Three weeks since 0.9, and this one's big. We'll start with the thing you probably saw first.

A proper front page

Until now the front page was a video, a few news posts and not much else. If you'd never played, it didn't tell you much. Now it does, top to bottom:

The highlights play straight away, as a silent loop next to the latest news. Hit "Watch the video" for the full thing with sound.
Your career: the cards for a player and a team, exactly as they look when you paste a profile link into Discord. Build, level, ratings, form, crest, squad, all of it.
How to play: move, kick, slide. Each one is a little scene on the real pitch with the real players, so you can see what the button does before you touch it.
Game modes: an old-school mode select. Pick a mode on the left and you see the line-up on the right, with every player marked as you, another player or a bot.
Roadmap at the bottom, and links to every section in the top bar.

Find a match

Ranked games are now found through queues, not set up by hand. Hit Play in the hub and pick what you're after:

Solo match: ten players, sides dealt by rating. Pick your main and second position (striker, midfield, defence or anywhere) before you queue.
Duel match: new in this release. You against one other player, each of you captaining four bots. It has its own rating, separate from Solo.
Team match: a team officer queues with five of the squad online.

When a game is found, everyone gets a ready check, in the hub or in the game, and the room is closed to the players who were matched. The lobby now shows what the match is worth for your rating before kickoff, and everyone can use the build sliders there, not just the host. In a team match you can ask a teammate to swap positions, and the captain can move anyone around.

Friendlies got their own spot in the chooser too: Training, Friendly and Ranked, depending on what's at stake.

New players, new pitch

Every player on the pitch is now drawn by hand, pixel by pixel, and so are the run, the shot, the throw-in, the slide, getting knocked down and every keeper move. Builds show on the body: a tall player is a few rows taller, a heavy one a column wider. There are thirteen haircuts (curly, bowl and the samurai knot are new) and all twelve kit patterns are drawn properly.

The pitch got a retro makeover to match: grass from a fixed palette, mud where it gets worn, a crowd made of actual people, and goals, flags and dugouts on the same pixel grid.

Keepers look and play better. They dive at the height of the ball, catch it where their hands are, shuffle along the line, bend down for low ones, claim crosses on their feet and punch the driven ones. A keeper diving at a soft shot can spill it now, so follow up on your shots.

The tutorial

New players now get a tutorial: eight short sessions, from the very basics to finishing, defending and set pieces. Finish the whole course while signed in and you get 100 XP. It's at the top of Offline training on the Play page, and in the Tasks drawer until you've done it.

On the pitch

A slide is a commitment now. Once you go in, pressing again does nothing. Get the ball, or live with it.
Short passes are softer. Right click near your feet plays a gentler ball, and the further the cursor, the closer it gets to the old pace.
First-time shots hit straight after a pass arrives get some of the incoming ball's pace.
Blocks can be aimed. If the ball hits you while you're holding right click or have just pressed left click, it goes off along your cursor's line.
Headers match the head you can see.
The taker can't touch it twice. Play a free kick, a throw-in or a corner to yourself and it's an indirect free kick to the other side. Doesn't apply if you're alone on your side.
Penalties have to go forward, and the kick waits until the keeper is ready. The keeper guesses a third of the goal, and even a right guess won't reach a ball tucked by the post or in the top corner.
Kickoff has a five second countdown with a beep each second and a whistle, so you'll hear it even if you've alt-tabbed out of the lobby.
The referee waits on the advantage while the fouled side is clearly winning the race to a loose ball, and two fouls in one advantage spell are dealt with in one decision.
A player inside the ring at a free kick now jogs out of it on their own, and a player in the sin bin waits in their team's technical area.
Captains: Q takes the bot nearest the ball. That bot wears a faint ring, so you know who you're getting before you press.

The bots got some work too. They commit fewer tactical fouls, sometimes go for the near post, chase a knock-on properly and weight their passes back better. A keeper with nobody safe to throw to boots it long.

Goals you can share

Every goal of a match is now kept for 30 days and can be watched from the match page. Each one has its own link, and pasting it into a chat shows a frame of the goal. Links to players, teams, matches and open rooms get proper preview cards too.

The hub

The front page is two columns: Play and Live on the left, News & events and Rankings on the right. Rankings show recent form, and the full table lives under Statistics.
Buttons and labels were redrawn as pixel keys and plates, so the hub looks like part of the game.
Today's events pop up once, as a box, not a strip across the whole screen.
Chat has one channel per tab. The "All" tab is gone.
Before an update we can now pause new matches for a short maintenance window. You'll see a banner with the time left.

Smaller bits

Zoom goes from 0.50 to 2.00.
There's one standing Kickabout room now, with the hardest bots.
The privacy policy and terms are published, linked at the bottom of every page.
We're on TikTok as well.

That's 0.10. See you in the queue.

0.10.0: a new front page