- Game Update 0.6.0 - 16 October 2026
LOCKED AND LOADED Patches aren't just handed to you anymore. You earn them. Plus six legendary patches, a full shakeup of the patch list, a rebuilt HUD, and some new stuff hanging from the ceiling. PATCH UNLOCKS New saves start with three patches: one to hit harder, one to stay alive, one to level faster. Everything else is locked. Every locked patch shows you exactly what unlocks it, with a progress bar. Kill things, eat things, take the hard lane, die a bunch. Yes, dying counts toward some of them. Darrell gets there on his own. Paying attention just gets you there faster. Unlocks are forever. They survive death, and they survive corruption. Once a patch is unlocked, it's in the shop for good. You still buy it with Patch Points. Loadout slots reset with each corruption again, so every boss pays out a slot on every climb. What carries over is what you've unlocked and the dogs you've re…
- Game Update 0.5.0 - 14 October 2026
PLAY BIG OR GO SMALL This is the big one. Darrell can now live in the corner of your screen, the VCR can leave the building, and there's a new kind of opener that I'm not going to spoil too much. Let's go. MINI MODE Hit the new MINI button in the title bar and the whole game shrinks into a little window that parks in the corner of your screen and stays on top of everything else. Work, browse, watch something, and Darrell keeps fighting in the corner. It's built for the small window, not squished into it. Mini mode has its own clean HUD: the fight, both health bars, your XP and rage, and the opener prompt. Your loadout, the VCR and the options are all in a menu in the top-left corner. Town gets its own compact layout in mini mode: tabs for your loadout and each patch tree, a menu for the kennel, mastery and corruption, and SEND HIM DOWN always pinned at the bottom. The window grows talle…
- Game Update 0.4.2 - 11 October 2026
GOOD BOYS I said 0.4.1 might be the last one this weekend. I lied again. Here's a little polish pass, mostly for the dogs, because the dogs deserve it. THE DOGS The dogs don't all sound the same anymore. Baby Darrell's growl is adorably high-pitched. Scary Darrell's is not. The pack no longer attacks in perfect unison like a synchronized swim team. They pile in one after another, in a different order every time. Scrappy. Like dogs. They sit a little lower behind the dock now, so they read as his pack instead of floating next to him. Baby Darrell got a little smaller. He's baby. DYING IS FASTER The death screen is a lot shorter. Dying was already bad enough without making you watch a slideshow about it. The death video now picks up right as Darrell's going down, instead of making you watch him take a stroll first. THE ENDING The sysop has a little more to say on the way out. The handoff…
- Game Update 0.4.1 - 11 October 2026
THE BOARD REMEMBERS This weekend I received a bug report. Since it wouldn't affect the vast majority of players I decided to just go ahead and do absolutely nothing just kidding of course I didn't do that. But fortunately I cut myself off after the bug fix and I'm totally lying again. So enjoy this one, because my weekend went full Darrell and I'm not complaining: A REAL ENDING There's a brand new ending. The previous one felt lackluster. I wanted to make a better one, so I did. "Press any key" now means any key or a mouse click, like every game since 1995 (my bad). It also waits a beat, so you can't blow past the good part by accident. THE DOGS GOT AN OVERHAUL Brand new dog art. Full bodies, a little angled, and they actually look at what they're fighting now. They bite like they mean it. Every dog has a real bite animation. They fight like Darrell now. Every dog attacks in a quick thr…
- Game Update 0.4.0 - 10 October 2026
PROJECT BEATDOWN Darrell has been punching things one at a time like some kind of gentleman. Not anymore. I sat him down, showed him a boxing tape, and now he won't shut up about "combinations." This update is about one thing: the beatdown. This is a big one, so strap tf in. EVERY TURN IS A COMBO NOW Darrell throws three punches a turn now instead of one. Same damage, just spread across more punches. He's not secretly hitting harder. He's just hitting more. Rude. He mixes it up himself: jabs, hooks, haymakers, the occasional headbutt. You don't pick. You just watch and nod like you taught him that. Rage still chains extra punches on top, and a full chain still ends on the uppercut. Some things are sacred. TWO NEW WAYS TO RUIN SOMEONE'S DAY THE HAYMAKER. A big, slow, wide right hand. You'll see it coming. So will they. Doesn't help them. THE HEADBUTT. Rare. He winds up, shakes like he's…
