Changelog

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

A title screen, a rebuilt leaderboard and a tidier board 2026-10-13

• NewMenu: a proper title screen — the MelonDrop logo sits on a pile of fruit spilling over the menu card, with a big Play button.
• NewMenu: welcome back — returning players see their best score and name, the mode they last played and a new tip each visit. Mode cards wear a NEW sticker until you've played that mode.
• NewMenu: Settings, How to play and What's new — three buttons at the bottom of the menu card, with the version on What's new. Settings also shows which version you're playing, next to the Changelog link. The floating gear is gone.
• FixMenu: smoother arrivals — the loading screen hands over to the menu smoothly, with a matching logo. Switching to the mode chooser no longer makes the card lurch, and the fruit arrive in time.
• NewScoreboard: combo banner on the edge — the combo banner clips onto the bottom edge of the scoreboard instead of floating over the board. It heats up from amber to orange to coral, turns gold foil with a shine at ×7 and up, and bumps on every step.
• NewScoreboard: big chains catch fire — at ×10 and up the combo banner gets a little flickering flame next to the count, and at ×10, ×15, ×20 and so on a sticker shine sweeps across it.
• NewScoreboard: COMBO EXTEND chip — a compact one-line chip with a stopwatch and a fuse that burns down. It no longer covers the fruit you're aiming.
• NewPower-up tray — UNDO and your banked power-ups sit in a tray under the board instead of the screen corners. UNDO is bigger and easier to tap, the pills use dark text on gold and mint, and MERGE ×2 shows the merges left in a corner badge.
• FixBoard: callouts that don't pile up — chain callouts (NICE CHAIN! up to HUGE CHAIN!) land in one spot mid-board, and a bigger one replaces the last. Fast chains keep at most three score popups on the board at once. Boosted merges show "+20 ×2" in one popup, and a Safety Net rescue shows a single SAFETY NET SAVE! stamp.
• NewBoard: chain rewards you can follow — a combo reward shows as one sticker card with the power-up's icon in a gold coin, then flies into its pill, the NEXT preview, or the fruit it bloomed. Power-up pills update the moment it lands and give a little wiggle as they catch it.
• FixBoard: popups stay out of your aim — popups and rescue stamps stay below the danger line, clear of the fruit you're about to drop.
• FixBoard: sharp popups — score popups and callouts like "+21" and "SAFETY NET!" are drawn at your screen's full resolution, so they're as crisp as the rest of the text instead of slightly blurry.
• NewScoreboard: the settings cog turns — it gives a little turn when you press it, and a dotted divider sets it apart from the rest of the scoreboard.
• NewLeaderboard: rebuilt — it fills the screen, so more rows show at once, and you switch boards from one row of five icon tabs.
• NewLeaderboard: medals and a crown — the top three get gold, silver and bronze, and a solo leader wears a crown. Tied players share a rank.
• NewLeaderboard: find yourself — your row is an orange sticker with a YOU tag, and the board opens on it. It shows once: when it scrolls out of view a copy pins to the bottom (tap it to jump back), and while it's on screen a one-line summary takes that spot. Switching tabs starts at the top and glides down to your row; touch the list to stop the glide.
• NewLeaderboard: where you stand — each board sums you up in one line: "Your best · #17 of 40 · 18,420", "Longest chain · ×11 · #3", "37 Watermelons grown · #17". Leading a board says so: "You lead Endless! 1,270 ahead of WatermelonWizard" (on a narrow phone, "You lead! +1,270 over WatermelonWizard"), or who you're tied with.
• FixLeaderboard: easier to read — scores have commas, combos read ×11, and the Melons and Cosmic boards show their fruit and say what they count. New loading and empty screens, and a "fruit stand is closed" screen with a Try again button.
• NewGame over: a moment to see what happened — the game holds on the fruit that topped out, with an OUT! tag, a red ring and a solid red line, before the Harvest Report comes up.
• NewGame over: your best for this mode — the Harvest Report shows which mode you played and your best for it. A record run shows your previous best and how much you beat it by; otherwise you see how far you have to go. Cascade runs also show your peak pressure.
• FixGame over: clean screen changes — Settings, the Leaderboard and the Harvest Report arrive as solid cards and peel away cleanly. Starting a run or tapping Play Again no longer layers the menu, board and scoreboard on top of each other, and your score resets to 0 without a "points earned" bump.
• FixReduce Motion respected — with Reduce Motion on, the board no longer shakes, and the title, banners and cards no longer bounce or spring.
• FixDark mode — board popups get a cream sticker rim so they stand out from the dark board, the loading screen no longer flashes peach, and the leaderboard shows which tab is selected.
• NewPages: in the game's style — About, How to play, Privacy, Changelog and the leaderboard page follow your Light/Dark theme and use the game's sticker look. Each has the MelonDrop logo, a Play button and links to the other pages. Opened from Settings, Play takes you back to your game instead of starting a second one. Changelog "Fix" tags are ink on cream, in the game's own colours.
• NewPages: a live leaderboard page — every board shows its live top five, with gold, silver and bronze medals, a crown for a lone leader and "T" for ties, and each board wears the same icon as its in-game tab. Placeholder rows show while scores load, "No scores yet" on an empty board, and a short note if scores can't load.
• FixPages: up to date — Cascade is explained correctly, the controls are the real ones, and all five leaderboards are listed. Text uses more of a phone's width.
• NewOn a PC — menu buttons, footer chips, mode cards, leaderboard tabs, rows and your pinned row, and the in-game cog react when you hover, the leaderboard card is bigger with a slim scrollbar, and keyboard focus shows a clear ring.

