Version 1.30 is a giant content update that finishes all of the unfinished levels and adds the Lake Slushi substory, increasing the total amount of stuff to do in the game by almost 50% from the previous version! New bosses, new levels, and massive amounts of new equipment to deal with them.

Quick Highlights:

• Lake Slushi story is finished, adding a LOT of new levels!
• All of the previously half-finished levels are now fully finished, including the larger sub-stories like the retro and movie worlds.
• Some fundamental gameplay improvements, like being able to access Tippy's storage from anywhere and being able to equip two spells / weapons at the same time.
• Tons of new story scenes to flesh out one-note characters like Terse and Eugene.

Full changelog:

• Updated the game to the latest version of Game Maker. This should fix a bunch of performance issues (especially when playing in windowed mode) but probably will also cause a bunch of completely new issues. Please alert me immediately if you notice something weird (especially if it's game-breaking). On the positive side the game now supports borderless fullscreen and toggleable VSync!
• Added a new system for secondary melee weapons and secondary spells! If you never used certain situational attacks because switching too them was too annoying, now you can have them at the press of a button! ...once you've found the trinket that unlocks the ability, that is.
  • Because of format changes, old options/keymapping files are not compatible and you'll need to re-change any custom settings. Sorry for the inconvenience.
• New level: Shattered Citadel! Can you bridge the gap, or will you get lost in the space in between? This level isn't the largest level in the game, but it's got the most complicated puzzles and require you to find multiple entrances to explore the entire thing...
• New level: City of the Stargazers! A level with layers, and maybe a new friend...?
• New level: The Great Sea! This is the largest sea in the game, and another contender for largest level in general! Can you handle four levels at once? Well, that's still not enough, because it's got even more than that to explore!
• New level: Pirate's Cove! Can you solve the mystery of the Three Rabbits, or are you just here to plunder the booty?
• New level: Lady Goldfish's Trap! In retrospect, you should've seen this coming if you've ever checked out the sound test and saw a song named Lady Goldfish's Trap which was labelled as "the song that plays when you're trapped by Lady Goldfish".
• New level: Speckled Springs! From dust to dust, from spores to spores... finally uncover the reason why Tippy moved away from Nugget Mines, and find some powerful accessories that add completely new gameplay mechanics while at it!
• New level: Lotus Laboratory! Will this descent into madness never end?
• Finished level: Frozen Ocean. Yes, there's somehow EVEN MORE to do in this place now, and it was planned all along.
• Finished level: Miasma Village. The pilgrim's path will be easier to someone in tune with the dead... and the dead are closer than you ever imagined, if you know where to look... can you make peace with your regrets before you join them?
• Finished level: Blast From The Past. The good old days can finally be put to rest... or will the past come back to haunt you in the future? Friends, enemies, and people being a little bit of both await your challenge...
• Finished level: Florence's Domain. You can finally save or destroy the Burger Nexus movie industry, depending on your point of view! If you can conquer the largest level in the game, there's nothing left to stop you. Except all of the smaller levels.
• A considerable amount of new secret areas in Burger Nexus... can you find them all? Includes a bunch of accessories specifically added to get around various roadblocks that might've seemed impossible previously.
• Quality of life overhaul: once you've been to Tippy's House, speaking to Tippy anywhere (twice) will let you use the storage.
• Quality of life: Added a shortcut warp between Fruitian Village and Nugget Mines warp room.
• Quality of life: new shortcut breakable wall between upper Lake Slushi and Castle Town.
• Maggie now becomes a shopkeeper after resolving the Bread Ruins incident (if she survives). You can finally try out her famous cranberry juice!
• More NPC variety and a new shopkeeper in Blast From The Past.
• Five new shopkeepers added to various Lake Slushi levels.
• Shortcut walls are now magical constructs instead of fleshy eyeball creatures, so you don't need to feel bad about killing them.
• Shortcut walls now block bullets (except piercing ones)
• Breaking a groundpound or oneway block that is PERMANENTLY destroyed (i.e., the ones used to unlock shortcuts) will now also trigger an autosave immediately after.
• Several weapons now protect against opposing ailments when equipped, e.g. the Torch against ice-related ailments or the Great Maracas and Honkin' Horn against Silence.
• Prism spell projectiles now bounces a few times, so you won't automatically waste the diagonal-down shot and they are more useful in tight spaces overall.
• New ability: charge shot! Works with every spell. Now you just need to find it...
• Fixed a bug that's been around for AGES where bullet duration wasn't taken into account for player spells.
• Removed wrong-depth-sorted particle effects from the waterfall in Bubble Trouble.
• New weapons now emit the same type of shiny particle as accessories and shards so you can tell they're collectibles.
• Fixed Tippy still referring to the Burgerface Domain door as needing 20 Crystal Burgers to open even after it was bumped up to a higher value.
• Fixed a bug where sliding and interaction could happen with the same button press
• Removed some excessive swearing.
• Fixed visual misalignment when bonking into a ceiling during a wallrun.
• Fixed dialogue boxes having too low tolerance when detecting if you're in the lower vs upper part of the screen and being prone to changing their mind mid-conversation.
• Optimized windzones / underwater streams, fixing some inconsistent behavior between directions
• Fixed pushable blocks being able to fall through each other when scrolling the screen in certain directions
• Fixed item blocks in Blast From The Past destroying all bullet types, so area attacks got interrupted. Now piercing bullet types are not destroyed.
• Fixed some jumps in Blast From The Past underground path to Treehome being tighter than intended because of bad wall placement.
• Added loot to Snowball paths in City of the Ancients.
• Added new props and TNT barrels to Bread Ruins Main ~ Natural Cave so the experiments aren't just background lore, also has some puzzle uses...
  • Also fixed some flow issues in the area, slimes getting stuck in other rooms etc.
• Fixed Purple Mayo room being a potential softlock due to broken wallrun ramp collision.
• Burgerlink Shrine is now green on the map so you can tell it's an important sub-area.