- Game Update 0.3.1 - 8 October 2026
BACK TO FUN STUFF, MOSTLY THE MINECART Every now and then, a floor opens with a minecart sitting in the path. JUMP IN or I'LL WALK. Your call. (It defaults to JUMP IN, because obviously.) Darrell rides it through the floor at speed, flattening everything that pops up ahead of him. Full XP for every kill. Hands up on every hit, hair in the wind, sparks off the wheels, leaning into the corners. He's got opinions about it. Check your DMs. It's got its own music, too. AFTER DARK Five brand new tracks on AFTER DARK. The old ones are retired. NO MORE MUSIC WHIPLASH Every time the music changes (town, rage, bosses, the radio, the minecart), the old song now fades out while the new one fades in. No more going from one loud track straight into another loud track. WHILE YOU WERE AFK Walk away for a while and leave the game running? When you come back, you'll get a little recap of what Darrell got…
- Game Update 0.3.0 | Achievements, Save Slots, UI Polish - 7 October 2026
LOG INBig one. Achievements, save slots, cloud saves, and the whole front door got rebuilt. STEAM ACHIEVEMENTS33 of them. A few are hidden. Some take five minutes. One takes a few hundred hours. Good luck with that one. Already deep in? Anything your save already proves (bosses down, levels, dogs, corruption) unlocks the first time you load in. No re-grinding. Pile 'Em Up tracks your kill count on your Steam profile, so you can watch it crawl. 3 SAVE SLOTSHit PLAY and you get the NODE login. Three nodes, three Darrells. Start a fresh run without nuking your main, or give someone else in the house their own. Empty nodes say NO CARRIER. Pick one and you dial in fresh. \ erases a node. It asks first. Your existing save moves into NODE 1 automatically. Nothing lost. I made a backup anyway, because I'm paranoid. Switch nodes mid-game from Options > Switch Node. Wipe Save now only wipes the n…
- Game Update 0.2.9 - 6 October 2026
GNOME SWEET GNOME Ten new enemies, one very rare golden asshole, and a whole new sound for Darrell FM. I need a nap. NEW: 10 new enemies Every zone got two new faces, so the dungeon finally has some variety in it. The Moldy Cellar: Ruxley, a very sad teddy bear, and the Sporehead. Forgotten Catacombs: the Wisp, and the Shambler (he has a top hat). You know what, I'm not going to ruin everything, even if these are patch notes. I'll let you run into the rest. There are still 6 to discover and probably get murdered by. NEW: The Golden Gnome Every so often, a solid gold garden gnome shows up instead of a regular fight. He's rare. He hates you. It's mutual. He's not a pushover, but he's fair. Also, he's worth 5x XP. New music Darrell FM has five brand new tracks: Bad Sector, Carrier Lost, Ctrl Alt Darrell, Punch Em If You Got Em, and Static. New title theme and new town theme. The whole vibe…
- Game Update 0.2.8 - 6 October 2026
THE SIGNAL The front door got rebuilt. The title screen, the first time you dial in, and Darrell's video all got a full pass. Anyways, more things: New trailer + screenshotsThere's a brand new trailer and a fresh set of screenshots up on the store page. Everything in them is the game as it is right now, including the new intro below. Go take a look, and if you like it, sharing the trailer helps me out more than you'd think. Your call. The title screen is corrodingThe picture is breaking down. Dead blocks eat in from the corners with a green decode fringe, and broken pixels flake off the damage and drift away. It creeps in and pulls back on its own. New look for the text: DARRELL3D.EXE stays phosphor green, everything else is clean white, and it's all a lot bigger. It was tiny on big monitors. The menu cursor follows your mouse now. The "use arrows" hint is gone. Nobody was using the arr…
- Game Update 0.2.7 - 5 October 2026
THE SYSOP WANTS TO PLAY Big one. The sysop got bored, the dogs got pettable, and the blood got a LOT messier. Let's get that bread: NEW: Rock Paper Scissors The sysop doesn't just challenge you to tic-tac-toe anymore. Sometimes he yanks the channel for Rock Paper Scissors instead. First to 2 wins. You get 4 seconds to throw each round. Darrell and the sysop both have their own hands. Yes, I drew them. He cheats. Not often. But you'll see it. Same stakes as tic-tac-toe: beat him and you get paid. Tic-Tac-Toe, cleaned up Bigger board that scales with your screen. One taunt, one plain line of rules. No more wall of text while you're trying to play. Clear YOU WIN / SYSOP WINS / DRAW at the end. Both minigames now time out properly even if the game is minimized, so an idle run never gets stuck waiting on you. NEW: Pet the dog You can pet the dogs now. Click any pup in the kennel. They wiggle…
