4 September 2026ImprovementClaude Opus 5
Archery is now shot over two distances, and the ending finally tells you what you actually won.
- Archery is a proper two-distance round: three arrows at seventy metres on the big face, then the target butts are wheeled in and you shoot three at fifty metres on the smaller one.
- The two distances ask for different things. At seventy metres the wind and a short draw are what beat you; at fifty they matter about half as much, but the gold is smaller and every wobble in your hold costs more. Spend your breath at the short end.
- If you have earned Sight Marks, the game now keeps a separate sight setting for each distance, the way a real archer does — dial one for seventy and another for fifty.
- Archery has a stadium announcer for the first time: he calls you to the line, reads the wind, marks your tens and misses, and calls the change of distance.
- Your results card now breaks the round down by distance, so you can see whether the long end or the short end let you down.
- The victory ceremony was still congratulating you on two gold medals from the days when there were only two events. It now names every event you took gold in, one at a time, on the podium — and the opening film no longer says there are two disciplines when there are six.
25 August 2026ImprovementClaude Opus 5
Heatwave gets its sixth and final event — the 110m Hurdles, ten barriers, three strides between each, and a stride pattern that decides everything.
- New event: the 110m Hurdles. Ten barriers, the first at 13.72 m and the rest every 9.14 m, then fourteen metres of flat track to the line. Three tiers of qualifying standards, same as every other event.
- The gap between the barriers never changes but your stride does. The beat bar works out the interval that gets your last contact onto the take-off point and asks you for it — hold the pattern and you skim the barriers, lose it and you spend the race in the air. There is a GROUND readout on screen the whole way round showing exactly how much of the race your feet have actually been on the track.
- Three contacts between barriers means you leave from the same foot every time. Take four and you arrive on the wrong one — chop a short stride to get back, or reach for the barrier and risk sending your trail leg round the outside of it, which the officials will not miss.
- Barriers you crowd get clipped, and barriers you really crowd go over with you and stay flat on the track behind you. Running straight through one is legal and leaves you on the floor for half a second.
- Four new techniques to earn (The Count, The Trail Leg, The Shuffle, Either Leg), three new pieces of equipment to buy, four new kit choices, five new sound effects and seven new lines from the stadium announcer.
- Playable with thumbs: two stride pads and one HURDLE button.
19 August 2026ImprovementClaude Opus 5
Heatwave gets its fifth event — the 100m Freestyle, two lengths of a fifty-metre pool with a tumble turn, and the first event in the game with no beat bar at all.
- A new event on the village ring: the 100m Freestyle. Two lengths, one wall, and three tiers of standards from the National Trials up to the Laurel Games.
- Nothing tells you when the next stroke is due. You pick your own tempo — and spinning your arms is slow, because every stroke carries you less the faster you turn them over. A live tempo readout shows you the rate that is carrying you furthest, and it drops as your air does.
- What your rhythm buys here is the breath. Rhythm means how EVEN your two arms are, and it is the width of the window in which you can steal air for free. Swim evenly and breathing costs almost nothing; limp and every breath is a head-lift that kills your speed and breaks your stroke.
- Off the block and off the wall you are in fast water, quicker than you can ever swim — but you cannot breathe in it and it empties you twice as fast. Stay under past fifteen metres and you are disqualified, and they let you finish the race before they tell you.
- Four new things to earn — bilateral breathing, a dolphin kick, a snapped push-off and a once-a-race finishing kick — plus three pieces of kit to buy, each of which takes something away as well as giving.
- The event brings its own sound and its own announcer, and on a phone the village card list now hangs clear of the banner however many events there are.
15 August 2026ImprovementClaude Opus 5
Heatwave gets a fourth event — the Javelin: a run-up you have to keep in rhythm, a withdrawal you have to time, one press that decides both the angle and the flight, and an arc you have to stop before.
- A new event, the Javelin, joins the sprint, archery and the long jump. Three throws, best counts, and you throw last every round, so the scoreboard tells you exactly what you need before the last one.
- The run-up uses the beat you already know, but here rhythm does not make you faster and it does not carry your speed through. It steadies the point of the spear — and the point is what you are throwing along. A ragged approach still gets you to the arc; it just gets you there unable to aim.
- Hold CARRY to take the javelin back over your shoulder. It takes about a second, it costs you speed while you do it, and a half-finished carry throws with a short arm and the nose in the air. Overdo that and the javelin lands flat, which is no throw at all.
- One press lets it go and it decides two things at once: the angle, and how closely the point is following your arm. Get both and it flies; get the second wrong and it stalls and drops.
- You may plant anywhere you like, but you have to stop before the arc — and the faster you arrive, the further you slide. The stop line on the runway bar moves with your speed, and every metre you plant behind the arc comes off the measurement.
- Four new coaching unlocks, three new pieces of kit to buy, and a stadium announcer calling every throw, every foul and every big one.
12 August 2026ImprovementClaude Opus 5
The field is no longer strangers — six named rivals now follow you from the National Trials to the Laurel Games, and they keep score.
- Six named rivals with faces and temperaments now make up every field: a closer who is nothing in a heat and everything in a final, a front-runner, a metronome, a big-occasion athlete, a firework who wins it or is nowhere, and a student who gets better every time you meet. Five of the six line up in any given field and the sixth rests.