• Burgerlink Shrine shop now sells Holy Water and Alleged Regalia weapons.
• Increased warning time before Eyepearls shoots at you, so you are actually guaranteed to see the warning animation.
• Cutscenes / dialogue now can't be interrupted and return player control by landing on a funkyslope.
• Increased the hitbox size when checking for interactions, so you won't slip past mirrors and people you wanted to talk to as often.
• Fixed softlock in bonus room at top of Breathing Room.
• Fixed the Sixshooter icon being way too big compared to all other weapons.
• Tweaked boulder trap at start of Circus Mines so it won't lose all its speed in an ugly way right before breaking
• Fixed enemies in Castle Town waterway being below the background layer
• Jeremy now has an unique sprite so he actually can BE the giant rat that makes all of the rules
• Abbreviated name of Cordon Roux Membership Card so it actually fits in the item listing.
• Reworked tornadojump puzzle in EggTower so you don't get a chance to phase through the block during the screen transition. Puzzle might now also be easier to detect in the first place.
• Getting into the escape-only Carrotcoin room in EggTower before the escape now isn't disappointing.
• Fixed the breakable block in Castle Town public pool not having any water behind it. There's also something to find behind it now...
• Fixed visual seam in water near Shiny Wings in Hidden Ninja Village.
• Warps now instantly reset to their regular size if enough time has passed, even if they're inactive (so they won't enter a glitched state if you warp and then walk back the long way)
• Fixed mirror at start of the path to Miasma Village being in front of the player
• Passage from Deep Sea to Bread Ruins is now one-way to prevent getting stuck at the top
• Added a crumbling platform in the shaft between Lake Slushi and Bread Ruins so you have time to react to falling into it
• Fixed Fastest Sun In The West having some slope-into-wallrun-triangle arrangements that would break the collision.
• Angry Sun and enemy drills does not collide with the Focus laser anymore.
• Made it more obvious where entrance to Queen of Heart's path is since it had literally no signposting.
• Lowered Three Queens' health significantly.
• Fixed unused rooms in Burger Nexus bottom left corner showing up on the map for some reason.
• Landing in water now cures the Sleepy ailment as implied by a character in Castle Town. Sorry for the misleading hint!
• Ground pound hitboxes now are considered shieldpiercing, so you can e.g. bop Porcine Mercenaries instead of getting damaged.
•  Freshboss now wears pants.
• Runts and Gnarlies in Blast From The Past can now be damaged by jumping on their heads.
• Ground pounds and Plumber's Boots jump attacks now have damage variation instead of always dealing exactly 30 damage.
• Reorganized the sound test to have the movie and retro world music in separate sections, since they're so huge.
• Fix Frie's voice being much louder than anyone else's
• Expanded the "half-secret" near the starting shaft into a full secret area
• Path between Hive Hijinks and Upper Castle Town is now a ladder so you don't need to make a blind jump.
• Having obtained the crystal burger in Hive Hijinks changes some stuff around the entrance to make it easier to navigate.
• Fixed merchant in Fruitian Village not being marked on the map
• Knife Deflector now can't deflect sword arc afterimage bullets anymore, but it can deflect shurikens and kunai
• Suffering from the Heavy ailment now makes you immune to windzones and underwater streams.
• Added more space to the Shiny Wings room in Assault on Cowboy Town so it's easier to get out of the walljump part
• Fixed damage popups being positioned incorrectly when the camera zooms out in e.g. Plane Insane
• Cat-Acombs balance tweaks:
  • Made Dark Hikkori, Large Hikkori enemies and the Great Balon boss easier.
  • Fixed chaser Hikkori getting stuck only moving horizontally.
  • Reduced Hikkori circles rotation speed.
• There's now little hidden arrows on the map indicating staff areas in the movie world.
• Moved the Monochrome chromosphere to the goth club shop since it's so similar to the sepia one. Instead you can now buy the 'Greenscreen' chromosphere in the movie world.
• Fixed ninja-type enemies randomizing their starting position sometimes leading to them spawning right on top of you and dealing unavoidable damage.
• When a level has multiple BGMs, music now crossfades instead of instantly cutting when you change the active song.
• Underwater dash now only triggers if you input a direction while pressing the run button (to make it easier to do charged dashes in tight quarters)
• Fixed an instability where the system for changing stuff behind your back could crash the game
• Mirrors now show your face from the front when looking into them, instead of reenacting that Franz Kafka painting.
• Fixed some cutscene effects not working as intended in after-level cutscenes, like adjusting messagebox position or screenshake.
• Fixed bee wizards being allowed to attack when not on-screen causing super fast projectiles to sometimes hit you without warning since their attack accelerates infinitely
• Unobtainable Crystal Burgers are only crossed over in the stage entry preview if you've visited the level before, so you won't be mislead into thinking there's nothing to do in the level yet
• Miranda now sells the Umbrella as intended, plus some new items...
• Fixed long character names breaking textboxes if character speaks in a different font than the default.
• Added door icons to Nexus rooms that lead to important indoors zones, like the Archeological Society.
• Increased cooldown before a Bounceshroom can bounce you again to prevent infinite momentum if you wedge yourself between one and a solid object
• Increased time limit for First Aid Chitin
• Fixed Umbra / Brasa / Umbrasa being able to shoot you from offscreen and having animations glitch during Burger Flip
• Fixed glass blocks immediately destroying piercing bullets (in particular Rejection magic)
• Fixed issues where magnet effects pulled coins to unreachable location, especially in Burger Flip
• Fixed there being no way to get back to Winnie's Classroom without warping or triggering Burger Flip if you drop down into area after Nosewald
• Fixed Shroomshield poison clouds not being shield/armor piercing
• Made Bonsai Bill much easier.
• Mole Miners, Bat Swoopers, Large Icicles now only detect you when they're on-screen, even if you're close enough.
• Shark Ninja, Hammerhead Ninja, Shark Scientist are now immune to knockback.
• Sharkie renamed to Shark Plushie, since the name fits in the interface now
• Solid objects are kept loaded at greater distances, to prevent issues where you could clip through them and/or get stuck when they loaded in when moving too fast
• Tons of new accessories, foods and weapons!
• Three new spells!