- Game Update 0.2.6c - 4 October 2026
Just a small patch this morning: Enemies now die in the hit. The punch that kills them freezes them mid-recoil, head snapped the way Darrell sent it, then they go green and fall apart right there. The old death poses are gone. They dropped behind Darrell where you could barely see them anyway. It always hurts to bury a lot of work I put into the death poses, but sometimes you gotta do something to realize it was the wrong thing to do. Or that's what I'm going to keep telling myself. For real though, enemy death is much cleaner now without losing impact. Blood that hits the screen now matches what you punched (green slime, bone dust, blue for the drowned) and lands on the side the punch sent it. The lens splatter, not the pixel spray. New option: Display > Radio FX. Turns off the AFTER DARK and FULL CONTACT looks if you just want the music. On by default, because it's funny. This should…
- Game Update 0.2.6b - 3 October 2026
Last patch I said a right hook snaps their head left. The blood did. Their heads didn't. Now they do. This is a fun one, even if it's small it should have a pretty big impact. Because of all the punching. ENEMIES NOW TAKE HITS Every enemy now has real sprite poses for taking damage. Actual pose, not a flash. They react to the hand that hit them. Darrell's right puts their head to the left, his left puts it to the right, and the blood flies the same way. Rage chains whip them back and forth. The killing blow skips the flinch. They go straight from standing to dead, because nobody flinches at the punch that kills them. LESS ARCADE NOISE Removed the flashing and the slash marks on hit. Those were shortcuts for when enemies couldn't actually react. Now they can, so they're gone. Enemies back up a little so they're not standing inside Darrell's face. Bosses are a bit smaller too. A NEW TOLL…
- Game Update 0.2.6 - 3 October 2026
THE ARCADE UPDATE Hey. Darrell is coming along nicely. I spent a lot of time on features, mechanics, balance, and other things that are super important to the player but also for me like staring at a spreadsheet for hours on end until my nose bleeds. Which brings me to this update. The fun update. The arcade update. The "dude I think you went overboard with the gore and nobody asked you to make the game look retro if someone flips a radio station" update. Well, it happened. And now you get to play with it. Let me know what you think. I won't go into details, that's what patch notes are for. Read on: COMBAT GOT LOUD LEVEL UP now rips across the entire dungeon view in giant letters. You will not miss it. RAGE does the same when Darrell pops off. Land an opener and it says OPENER instead. Gore. Every punch sprays, and the blood goes where physics says it should. Right hook? Their head snap…
- Game Update 0.2.5 - 30 September 2026
This patch introduces Mastery. What's Mastery, you ask? Wow that's crazy I was just about to talk about it. PATCH MASTERY Your patches learn now. You gain mastery while a patch is equipped and enemies are killed. Tougher enemies grant more progress. Darrell uses the patch, the patch learns from Darrell and mutates, making it stronger. You will not lose mastery if you refund patches and build a new loadout. HOW IT WORKS Every patch has a mastery bar and five pips. Fill the bar, earn a pip. Five pips and you've mastered it. Each pip makes the patch a little stronger, and the card shows you exactly what the next one buys, like 20% → 24% gold enemy. You always know what you're training toward. The bars live on your run HUD, your loadout, and every patch card in town. Watch them fill while Darrell works. Earning a pip makes the patch flash, and a mastered patch glows. Hit in town (next to th…
- Game Update 0.2.4 - 28 September 2026
New patch. New Darrell. Let's go: SOMETHING'S WRONG WITH THE FORK Every so often, a fork in the corridor doesn't look right. It flickers. It shouldn't be there. You don't have to pick it. You should pick it. (Darrell will be fine. Probably. Pay attention to what's in there.) DEATH, NOW WITH MORE DEATH Every enemy in the game now has a death pose. They crumple into a heap, hold there for a beat so you can admire your work, then go green and dissolve. Bosses die like it's Final Fantasy. Slow dissolve, lots of shaking, the whole screen rumbles. You earned it. Darrell steps out of the shot for a second on every kill so you can actually see the body. He's not shy, he's just being polite. DARRELL LOST SOME WEIGHT He's about 12% smaller. He was eating the screen, especially on smaller resolutions. More room for the things he's punching. THE VCR Some say the VCR is haunted. Because it is. That…
