SWAPMEAT Patch Notes — June 17, 2026
Aggregated from Steam, cross-tracked with Battle.net coverage on GamePatchNote.
We made it! 1.0 is out now!
[ LAUNCH TRAILER GOES HERE ]
Chef's Picks
We've cooked up special events and content for launch week:
- Developer deep dives at OMG Insiders: Making the Sausage with a trove of behind-the-scenes content
- Meat Your Quota: an in-game unlock event for launch week. Kill and swap your way to unlocking these items!
- A tasty SWAPMEAT launch discount. This week only, my Squishies.
WARNING: Spoilers ahead!
Proceed with caution if you want to discover the changes in-game for yourself. Or, go ahead and live dangerously! Life is short -- just ask Squishy.
Either way, you've been warned!
[ JAMIE VIDEO GOES HERE ]
New Solar System and Boss Fight
We now have a third solar system and a new boss battle!
Meat World: Enter the Carniverse and retrieve Carl's Mech!
Revive Teammates
If you die in multiplayer your teammates can now revive you. If you don't feel like waiting around you can still use a respawn token if you've unlocked them from Carl. Developer details about bringing your friends back to life from our co-founder here.
If your teammate dies behind enemy lines be sure to try the new Bubble Shield Mystery Meat to create a safe revive space!
Streamlined Runs
We reduced our run length to 2 planets and a boss. We found that this makes it more enticing to jump back in after a failure and also allows us to throw more substantial threats at the player. Some planets have been moved to random mode to accommodate this.
And speaking of planets ...
You Named A Planet!
Last week, we invited you to rename Barbecuria. The results of the community vote in Discord are in, and we can announce the winning name:
BRISKETON!
Thank you @Ayden_Pride for the suggestion!
You can tour lovely, inhospitable Brisketon on the Random Solar Systems mode that unlocks after beating the main campaign.
[ BRISKETON YOUTUBE VIDEO EMBED HERE ]
Wrestling Boss Rework
It's been a while since we reviewed the Mutant Boss fight. After Frank's rework, we decided to give this fight a fresh look. Our original design used pin mechanics and required getting around the cheating ref. This made sense with the narrative of the fight but proved to be oppressive and repetitive in practice.
For 1.0, we streamlined the fight, removed those mechanics, and made it more dynamic. Each boss now has a new or modified attack and a "special move." Pork Barrel Pete is the first in the ring and over time his teammates will join in on the fight. The folding chair and the wrestling legs make their return but are no longer necessary to winning the fight. That being said, a well timed use of them will help control the fight when things get hectic.
Hunter Boss Fight
We wanted to have the player face the Hunters in a suped-up boss form while also staying true to their unique identities. We came up with the concept that they are overpowered by slamming that addictive, toxic Glizzy Gulp. They have new attacks and a new green "hard candy" look when hopped up on the Gulp. They are a real challenge.
However, the balance is struck by fighting alongside Carl in a super weapon he hid away long ago, then forgot where he had hidden. Typical Carl. But, in this fight, he can relive the glory days of getting his hands dirty and keeping the relentless Hunters on their toes.
Many of you love Carl, and we do, too. His origin story lives at OMG Insiders for you Carl stans. It's a fun one, and might surprise you!
Hunter System Changes
We felt the Hunters were becoming a non-threat to players so we decided to shift the Hunter timer bonus from secondary objectives to primary. You're...welcome?
Additional changes:
- Hunters now stay in world when you incapacitate them. Incapacitated is no longer interrupted by Enraged, so milk that extra time!
- Hunters can target separate players now.
- Hunters can now be Staggered via Kinetic elemental damage accumulation.
- The Hunters have been renamed to Null & Void.
- If you were with us in Early Access, Null was formerly Ponk (the one with dat booty), and Void was formerly Tibbler (star-shaped mamacita).
New Player Experience
We wanted to create a new player experience that leaned into the workplace roleplaying in the game (every one loves to work!) Our hope is that it feels snappy and conveys useful information that our previous tutorial was missing. Go get your official Employee Orientation Certificate now!
If you're a game-design junkie, you'll enjoy the thought process behind this change (based on feedback from many of you), written by SWAPMEAT's UX Designer.
UX/UI
- Danger indicator added — A visual HUD indicator now alarms when a large, off-screen attack is coming toward you for certain enemies and attacks (like Meat Zord lasers, Null's "starfall", and Lava Del Rey's volcano eruption).
