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Something neat our programmer @jillkatze.lastwing.net put together: We're currently working on the characters' various CPU personalities, and to help balance them against each other, we can run a "tournament" of 10x speed games between every matchup. It's fun to just watch 'em go!

Balancing the CPU players has been a big challenge, especially since the process has exposed a lot of balance issues in the game itself! I think we're really close to getting it dialed in, though - versus matches are feeling really fun and dynamic with the tweaks we've made.

We tried lots of solutions! The first was just to reduce the amount of garbage sent, but making a big chain to land a small attack was no fun. We tried various comeback mechanics associated with clearing garbage, but they were always so strong that getting attacked was a good thing!

What we've got going right now, which I'm pretty confident in as the solution, is that we now factor in the amount of garbage an opponent is already dealing with when calculating how much garbage to send. You can still land the big attacks from the first game, but follow-ups are weaker.