkpoint added.
  
• Mad Vacrat Nest - A checkpoint was moved a tiny amount to help players not stick themselves in an infinite death loop. also one coin was removed. DESIGN!
  
• That's an Incredible GR-18 - a block has been filled in
  
• Spikepop Experiment - The final row of spikechains have been rotated a few degrees to make completion of the level more likely
  
• Throw Rage - The switch IDs have been redone to make it not possible for players to fall and get stuck in the latter half of the level.
  
• Dune Doom Dream - The camera now gives the player slightly more time before the 2nd checkpoint, to reduce the likelihood of a death-by-camera checkpoint loop. The final camera path has been simplified somewhat, which makes the last part of the level somewhat faster.
  
• Sproing Time - The checkpoint has been moved further into the level to reduce repeat activities.
  
• Sproing Time - Spike column has been increased in height to stop players from getting fixated on jumping over it before getting the Tiptow power-up.
  
• Sproing Time - Players should no longer get stuck in the secret, and an additional checkpoint has been added to allow for a reset if you misplaced your box like a BAD GR-18!
  
• Switch Karma - The key switches are now locking, as originally intended. Also the key path has become exceptionally tricksy.
  
• Pow Pow Magic - The intro has been reworked to feel more epic, the final checkpoint is now infinite, and the level teaches you that you can grab power-ups with GR-18's tow cable.

UI

• Fully revamped the tower UI.
  
• Fully revamped the level renamer UI.
  
• Clickable text on Level Slugs (such as people's names and the Lookup Code link) will now change color when you hover over them, so you can tell they are clickable.
  
• Added more information to the level publishing confirmation window, to explain that the level will exit your workshop.
  
• Lookup codes are now displayed on the ending scoreboard of a level, and there is a button that you can click to copy the lookup code to your clipboard.
  
• Renamed "Watch List" as "Buddy List" to hopefully make it more clear that... it's just a list of your buddies.

Web

• Updated the save syncer such that it will only update your save file from the server's version, if that file has more playtime than your local file. This should prevent data loss of player saves.
  
• Update to change below -- Using the "Restart" button will not affect difficulty rating of a level only if you are in Speed Run Mode.
  
• Retries via the "Restart" button during gameplay will no longer affect level difficulty ratings. They will still count toward level playtime.
  
• When you copy a level Share Code, it now also comes with the level name and tags in your clipboard, so you can paste the information elsewhere like a Discord server. When you paste that same information back into the game, it will truncate what is in your clipboard and just grab the share code part, so everything should still work the way it used to in-game.
  
• You can now subscribe to 20 creators, up from 10.

Editor

• Added "Elite" tag for levels that required the most advanced techniques, exploits, or esoteric game knowledge to complete, such as Infinity Leaps and Super Jumps.
  
• Boombox music note selection is now a slider instead of a click arrow.
  
• Boomboxes now preserve the pitch you set when you change instruments.
  
• Burny Whirler overhaul! You can now have up to 4 fire chains on a single Burny Whirler. Also, when you have a Burny Whirler in the editor attached to a switch that is "off", you will still be able to see its fire chains at a reduced opacity.
  
• Previously, you had to take more than 3 seconds to beat your level in order to publish it. However, this didn't prevent anyone from making extremely short levels; they would just wait 3 seconds and then finish the level. This limit has been reduced to 0.25 seconds.
  
• Switch IDs can now go up to 127, up from 99. We will work on getting them higher, but this is what we've got for now!
  
• Switch ID display has been optimized in the editor, so if you have HUNDREDS of them in your level, you should see less of a slowdown.
  
• You can now add "Music Box" tags to your levels, and you can select "Musical" as an adjective.

Audio

• Tweaked some of the powerup sound effects. Nothing major.
  
• Updated some of the sound effects on the main menu.

Settings

• You can now choose between Fullscreen, Borderless Window, and Borderless Maximized. Some users that were experiencing stutters may find the stuttering is resolved by changing this setting.

Fixes

Web

• Fixed an issue that could cause save syncing to crash.
  
• Some players experienced data loss if they force-quit the game on their first playthrough. This should no longer occur.
  
• When you play a level via lookup code, the names of the creator, top score holder, and fastest player should now properly be retrieved from the web.
  
• If login fails due to a connection issue, you will get a human readable error message, instead of weird nonsense.
  
• If login fails, you will now be returned to the login method selection page, instead of being repeatedly slammed in the eye sockets by red text.

Gameplay

• When hanging from the ceiling in Tiptow mode, GR-18 will now trigger Prize Blocks and Dense Fog.
  
• The Tiptow powerup should now properly register wall sliding on Regret Gates.
  
• Enemies should be less stupid when walking across regret gate floors.
  
• If you were in the middle of grabbing a powerup or consumable while hitting a checkpoint, you would respawn at the checkpoint with the powerup on your back. Now, you will gain the powerup or consumable upon respawning.
  
• If you were in slow motion with the Waylay powerup, you would sometimes punch upwards even though you were standing on the ground. This should now be fixed.
  
• Balloogs on switches now store their states in checkpoints, so the balloogs won't start deflated if they were inflated when you touched the checkpoint.
  
• Balloogs that aren't attached to switches now have their on/off state tied to the stage timer, so they will always be in the same state when you hit the same time in the stage. Previously, ballogs tracked time on their own, and they restarted their timer with every checkpoint respawn, which would make them go out of sync with other level elements over time.
  
• Enemies can now go through portals that are either their same size or larger.
  
• While stealthed using Slurb Juice, your ghosts would cause a weird flicker. This has been fixed.
  
• Users who were experiencing stutters during gameplay due to hardware compatibility issues were unable to activate Sprinting as a result of the stutter. This should now be fixed.
  
• Popjaws will no longer go through teleporters when they are collapsed into their medallions.
  
• If you pass near a Jem and it begins chasing you, that Jem will no longer be deactivated by a switch.

Campaign

• The Steel projectile is now unlocked by default, so if players get the Lookcannon before the regular cannon they can properly set their projectiles.

Editor

• Opening up the path editor should no longer open the properties window for the item at the bottom-left-most corner of the game world (if you have one there).

UI

• Fixed an issue where the hitboxes of the bottom-left corner buttons in the pause menu would change to the incorrect size after going into the settings.
  
• The campaign percentage now floors instead of rounds, so you won't see 100% completion until you actually have 100% completion.
  
• When you set the top score or time and restart the level, the interface during gameplay will properly reflect your changes.

Localization

• In some languages, there was a missing space in the "Number of Players" dropdown menu in the tower. This has been fixed.
  
• Edited translations for Boombox music notes so that the text do not overflow out of the display space.

Crash

• The game would crash when you had a blopfush coming out of a prize block. Now it doesn't!

Controller

• Fixed an issue that may have been preventing some users from using Playstation 4 controllers and Switch Pro controllers.