← Back to MelonDrop

Changelog

Transparent build log — every meaningful change to the live game.

Leaderboard submit no longer blocked by name prompt 2026-05-07

FixFirst-time scores actually save now — on a fresh browser session, the post-game name prompt was rendering hidden behind the harvest report (same z-index, later element won the stack), so its Continue button was unclickable and the submit pipeline blocked forever waiting on it. Score posts immediately under the current display name now (auto "Player ####" if you haven't customized it); name prompt no longer gates submission.

Leaderboard accepts every score 2026-05-07

FixSubmissions no longer silently dropped — the previous anti-cheat layer (server-issued ranked runs, score seal verification, plausibility heuristics) was rejecting legitimate runs for benign reasons like clock skew, expired sessions, or race conditions on game-over. Submitting a finished Endless or Cascade run now always credits the score and updates the public boards.

Version tag in the menu 2026-05-06

NewBuild version visible — the main menu now shows the current build version as a small faint line under the "Tap a fruit…" hint. Hidden during gameplay so it never competes with the board. Helps players (and bug reports) reference exactly which build they're on.

PvP attack expansion — readable, satisfying, fair 2026-04-30

Six new cards

PvPLightning Strike (rare, transmute) — telegraphed circular strike marker over a dense or dangerous part of the opponent's board. Affected fruit re-rolls into a non-matching tier. No instant free merges (touching neighbors are excluded from the reroll pool); affected bodies get a merge-lock window. Caps at 7 desktop / 5 mobile fruit.
PvPPrism Laser (rare, transmute) — horizontal warning beam picks a dense row and phases the fruit it passes through into different tiers. Same anti-merge guarantees as Lightning. Caps at 8 desktop / 6 mobile fruit.
PvPCompost Cannon (epic, self-target buff) — for 8 seconds, every merge YOU make also auto-fires a downgraded copy of the merged fruit at your opponent. Capped at 8 sends desktop / 6 mobile, minimum 300 ms between sends — chains stay punchy without flooding the opponent.
PvPPocket Dimension (rare, self-target defense) — temporarily shrinks your largest fruit by 18% for 7 seconds, then re-expands them over 1.5 seconds. Buys you breathing room without making your stack explode when the effect ends — bodies are safely re-spawned at full size. Caps at the largest 8 desktop / 6 mobile fruit.
PvPCursed Watermelon (legendary, clutter) — long telegraph then a heavy purple-aura watermelon drops onto the opponent. It cannot merge for the duration of its 4-second curse. When the curse expires, the cursed body cracks open into 4 small non-matching fruit (it never becomes a friendly Watermelon — that would gift the strongest body in the game).
PvPCosmic Bomb (legendary, spectacle) — 3-second charged telegraph, lands as a pulsing purple orb, then explodes and rains 6-8 small non-matching fruit (tiers 0-3 only) in staggered waves. Always a spectacle, never a board-clear-and-restock.

Wind Gust retired from PvP

The auto-fire wind hazard was removed from PvP combo pools — it wasn't visually obvious enough to satisfy as an attack. The same effect lives on in solo Cascade Mode where the hazard director still uses it. Lightning Strike and Prism Laser take its slot as combo-3+ rolls.

Self-target attack routing

Attacks now carry an explicit target field (opponent / self / global). Compost Cannon and Pocket Dimension are self-target buffs that activate on the sender's own board. The card-fly animation flies to your own board on play. Network PvP routes self-target cards correctly across both clients.

New layered audio

18 new Web Audio synth recipes for the queue lifecycle (card earned, card fired, incoming warning, attack blocked) plus per-card telegraph + impact sounds for each new attack. Lightning crackles + zaps, the laser whines + fires, Compost plops, Pocket Dimension shrinks + chimes, Cursed Watermelon lands heavy, Cosmic Bomb charges + explodes with sparkle rain. All synth-only — no asset downloads.

PvP content expansion 2026-04-28

New attacks

PvPTop Nudge (common, board) — surgical impulse on the single highest fruit on your opponent's board. Pushes one body toward overflow rather than scattering the whole stack. Drops on combo-2 alongside Poke.
PvPMirror Aim (uncommon, control) — mirrors your opponent's launcher aim for their next drop. Tap left, fruit goes right. Drop-counted so they can't wait it out. Drops on combo-4 alongside Storm.
PvPPebble Pack (uncommon, clutter) — drops 2 small inert gray pebbles that don't merge with anything and decay after 12 seconds. Pure geometric obstruction without bomb anxiety. Drops on combo-4.

Defensive cards (new!)

PvPUmbrella ☂️ — Wonderfruit pickup. Banks a defensive charge that auto-blocks the next incoming clutter attack (Poke/Barrage/Storm/Rain/Pebble Pack). Cyan ring + "BLOCKED!" popup when it fires.
PvPCleanse 🌿 — Wonderfruit pickup. Auto-blocks the next incoming control attack (Curse, Mirror Aim) AND clears any control effect already active when you pick it up. Either way the pickup is responsive — never wasted sitting in a queue.

