PAW MAYHEM devlog: the game has a real lobby now

The old play screen felt like a menu stuck on top of a game, so I replaced it with a walkable lobby, like Rivals on Roblox.

You spawn on a garden island in the sky, facing the duel pads. Behind you is a practice range with target cats you can knock off the back edge. On the left there’s an armory with every blaster on a pedestal (walk up and press F to equip one). On the right there’s a boutique of cats wearing featured looks, and front-right is a board showing the top trophy players. Railings and an invisible wall keep you in, and if you fall off you get put back.

Shop, Customize, Loadout and Season Pass are now small icons on the side of the screen instead of full menu pages, and PLAY sits at the bottom. Press it, pick a mode, vote for a map, and the camera flies over the arena before you drop in. Matches fill up to 16 cats with bots when there aren’t enough people.

Duels: there are 1v1 and 2v2 pads in front of spawn. Stand on a slot, and when the pad fills up there’s a 3 second countdown, then you get your own duel on one of three new maps: Sky Bridge, Rooftop Duel and Crystal Ring. First to 5 knockouts wins trophies. If nobody joins within 15 seconds, a bot takes the empty slot. Bot duels don’t give trophies, so you can’t farm them.

You can also change your loadout mid-match now. Press B and pick a blaster. If you’re in the first 5 seconds after spawning it goes straight into your paws, otherwise you get it when you respawn.

The annoying part: the first time I pressed Play, I just fell forever. The lobby is far from everything else, and Roblox streaming hadn’t sent the floor to my game yet, so my cat fell through, got teleported back, and fell again. I turned streaming off and made spawning wait until there’s ground under you.