Trial by Fryer Update Has Been Served: New PvP Mode, Restaurants

Trial by Fryer Update is OUT NOW

▶ Watch on YouTube

🎮 NEW PVP MODE: "TRIAL BY FRYER"

• A team-vs-team cooking race in a brand-new stadium arena. Two kitchens, one crowd, three rounds, and a judge's desk deciding who gets served.↓
  
  
  
• Enter through the new Trial by Fryer hallway in the Lair.
  
• Play solo against an AI kitchen if you're short on friends.
  
• Powerups scattered around the arena in crates. Grab one and the whole stadium reacts: jumbotron close-up, crowd roar, announcer call, camera cut.
  
• Opening cinematic with the cultists and Toe, and Happy and Charlie presiding as judges with their own animations.↓
  
  
  
• Round spinner picks each round's twist, with stingers for round wins and the final result.
  
• Confetti and fireworks for wins and clean serves.↓
  
  
  
• Winner's wall in the stadium with the champions' photos.
  
• Original three-round soundtrack: "Trial by Fryer (Intro)", "Round 1… Fry!", "Round 2… Grill On!", and "Round 3… The Final Chowdown", with tempo-matched transitions so the music never skips a beat between rounds.
  
• Employee of the Weak mode has been retired.
  

🍽️ 2 NEW RESTAURANTS

• 🐔Roost ↓

  — a chicken joint with a DJ booth and graffiti on every wall. Bird-only menu of 8 new recipes: Scorched Cock, Chiki-Chiki Club, Cow & Chicken, Porky Chick, Pecker Patty, Wing Man, Mayo Clinique, and the Eggless Veggie Omelette.
  
  

• 🐷The Pig Pen ↓

  — a farm-barn pork joint with hay bales, feed troughs, hand-painted signs, and its own industrial groove-metal soundtrack. 8 new hog recipes: Big Rig Pig, Hog Garden, Holy Ham, Babe avec Fromage, Troth's Trough, Four Skins, Arterial Assault, and the house monster, the Pigpen Ten.
  
  
• Both joints unlock in the new later progression tiers (see Progression below).
  
• A third restaurant, Sammy's, is on the way.
  

👨‍🍳 CO-WORKERS FOR HIRE

• Hire cultist workers in the Lair basement. Crew size scales with your party, and they take a cut of the payout.
  
• They cook, bag, and serve alongside you, and they know their way around every appliance.
  
• They'll chat in text chat, they can jump, and you can shove them out of the way when they're in it.
  

🦸‍♂ COSMETICS OVERHAUL

• New cosmetic bathroom in the Lair with a rebuilt mirror menu, new camera angles, dimmed lighting for a proper look at yourself, and new UI sounds.
  
• New economy: crack open a jar to reveal a random cosmetic, or spend credits to buy the one you want. Cosmetics now have rarity tiers, and you can try anything on before you commit.
  
• Masks and outfits are now separate — mix any of 76 masks with any of 17 outfits.
  
• Hats are a brand-new slot with 19 to collect.
  
• Coloured aprons — cape roster grows from 13 to 21.
  
• Dozens of new masks, plus the cosmetic contest winners.
  
• Community cosmetics are free for everyone from the start.
  
• Existing saves get any cosmetics they'd already earned but never received.
  

📈 PROGRESSION

• Progression ladder doubled from 12 tiers to 24, with the new restaurants and recipes waiting in the later tiers.
  
• Fixed the jar not advancing for players who'd already saved up past the next tier.
  
• The Backrooms now shows as "???????" on the destination board instead of overriding whichever level you picked.
  

👹 ENEMIES & AI

• Happy is in every restaurant now. She follows you around and doubles as a walking stability meter: the lower it drops, the more corrupted she gets. Below 25%, she stops moving entirely. She'll wander, poke at customers, and drop a voice line every so often — and they get a lot less friendly under 50%. Shove her to send her elsewhere.
  
• Paragon Riot Squad — the Cleaners are back as a four-man riot squad with stun sticks. Three hits and you're on the floor. They show up at 25% stability.
  
• Khyvin demon reworked — no more freezing when you look at it. It creeps, locks eyes with you, charges, and blows up.
  
• The Clopener now grabs a real order off the board instead of conjuring a fake ticket.
  
• Customers got a visual refresh: new hats, new looks, and they actually turn to look at you.
  
• Toe has no reflection. Draw your own conclusions. What does this mean? Is he a vampire?
  

🕹️ PLAYER

• You can jump now, with proper takeoff and landing animations (this feature brought to you by bullying from our community)
  
• Inspect what you're holding: hold the flashlight button to bring it up close, look around to rotate it, hold throw to move it, scroll to zoom.
  
• Head bob is now in step with your footsteps.
  
• 8 new voice packs (around 85 new lines): AI Ghost, The Slasher, Simulation Breakdown, Horny, Old McDonald, Classic Happy, AI Glitcher, and Ratburg.
  
• Dying spawns exactly one of you now, and your body no longer stretches into the next zip code.
  
• Text chat moved somewhere less in the way.
  

🎵 MUSIC & AUDIO

• New 'Roost' soundtrack: "Roost 'n' Roll" and "Dirty Bird"
  
• New 'Pig Pen' soundtrack: "Pig Penance", "Table for None", and "Eat from the Trough".
  
• New sound packs and a refresh across the game's audio.
  
• Collectibles are easier to find — they glow, spark, and give off a faint electric hum when you're close. Audio logs sound distinct from tapes.
  
• Audio Log screen rebuilt with a "found X of Y" counter, new look, working scrolling, and full controller support. The VHS shelf also shows your collection count.
  

🖥️ GRAPHICS & PERFORMANCE

• Big performance win: the game's core materials were rebuilt from the ground up. Faster frames, faster loads, and shorter first-launch shader compile.
  
• Reflections look far better and cost less, even on low settings. The odd streaky lines in some reflections are gone.
  
• Volumetric fog and light shafts are cleaner and smoother at every quality level.
  
• New Render Scale option replaces the anti-aliasing toggle. Drop the internal resolution to boost framerate without changing your display resolution — 50% at 1080p still looks close to native.
  
• New puddle, oil-slick, and graffiti effects; oil now has that rainbow sheen.
  
• Flickering decals and signage fixed at every render scale.
  
• Grass, cornstalks, and other vegetation now cast shadows. Festival runs noticeably better.
  
• Smoother lighting with less banding on lower settings, and lower VRAM usage overall.
  
• Fresh lighting passes on Bugungas, Festival, and the Lair (including the new rooms).
  

🤝 ACCESSIBILITY & OPTIONS

• Skip Intro option in the main menu and options.
  
• Reduce Motion now also calms down the pulsing meat on the main menu.
  
• Lobby code is hidden by default — hit the eye button to reveal it. Copying it now confirms on screen.
  
• The server browser shows a loading screen instead of hanging.
  

🌍 LOCALIZATION

• Vietnamese is now fully supported, our 15th language.
  
• Every new string in this update is localized in all supported languages.
  

🛠️ BUG FIXES

• Controls not responding in some builds.
  
• Errors when loading into the Lair.
  
• Grainy screen during loading, and loading screens that briefly went black.
  
• Flickering decals in Bugungas and Roost.
  
• Getting stuck on geometry in Roost and Pig Pen; hay bales you could walk through.
  
• Missing or wrong shadows on some props; glowing objects now glow the right color.
  
• The gumball machine is see-through again.
  
• Toe standing in the wrong spot in the Lair.
  
• Lobbies wrongly rejecting players, plus assorted connection fixes.
  
• Assorted sandwich, recipe, and texture fixes.