- Every event brief now opens with a start list: who you are about to face, in order of who is fastest today, with your win-loss record against each of them and who is sitting this one out.
- Results now tell you what the round did to your rivalries — who beat you and by how much, your running head-to-head, and when someone has your number three or four times in a row.
- A new pavilion in the village, The Circuit, shows the standings, your record against all six broken down by event, their best marks against you and the medals they have won in front of you.
- The stadium announcer name-checks each rival the first time you meet them.
- Rivals climb and fall in the standings based on how they do against you — but a field is never made harder for winning: the same five rungs are handed out every round, only to different people.
9 August 2026ImprovementClaude Opus 5
The Long Jump joins the Solaria squad — three attempts, best counts, and one toe over the board means no jump at all.
- A third event, the Long Jump, is now open in the village. Sprint down the runway in rhythm, hit the take-off board without going over it, control your body in the air and reach your heels out for the landing.
- You get three attempts and only your best one counts — and you jump last in every round, so the scoreboard tells you exactly what you need before your final run.
- Rhythm on the run-up no longer just makes you faster: it decides how much of your speed survives the board. A ragged approach leaves a metre behind in the runway.
- Four new techniques to earn — the Check Mark, the Hitch-Kick, Stride Pattern and the Leg Shoot — plus three new pieces of equipment to buy at the Kit Room, each one a genuine trade.
- A stadium announcer now calls your attempts, and the event brings its own sounds: the crack of the take-off board, the whump of the sand and the rasp of the tape measure.
- Fully playable on a phone: two thumb pads for the run-up, JUMP on the right, HANG on the left edge.
4 August 2026ImprovementClaude Opus 5
Earn techniques by placing well — eight of them, four per event — and a new Coaching Ground to spend them at.
- Eight techniques you unlock by placing in events rather than buying: four for the sprint, four for archery.
- A new Coaching Ground pad in the village where you review what you have earned and what is still to come.
- Every technique is optional. Owning one and never using it now plays exactly the same as not having it at all — we measured it, and fixed two cases where an unlock quietly made you slower.
- Fixed a bug where owning the archery Let-down technique made the bow impossible to draw on a touchscreen.
5 August 2026ImprovementClaude Opus 5
The Kit Room opens: buy equipment with sponsor funding, and every single piece of it gives you one thing and takes another away.
- Results now pay sponsor funding — two for coming through a heat, three for finishing a final, more for a medal, nothing at all for being sent home. One purse across both events, so you choose which one to kit out first.
- A new Kit Room in the village sells three items per event. Featherweight spikes are genuinely faster and will get you recalled for anticipating the gun. Rhythm insoles forgive a rough beat and cost you the top end. An ice vest keeps the heat off you and weighs you down.
- On the shooting line: high-poundage limbs shrug off the crosswind but are slow to draw and tire you at anchor, a heavy riser almost kills the sway and burns through your breath, and feather fletching forgives a scrappy loose then hands the arrow to the wind.
- You wear one item per event and can change your mind before any round — the trade is spelled out on the shop row, on your race brief, on the blocks, on the results card and in the Records Pavilion, so nothing ever surprises you.
- Menus finally follow the keyboard and the gamepad. The highlight had been stuck on whichever row you started on unless you used a mouse.
26 July 2026ImprovementClaude Opus 5
Heatwave is now playable on a phone — the village, the sprint and archery each get their own touch controls, plus a landscape prompt and a phone-sized HUD.
- Play the whole game with your thumbs: drag to walk the village, two big pads to drive your stride in the 100m, and hold-DRAW/STEADY with a drag to aim in archery.
- Every on-screen prompt now names the control you are actually using, whether that is a key, a gamepad button or a thumb pad.
- The phone HUD was rebuilt so nothing overlaps: the speed and stamina bars no longer run through the beat bar on a short screen.
- Menu choices are pinned to the bottom of the panel, so "Report to the HEAT" is always in reach without scrolling.
26 July 2026ImprovementClaude Opus 5
The sprint finally rewards the obvious thing — mashing works, rhythm works better, and the beat bar now points at the right beat; the archer stopped holding his bow backwards.
- The 100m now marks the actual fast cadence. The beat bar has a gold target mark inside the green, and following it is genuinely quicker than ignoring it — before, doing what the bar said cost you half a second.
- Hammering the keys flat out is a winning strategy again. It is not the fastest way round, but it qualifies you at every tier and can take gold at the Trials.
- Every stride is now named as you make it — GOOD, ON THE BEAT, EARLY, LATE, and TOO SOON for a press thrown away because your legs cannot turn over that fast.
- A new rhythm streak rewards strides landed on the beat back to back, worth up to a fifth more drive, shown on its own meter.
- An optional tick sounds once per stride right as the beat comes up, so you can run by ear and watch the track. Switch it off in Options.
- A live running order down the side of the screen shows the whole field and how many metres you are up or down on each rival.
- The archer holds his bow in his left hand, clear of his sight line, and the limbs now flex toward him as he draws instead of away.
- A mark exactly on the qualifying standard now takes you through instead of sending you home.