News & patch notes — A New Life

The Crown: royal lives, aliens, billionaires and a lot more

October 19, 2026

New Born royal. Eleven countries now have a crown and a real royal house: the United Kingdom, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Japan, Thailand, Qatar and Morocco. Be born first in line or the spare, watch the line of succession move, and when it is your turn, a coronation. Your own throne room, a coat of arms drawn for your house, the Court Gazette with a headline about you every year, and a crowd at the gates that cheers or brings torches.
New Rule. A constitutional monarch gets three bills a year to sign, refuse or send back with a note — banning pineapple pizza, a four-day week, abolishing Mondays, a tax on yachts — and finds out a year later whether they worked. An absolute monarch writes decrees instead, and can rule badly enough to be overthrown. A president can bring the crown back, or crown themselves.
New Court life. Hold court and judge three petitions, throw a ball, plan the seating at a state banquet, a royal wedding with a kiss on the balcony, knight somebody, tour abroad and bring back gifts, sit for your official portrait, name a ship after yourself, slip out incognito, give the speech, and do up the palace. Princes and princesses get boarding school, a regiment, a secret romance, a sibling to plot against and, for the spare, a memoir.
New Out there. Look at the sky long enough and something looks back. Get abducted, join them, get the green head and work your way up from Specimen to Overlord: crop circles, a cow, flying the saucer, a year in disguise, and a treaty with Earth.
New Area 51 and other worlds. Join the base, investigate sightings, interrogate a guest, keep it out of the papers and upgrade your ray gun. Defend your city from an invasion in a ray-gun game, then travel to Mars, Europa and three other worlds to explore, take DNA samples, found colonies or conquer. Not for you? Settings → Sci-fi content turns all of it off.
New The very rich. From fifty million, a Luxury section: superyachts you name yourself, jets and helicopters, private islands with villas and resorts, any sports club in the game, a Monet or a T. rex, a tower with your name on it, a rocket company, a foundation, a newspaper, a vineyard, racehorses — with upkeep, heists, tax inspectors and a rich list of rivals.
New Music, properly. SoundCloud in the Social tab: upload tracks, read the comments, go viral and get a label's attention. In the career, several singles a year, EPs and albums, features, music videos, gigs and tours, and a chart that moves.
New A belt at every level. Amateur, regional, national and the ANL FC each have a champion to beat, and winning one ends in a ceremony with the belt round your waist. Champions can now move up or down a weight.
New Health you can do something about. Smoking, drinking, drugs and gambling show up as habits with a meter, a cost and a doctor's warning. Quit, get help, or go to rehab. A check-up really helps, healthy habits add up over the years, and nobody healthy dies young without a reason you could see.
New Famous for what you do. A president, a pro athlete, a champion, a star or a billionaire is known for it, and fame now brings real likes and followers and sells more of whatever your company makes.
New Your country first. The new life asks where before who, and every country has names of its own.
New Smaller things. Spend time with everyone in one go. Family you live with no longer drifts away, and acquaintances can be made friends or let go. Pets look like pets. Beards grow in over a few years. Settings can play the mini-games out for you. Tap outside a card to close it.
Fix Time added to a prison sentence is added, not swapped for the new one. Investments no longer stop at ten million at a time. A tie under a jacket sits on the shirt. Music pays a little less like a lottery. Training, Health and getting dressed work properly on a computer.

Halloween: costumes, pumpkins and a few bad decisions

October 4, 2026

New Costumes in the shops. From October 1 to November 2, by the date on your own phone, the shops put costumes out: a witch's hat, a witch's dress and zombie rags at Second Chance Thrift, a skeleton onesie and a pumpkin hoodie at Blok, pumpkin socks at Apex, and a vampire cape lined in red at Maison Varga. They go at the front of the shop and in the window. Once bought they are yours to wear all year.
New The room, in October. A carved pumpkin with a candle in it, a string of orange lights across the wall and cobwebs in the corners. A cell gets the cobwebs.
New Ten things that only happen at Halloween. Trick-or-treating, and the house with no lights on. A party at a house whose parents are away. The empty house at the end of the road. A costume party where somebody came as the same thing, better. A costume your child needs to have wings. Pumpkins on the kitchen table, eggs on the front door, a horror film and a noise in the house, the costume contest at work, and an old aunt's story about the thing on the stairs.