What's Next for Burgertale?

This update got done RIGHT in the nick of time before 2025 ended, huh?

I feel like this update is where the game goes from being a "demo" to truly being an early access experience. There's now about 40 hours of gameplay, probably more on a blind playthrough. I've realized making many quick updates just doesn't work when you have a linear story to tell, so I'll probably switch over to releasing fewer but larger updates instead of trying to rush them and having tons of unfinished business to wrap up. I have no idea when and how I'll go commercial, perhaps releasing the entire rest of the game in one go as the "full" version and keeping this as the world's largest demo, or maybe scaling things down for a demo and have this be the paid experience but with a 100% off sale during a graze period so everyone that's been around since the beginning can upgrade before the paywall gets put in place - we'll see. 

Instead of making the game a melting pot of every mechanic I've ever conceived I also am considering cutting some of the planned extraneous stuff (e.g. Resident Snowman, World of Cheese) and focusing on wrapping it up - it's been 2 years already and I'm only HALF done?! Well, to be fair I've spent a lot of time taking breaks from it and working on side projects like Bloodhead, Chuck Seagull, Fractal RPG and of course Epsilon Engraving Engine, so maybe it would've been a different story if I'd crunched BT out a bit more consistently. If I focus entirely on Burgertale it'll hopefully not take two MORE years to wrap everything else up. A big reason this update was so extremely delayed was that there was a LOT of unfinished stuff to stitch together, I could've left it but ultimately the game feels unfinished if the player can stumble into unfinished levels so I really wanted to clear it all out now. I actively dreaded having to test play and polish the giant backlog, and when I finally got myself together it took three full-length days of JUST test playing to check and fix up everything. Yeah, ideally I shouldn't let THAT happen again... and that's part of the reason why I wanna try to hold myself back on extreme level gimmicks, because those prototypes are a GREAT way to make unfinished things that linger for ages...

Either case, the two remaining main worlds Cowloon and Nameless Institute are settings I'm actually interested in, cyberpunk and lovecraftian horror, so it'll be a lot more fun to work on them than the mandatory desert and ice worlds! For Cowloon I've also had much more clear story ideas, while Lake Slushi's was stitched together at the last second after going through like a hundred rewrites. Here's hoping 2026 will be a productive year, with neither RAM shortages or stupid OS updates getting in the way (my hope levels are not high though...).

Stay flippin', folks!