7 September 2026ImprovementClaude Opus 5
Port Vantage is two and a half times bigger, the grass is no longer a shortcut, and you can now break both the city and your cab.
- Every district is far larger — up to 1.9 km a side, with more neighbourhoods, more parks, longer arterials and a lot more city between fares.
- The road is now where the cab belongs. Cut across the grass and you bog down to a crawl with a warning on screen and gravel under the wheels. Railings, hedges and park fences show you where the road ends, and pressing R always puts you straight back on the nearest street.
- Street lights, lanterns, railings and hedges smash when you hit them, with sparks, breaking glass and the light going out. Trees only come down for a heavy cab at speed — anything lighter bounces off, and it hurts.
- Your cab now takes damage. It dents, then it smokes and loses power, then a wheel starts dragging and pulling the steering, and finally it dies. Light bumps cost you nothing — only real crashes count.
- A wrecked cab is not the end of the shift: the depot tows you out, which costs you six seconds and whoever was in the back, and then you are straight back on the road.
- Fix the cab at a repair bay — the blue canopies marked on the minimap — or just keep delivering, because every fare pays for a bit of panel-beating. Both cost you clock, which is the point.
- Ramps now always have somewhere to land, and the fare board shows how much you smashed and how many times the tow truck came out.
6 September 2026ImprovementClaude Opus 5
Every district now has its own landmark — and every one of them has a roof you can drive onto.
- Eight one-of-a-kind landmarks, one per district: a banded lighthouse on the harbour, a cannery chimney by the freight line, a cathedral in the old town, an iron-and-glass market hall, a tram depot with a clock tower, the bascule towers by the canal, a floodlit arena uptown, and a glass spire over the skyline.
- Each one has a striped ramp off the forecourt that takes you up onto its roof terrace, a long run along the top of the building, and a kicker at the far end that launches you back down at the street.
- Stone parapets line the ramp and the roof, so once you are committed you stay on it — clip a wall and you slide, you do not stall.
- Landmarks show up on the minimap as a gold diamond, and the one in your district is named on screen when the shift starts, so you always have something to steer by.
- All eight are tall enough to see from most of the district — useful when you are chasing a fare and have lost your bearings.
1 September 2026ImprovementClaude Opus 5
Other cars sit on the road instead of sinking into it, the ramps finally have a run-up you can hit, the trees grew bark, and there is a minimap so you can see where your next fare is.
- Every other vehicle on the road - street traffic, rival cabs, trams, parade floats and the freight train - had been driving about twenty centimetres buried in the tarmac. They now sit on the road properly, and they lean with the camber of the street instead of digging one side in.
- Ramps used to begin with a step you bumped into rather than a lip you could climb, in every district. Each one now rises smoothly out of the road, so you get onto it at speed and keep that speed over the top. The take-off angle is unchanged, but because you no longer lose anything on the way up, jumps now carry about fifteen per cent farther than they used to.
- There is a minimap in the top-left corner. It shows the streets around you, every passenger waiting nearby as a dot in that passenger's own colour, your drop-off as a gold diamond once someone is in the back, and rival cabs as small red squares. Anything too far away to fit is pinned to the edge pointing the way, and a red N always marks north.
- The big direction arrow now works with an empty cab too. It points at the nearest waiting fare, shows how far away it is, and takes that passenger's colour so the arrow and the dot on the map are always the same person. It turns gold once you are carrying someone.
- Trees have real bark and leaves instead of being flat green balls, come in two kinds, cast shadows on the grass, and no two look quite the same.
31 August 2026ImprovementClaude Opus 5
The ground came back, and Port Vantage got a railway.
- Fixed the big one: whole stretches of every district were solid but invisible — you could drive across grass, courtyards and parkland that simply were not drawn. All eight districts now show the ground you are driving on.
- Park ponds no longer sink halfway into the hillside they sit on.
- New hazard, the level crossing: a freight line runs straight across Cannery Row and Skyline, and every road it meets has half-barriers that drop with flashing lamps and a warning bell about four seconds before the train. Beat it or wait for it.
- New hazard, road works: lane closures in Market Quarter and Skyline, with a striped board and a skip you have to steer around, and cones you are welcome to scatter.
- Skyline — Rush Hour now really is everything at once: trams, drawbridges, a parade, rival cabs, a train and road works.
- New sounds for all of it: the crossing bell, the train rolling past, its horn, and the thwack of a cone off the bumper.
28 August 2026ImprovementClaude Opus 5
The cab finally has the power its speedo always claimed, the city has roads long enough to use it, and the taxi looks like a taxi.
- Fixed the real reason the cab felt gutless: a physics bug had been quietly building up an invisible brake, capping every cab at little over half its stated top speed and, on a hill, shoving it back down. Cabs now pull hard from a standstill and hold their top speed.
- The cab will never roll backwards under throttle again, however steep the street. Stop on a hill with no pedal pressed and it holds itself instead of sliding away.
- Every district is bigger and opened up, with two or three wide expressways running clear across the city - long, fast, and nearly free of junctions, so there is finally somewhere to open the throttle.
- The taxi is a proper taxi now: cab proportions, a lit roof sign, a checker band down the doors, grille, lights, plates, mirrors and hubcaps. Rival cabs and street traffic got the same treatment.
- Shift clocks, medal targets and the Rush Hour goal were all re-tuned around the quicker cab, so the ladder still asks something of you.
- The speedometer was reading about 11 per cent slow. It reads true now.
27 August 2026ImprovementClaude Opus 5
Every passenger is now somebody, and five new rival cabs are working the streets against you.
- Five kinds of passenger, each wanting a different drive: the Tipper pays huge but hates waiting, the Thrill-seeker pays double for drifts and big air, the Nervous one pays a bonus if you get them there without a single slide or scrape, and the V.I.P. pays double fare and buys you far more clock.
- You can tell who is waiting before you stop: the glowing ring on the kerb is colour-coded, and each passenger looks the part — a sun hat, a green mohawk, a clutched bag, a briefcase and a sharp suit.
- Every personality speaks up when you pick them up, cheers your stunts or yelps at them, and the card in the corner tells you exactly what they are paying for.
- Six rival cab crews now work Port Vantage instead of one: the Scout races you to the nearest fare, the Poacher wants the exact fare you are going for, the Blocker parks itself in front of your bonnet, the Tailgater shunts you from behind, the Bandit ignores one-way signs entirely, and Vega — the best cab in the city — hunts fares while you are empty and gets in your way the moment you are carrying
- The district select screen now tells you which rivals work each district before you commit to a shift.
- The end-of-shift results add VIPs delivered, clean runs, and a rundown of who you actually drove.