- Game Update 0.2.3 - 28 September 2026
Happy Monday, if that's your thing. This patch isn't huge, but it does add something that should make boss fights a little more interesting (and potentially lethal). It also makes your patch loadouts a little more important depending on the fight. BOSSES HAVE PATCHES NOW Darrell's been running patches this whole time. The Sysop finally noticed and gave his big bois some too. Every boss now runs ONE boss patch. Look at their HP block to see what the new buff is, and hover over it to see what it does. For example, the Obligatory Giant Spider's patch is BROOD: at half HP, she tags out and sends in her babies, one at a time. They're angry. Then mom comes back to finish what she started. To see what the other bosses do (including the Sysop himself), you're going to have to confront them yourself. Good luck. EARLY GAME The first couple of levels come way faster. The EXP progression felt good…
- Game Update 0.2.2 - 27 September 2026
Yeah so the last patch was pretty huge. Unsurprisingly, I found some stuff after further testing. Nothing major, but worth patching sooner than later. OOOH, SHINY! (actually shiny now)Gold enemies used to be tinted gold, so a green slime came out mildly jaundiced. Now they're properly gold. The chance went up from 10% to 20%. I said "1 in 10" on the card, you read it as a promise, went 12 fights without seeing one, and decided the patch was broken. Fair. Now it's 20% of the time. It's a chance, not a promise. The card now says "20% chance an enemy spawns gold: 3x XP."PATCH SCREENPatch icons are bigger. They were too damn small. The patch name now lines up with its price, and the text is tightened up. Flavor text caps at two lines. The jokes stay, the wall of text goes. HUDThe LEVEL UP announcement now actually shows up in the middle of the screen. It had been sitting off to the left bec…
- Game Update 0.2.1 | Progression Rework - 27 September 2026
Darrell finally learned how RPGs work. I spent the last few nights trying to figure out why parts of my own game were pissing me off. Turns out the answer was progression. The old loop was: Darrell fights for hours, gets exactly zero stronger, then you come home to a pile of copper and do spreadsheet math about FISTS vs BODY vs the patch you actually wanted. That's not an idle RPG. That's accounting. Now Darrell fights, and Darrell gets stronger. You decide what kind of Darrell he becomes. Leave him running and he can actually level, get stronger, and push farther without you. That's the game. It just took me until 0.2.1 to figure it out. DARRELL LEVELS UP NOW XP from every punch. Every hit pays a little, the kill pays the rest. Lose a fight? He still learned something. Levels raise his stats automatically. More ATK and HP every level, and ATK always goes up by at least 1. No stat alloc…
- Game Update 0.1.3 - 25 September 2026
ENEMY ATTACKS Enemies no longer have a subtle animated lunge on attack. I mean they do, but they used to too. Enemies now switch to an actual attack pose on attack. I'm saying the word attack a lot. Moving on. GREED OR GRIND Forks matter now. They're split between greed and grind. Greed means more money, harder enemies. Grind means less money, easier enemies. The spectator (you) can now intervene at each fork, or let Darrell go in blind. Your call. AREA PROPS & THINGSEach area (Cellar, Catacombs, Aqueducts, etc.) is now decorated with more theme-appropriate stuff. And by decorated I mean stuff on the walls and crap on the floor now appears specific to the areas. This makes each area feel more lived in, even if it was lived in by an insane hermit and sentient garbage. Buffs have the same effects (taco vs pizza) but have also been reworked to match the theme of the area. The cellar is now…
- Game Update 0.1.2 - 23 September 2026
DARRELL RADIO Three stations, fifteen tracks, same Darrell. DARRELL FM. The shit I have been listening to for 6 months, one track at a time based on the zone. I can't take it anymore, and neither will you if I leave it there. AFTER DARK. Neon and bad decisions. Synthwave and stuff. FULL CONTACT. Punch stuff. No fluff. Plays straight through all tracks per station and loops. Skip forward, skip back, shut it off. Music no longer changes just because he walked downstairs. It's a radio. That's how radios work. Boss fights and berserk still take the air. They earned it. You get it back after. Radio's off in Bastion (town). It's intentional. FIGHT ANIMATIONS Darrell no longer stands there with sleep paralysis between punches. Now he bobs, shifts his weight, drifts off range and comes back. It's subtle, but he's alive between swings now. Feels good. THE DOGS Their size has been reduced to dog-…