Focused on Solo 2026-10-11

• PvPMelonDrop is single-player now — VS AI and online matches (Random Match and Join Room) have been retired, and the PvP Rating tab is gone from the leaderboard. Your Endless and Cascade scores, bests and leaderboard records are unchanged.
• PerfSmaller download — the game's main script is about a quarter smaller, so it loads faster.
• FixTidier menus — the menu card now fits its content, the leaderboard tabs sit in two rows of 3 and 2, and How to Play lists the powerups you can actually get.

Juicier merges, a new-best moment and smoother menus 2026-10-04

• NewMode picker inside the menu — tapping Solo now slides the menu over to illustrated Endless and Cascade cards instead of opening a second popup. Each card shows your best score for that mode, and the mode you played last is tagged.
• NewSmoother screen changes — starting a game, the menu drops away while the score bar slides down and the board rises into place. At game over the board dims and sinks as the Harvest Report pops up, then lifts back on Play Again.
• NewMerges splash — every merge now pops with a quick flash and a spray of juice in the new fruit's colour (pink with seeds for watermelons). Bigger fruit and longer chains splash harder.
• NewGummy merges — the two fruit stretch toward each other like taffy as they merge, and the new fruit wobbles into place. Bigger fruit wobble more.
• NewFruit land with weight — a dropped fruit stretches as it falls, squashes for a moment when it lands and kicks up a little dust. Purely visual; the physics are unchanged.
• NewBig fruit are born shiny — a Grapefruit or bigger pops out of a merge with a little star glint on its shine.
• NewMelons fly to the score bar — a mini watermelon (or a galaxy orb for a Cosmic Melon) arcs from the board into its counter, which catches it with a squash. The counters start each run dimmed and light up with your first melon.
• NewCosmic Melon build-up — while it charges, a violet glow swells behind it, the rest of the board dims a little, small stars spiral in and it starts to tremble. After it goes off, star dust drifts down.
• NewBadges pop in — the UNDO, ×2 and SAFETY NET badges and the Combo Extend and incoming-attack banners slap on like stickers and peel off, and a badge bumps when its count changes.
• NewHarvest Report reveal — the stats rise in, your score ticks up and lands with a thock, and the fruit ladder lights up rung by rung, each fruit playing its note. Tap the card to skip.
• FixMelon counters reset on Play Again — the watermelon and Cosmic counters used to keep showing the previous run's numbers.
• NewButtons press like stickers — buttons squash down when you press them and spring back with a little bounce.
• NewHaptics on some iPhones — on iOS 18 to 26.4, drops and tapped PvP cards now give a light tap, like Android's vibration. Newer iOS versions don't let web games trigger haptics this way, so nothing changes there yet.
• FixCosmic Melon you can actually see — its burst no longer washes the whole board white, then green, then pink. One soft flash and a burst of light where it goes off keep the confetti and your points in view.
• FixFull-size logo — the MelonDrop logo on the main menu shows at its intended size again, in the same colours as the loading screen.
• FixHarvest Report fits on iPhone — the Watermelons, Cosmic Melons and Best Save rows only appear when you earned them, and on shorter screens the card tightens up so Play Again and Main Menu always fit.
• FixPaper texture on the board — the board's subtle paper grain now shows between the fruit instead of being hidden under the board colour.
• PerfSharper Quality mode on phones — with Performance set to Quality, the board now draws at your screen's full resolution, so fruit edges are crisp. Auto and Battery are unchanged.
• NewScore popups restyled — popups use the game's own font and outline, take the colour of the fruit you made, grow with its size, and stack neatly instead of overlapping. Chain callouts like "NICE CHAIN!" stamp in above the score.
• NewNew best celebration — beat your best mid-run and the BEST counter flashes gold with a "NEW BEST!" ribbon and a sparkle. Finish a record run and the Harvest Report stamps "NEW BEST" on your score with confetti and a fanfare.

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.

Got feedback or notice a regression? The dev log lives in this changelog and the codebase. Bug reports + feature ideas welcome.