Five new CPU Upgrades, Ban/Skip actions, and leaderboard build previews
Greetings Operators,
Three days since the last release and this one is all about making the CLAIRE CPU Upgrade system deeper and more readable.
Five new upgrades joined the roster: Ballistic Overrun (turret shots pierce through zombies), Servo Overclock (faster turret fire rate), Impact Bloom (your bullets explode on hit), High-Risk Harvest (more zombies spawn but more XP to grab), and Factory Productivity (bonus factory output). These are meant to be build-defining — pick one early and lean into it.
Ban and Skip are now available alongside Reroll when picking upgrades. Ban permanently blocks a family for the rest of your run, Skip lets you pass on a level-up entirely. Both have their own charge pools. This means you can actually shape your build instead of hoping RNG cooperates.
Leaderboard upgrade grids. Every leaderboard row now shows a 2x3 grid of the upgrades that player picked, so you can see their build at a glance. Hover a slot for the name. Works everywhere — in-game drawer, Game Over screen, main menu top-5.
XP curve rework. The early game now uses a hand-tuned ramp so your first upgrade arrives in wave 1, and full six-family caps land closer to wave 25. Upgrade stat values got cleaned up too — nice round numbers like +5/+10/+15/+20 across the board.
Other stuff:
- Upgrade cards now show before/after values, rarity-colored highlights, and stat icons for faster picks
- HUD now has six persistent power-up slots tracking your current build
- If you run out of upgrade cards, queued level-ups convert into +50 iron and +50 copper so you're never stuck
- Leaderboard blocks save/load spam — one entry per save chain, only updates when your score improves
- Survival time shows as
1h21format after 60 minutes
As always, full patch notes are in the Patch Notes button in-game at zombiesperminute.com.
We will discover what happens to humans on Earth, CLAIRE (on behalf of me, Enzed ;))