- Improved AOE telegraphing — Attacks like Null's "starfall" and Franken Beans' "stomp" now have a cohesive visual that more clearly shows the danger area so the player can more easily react and deftly avoid.
- Target tagging polish — More forgiving pinging/tagging. Gather nodes and health stations now pingable.
- Low-health flash and sound is back — Tuned conservatively to avoid fatigue, but we really needed to alert players to low-health in a clear way.
- Reworking HUD images of speakers — We replaced the unseemly visuals of our speakers while in a run with stripped down, clearer images attached to the subtitles of each speaker.
- Aim assist — Target placement pass across enemies and spawners.
- Keywords in the UI will now show small explanatory popups. You can turn these off in the settings if you already know what they do.
- When you unlock new content in the lobby, a new banner will appear to celebrate your hard-fought rewards. Carl is proud of you!
- The lobby now has a leaderboard to motivate employees by ranking you against your friends.
- Certain abilities, such as on the Monolith Head and Duckstone Torso, now show an aiming line while holding down the input.
- Upgrade Select card improvements to visuals and text descriptions.
Narrative Changes
We decided to remove our longer cutscenes and focus on lighter reactive roleplaying moments. Ultimately the linear narrative felt like the wrong fit for a multiplayer roguelite and players mostly just skipped the cutscenes. The world-building is still there in full effect, but we're telling the story visually now, with world lore discovered through the Rangus Files. This is more akin to a Soulslike lore approach.
Rangus Files are collectibles that unlock lore as you find them. They exist randomly throughout the galaxy, and are not locked or found in any particular order. Once you collect a file you can decrypt their secrets on the ship.
Gameplay
- Weapons previously had hidden damage bonuses or penalties at certain ranges, which meant that many times weapons would only do their listed damage at specific ranges. Now weapons have a hidden "optimal range." Weapons inflict their listed damage within this range. Outside of that range they do less damage.
- Level Up items now define multiple rarities. Increasing your Luck will give you a higher probability of rolling these new rare items.
- Hover Turret Ability buffed and doubled — it was weak and boring, now there's two and they are stronger.
- Balance, balance and more balance!
Meta Progression
- The Smart Meat terminal and the Carl Upgrades have been replaced with the new Employee Benefits terminal, as required by intergalactic workplace safety regulations. Any currencies spent on the previous systems have been refunded. More details on why we made that change here.
- You now unlock a special Mystery Meat the first time you beat each boss.
Steam Deck Verification
Earning that little green check-mark kept us up at night. We're fully verified on the Steam Deck now. Scooty-doo!
Target Dummy
Perhaps our most important update yet. Behold the jiggle!!
Animation
- The Monday Night Midterms boss fight now has new animations to match the new enemy behaviors.
- New animations for the Hunters in the main campaign: Staggers and reworked Incapacitated anims to show they are dazed / knocked out more clearly.
- New animations for the Hunters for their boss fight: Dodge, Beam Attacks, Bomb Attacks, you'll see!
- Cutscene rework and polish across the board to streamline and emphasize the run.
Art
- Bug fixes and polish of environmental models
- Texture and Material optimization
- Level of Detail polish and optimization across Character assets
- Death VFX updates across many Enemy Characters
Videos, concept art, and behind-the-scenes content about SWAPMEAT's art aesthetic here.
Audio
New score by composer Austin Wintory!This week, we proudly announced that SWAPMEAT's score was created by one of our favorite composers, Austin Wintory.
The Official SWAPMEAT Soundtrack will soon be available on the store page, and includes a brand new track for the final boss fight! (At the time of this writing, we're just waiting on our friends at Valve to check that everything looks good on their end. It might even already be there by the time you read this!)
Audiophile? Check out the interview with Austin and a reveal of the first track of his original score.
Other Improvements
- Major VO implementation pass for: Carl, Roxie, Trader Mike, Hunters, Broadside, and the Pounding Fathers.
- SFX work on the boss fights, cutscenes and gameplay.
- Lots of Mix polish!
Bug Fixes
- VFX and Animation fixes to ensure visual clarity and consistency, like Broadside's broken frozen state.
- Audio bugs fixed, like the Shrine SFX and many other things.
Known Issues
Having issues? Submit your bugs to the developers in our Discord.Enjoy 1.0!
Time to Print, Swap, and Evolve. And don't forget to Meat Your Quota!
With love,
- The OMG Team
- Hunters now stay in world when you incapacitate them. Incapacitated is no longer interrupted by Enraged, so milk that extra time!