Solo content + harvest report 2026-04-28

New solo powerups

NewCombo Extender ⏱️ — freezes the combo timer for 8 seconds and adds a 1.5× score bonus on your next 3 merges. Use it to chase 7-chains without losing the chain to the normal decay. Drops from Wonderfruit, Treasure, and combo rewards.
NewSafety Net 🪂 — banks a one-time save against overflow game-over. When a fruit would otherwise end your run, the safety net slams it deep into the stack instead. Stacks up to 9 charges. Drops from Wonderfruit and Treasure.
NewUndo Drop ↩️ — banks a charge you can spend with the new lavender HUD button to remove your last drop and rewind the launcher queue. Eligible if the dropped fruit hasn't merged and was dropped within the last 5 seconds. Stops a single mis-tap from ruining a run.

Save medals

Save events now classify into four tiers based on how long you held the danger zone before recovering: Saved, Clutch, Cleaned Up, and Barely Alive. The popup color and label scale with the tier so a clutch save reads more emphatically.

Expanded harvest report

Three new optional rows on the Game Over screen: Watermelons, Cosmic Melons, Best Save. Each row hides if its value is zero, so the report stays focused on what actually happened in your run.
Run insight headline now surfaces high-tier saves (Cleaned Up / Barely Alive) when nothing more impressive happened.

PvP correctness rework 2026-04-28

Two PvP attacks had a real bug — landing on a messy board could accidentally HELP the defender by jamming same-tier fruits into proximity merges. Skilled players learned to bait these attacks because the cleanup was worth more than the disruption. Both reworks now apply a 900ms attack-merge suppression window on every body the attack touches, so impulse-driven contacts can no longer gift the defender free merge credit.

PvPEarthquake → Aftershock — rebranded to match its new identity. Mechanic stays mostly the same (radial outward + dominant upward bias) but no longer creates free merges via the impulse storm.
PvPJumble → Band Shuffle — X is randomized but Y stays within ±18px of each fruit's origin AND can never go LOWER than origin. Previously the random Y often shoved the stack into a more settled layout — now the disruption stays disruptive.

Performance pass 2026-04-28

Five phases of performance work focused on mobile, network play, and idle battery drain. No gameplay behavior change.

PerfNetwork PvP CPU — the network opponent's PiP physics now steps at 20-30fps with reduced solver iterations (down from 60+fps with full iterations). Their PiP corrects to authoritative state every second so full-fidelity simulation is wasted CPU. Biggest single mobile PvP CPU win.
PerfAsset loading — first-play no longer waits for every fruit asset. Critical tiers (Blueberry through Grapefruit) load first; later tiers stream in while you're already playing. WebP preferred over PNG (5-10× smaller) including for the harvest fruit ladder.
PerfStatic cache headers — images, icons, and fonts now cache for a year instead of being refetched every visit. HTML/JS/CSS still revalidate so updates land immediately.
PerfPointer + resize — pointermove events coalesced into one aim update per frame, canvas rect cached, resize storms debounced. Removes a layout-forcing read from every drag event.
PerfRenderer hot paths — particle removal is now O(1), fruit-ghost merge animations pool their sprites, junk countdown text only redraws when the integer second changes, PvP auto-fire cards skip a stack-insertion reflow.
PerfIdle drain — the main animation loop now self-suspends on the menu. No more 60-360 wakeups per second when you're sitting on the menu.
FixParticle regression — a brief regression where merge convergence + cosmic explosion particles were invisible (single missing line in the renderer's particle attach path). Restored the same day.
FixNetwork rematch handler dedup — fixed a slow bug where consecutive PvP rematches stacked duplicate event handlers, causing snapshots and attacks to fire 2×, 3×, 4× over a long session.

Fruit size rebalance 2026-04-28

NewSmoother size ladder — the early-game tier jumps used to whiplash (Blueberry → Strawberry was a 1.41× radius jump, Plum → Apple was 1.32×) while the late game was much more gradual. New radii smooth the whole ladder to a uniform ~1.22× ratio per tier with the endpoints (Blueberry, Watermelon, Cosmic) preserved. Mid-game fruits got smaller; late game unchanged.
NewNew plum + pineapple art — re-authored plum and pineapple PNGs with proportional bodies. Pineapple's crown is now small + decorative instead of dominating the silhouette; plum is a clean sphere.
New?showcase=1 debug mode — adds a developer URL flag that shows all 10 fruits lined up at their physics radii on a baseline, with mix-blend-difference dashed reference circles. Used internally for tuning future asset art.
NewWatermelon-slice favicon — replaces the previous green-ball with the iconic merge-game pink-and-green slice. The mascot watermelon stays in the boot loader where it has room.
NewFriction tuning — fixed a "side-pumping merges" complaint where repeatedly dropping on one side compressed the pile and popped fruits over the rim. Friction bumped from 0.35/0.4 to 0.55 to keep stacks settled under lateral pressure.

Cosmic Melon visual buildup 2026-04-28

NewPre-detonation buildup — Cosmic Melons now grow + wobble subtly during the 600ms charge window before exploding (1.10× peak with a small rotation jitter). Pairs with a new inward-spiraling rainbow particle stream so the moment reads as "gathering energy" instead of just sitting and popping.

Earlier work

This changelog starts with the late-April 2026 releases. Earlier shipped work — WebSocket multiplayer (Phase 1+2), passive opponent + state snapshots (Phase 2.5), PvP attack families with throttling, server-arbitrated round timers + READY/SET/GO, Cosmic Melon as the new top tier, Cascade Mode, Wonderfruit + Treasure Package, the powerup framework, and the five UI polish phases (Fredoka font, sticker buttons, paper grain, parallax sparkles, trading-card PvP queue) — was developed before this changelog existed. Adding retroactively as time allows.