Step into the cage: a whole MMA career

October 2, 2026

New An MMA career. Pick where you come from — boxing, kickboxing, Muay Thai, jiu-jitsu, wrestling, judo, sambo or MMA from day one — and a weight class, and start at an amateur show in a sports hall.
New Fights you fight. Exchange by exchange, on the feet, in the clinch and on the floor: jab, kick, shoot, sprawl, pass, submit. They read what you keep doing and counter it. Between rounds the camera cuts to your corner, where your coach reads the round and you pick the plan. Three judges score every round, and at the end the referee raises a hand.
New Camp and fight week. Six areas to train — striking, grappling, cardio, strength, defence, technique — and a week off when you need it. Every coach works their own way. Before each fight you choose the game plan, a light or hard camp, how hard you cut weight, and what you say at the press conference.
New Amateur to pro. Win enough and the promotions call with paper you can sign, push back on, or turn down. Your amateur record is kept apart, and your professional one starts at 0-0-0. Seven promotions, nine weight classes, fifteen ranked names in every division, and one belt to win and defend. Records read wins, losses and no contests.
New Everything around the cage. Rivals who come back for the rematch, and who carry their own records. Opponents with personalities and styles that beat other styles. Short-notice fights for more money and no camp. Sponsors whose logos go on your shorts. Hype, followers, and interviews after the fight. Gym partners who become friends, rivals or mentors. Minor injuries you can fight through, and serious ones you cannot.
New The rest of your life pays for it. Too much camp and your job, your grades and the people at home suffer. Steroids help in the gym and show up on the test after the fight: the win is overturned, the belt goes, the brands walk. Twelve new events, from the weigh-in you are two kilos over to the man who wants you to lose in the second round.
New Retire and teach. Hang up the gloves, take a break or make a comeback. Once you retire, train your children, your brothers and sisters, or a cousin who turns up at the gym. When your life ends, a brother, sister or cousin you trained can carry on as the next generation, and starts their own career with what you taught them.
Fix A child who carries on no longer inherits their parent's careers in racing, music, streaming, acting, sport, medicine or the law, and keeps the gender they were born with.

Your whole body, clothes that are yours, and money you can read

October 1, 2026

New A body, not just a face. You stand in your room, growing a year at a time from a baby to old age. Tap any face to see the whole person. Health shows your body with what you live with pinned where it sits. Babies and small children have haircuts of their own.
New Clothes shops. Second Chance Thrift, Blok Streetwear, Apex Sports and Maison Varga, under Assets: try things on in the mirror, recolour what you wear, and look better for it. The rails turn over every year — Blok's numbered drops, Varga's new collection.
New The brands are everywhere. The same companies sponsor athletes, pay for Glimpse posts, and trade on the market: buy shares in Blok, Apex, Maison Varga, Crestline, Vantar and more. The market shows a price per share, ounce and coin.
New Money you can read. Saving goals filled from your savings account, with a pace. A bank statement that names who paid and who was paid, and a breakdown of what you are worth.
New A clearer game. Dating shows the two of you and what the next yes takes. Social opens on you. Your family tree, your parents either side of you, and line icons across Actions, People and the casino. The game loads faster: screens are fetched when you open them.
Fix You can sit an exam even when you are in debt.

The Crips, the Bloods, and what it costs to get out

September 28, 2026

New Real sets. The Crips, the Bloods, the Latin Kings and MS-13, each with its colour, its part of town, its enemy and what it asks before it lets you in — somebody who can drive, proof first, family to vouch for you, or young and all the way in. Nobody joins on their own: they jump you in, give you a name, and their war is yours.
New The set. Everybody you came up with, and what happened to each of them: a cross on the ones who died, bars on the ones inside, an arrow for the ones who moved away. Every year somebody goes in, somebody comes home, and a new kid starts coming round. Somebody's rent is behind, somebody's brother needs a lawyer — take care of it quietly, and it goes in the book.
New The book. Who owes you, whom you owe, and blood — the one debt that is never paid. A favour you never call in goes cold. A debt you never settle gets collected, their way. And an officer who loses your file writes it down too: he wants a name, never money.
New The call. When the other side does something on your block, you choose who comes tonight, and every name has a price: it costs nothing, it spends what they owe you, or it puts you in their book. Go outnumbered, or call it off while the whole block watches.
New Getting out. The set has hold of your mother's street, your job, your children's school. You buy each thing back one at a time, settle what you owe, and it costs every favour anybody ever owed you — and for a few years afterwards, they want you to know they could still find you.

Behind the camera, and a law that bends for the right people

September 28, 2026

New Directing. A new special career, one film a year. Three scripts land on your desk — each with a title, a sentence and how the script really reads — and you choose how big to go: your own money, an independent, a studio picture, or the summer blockbuster, and nobody hands a stranger the last two.
New A casting call. Tom Cruze, Margot Robby, Nicholas Cagge, Meryl Streap and twenty more, each with a fee, a draw, a talent and a temperament — reliable, difficult, rising, fading, chaos, prestige or crowd-pleaser — and genres they are at their best in. Or cast the people you know for almost nothing, or yourself if you have ever acted. How the two leads get on shows the moment they are both cast.
New The shoot goes wrong three times. The lead wants the ending, it rains for eleven days, the studio wants it happier, the footage leaks, the stunt car is in the river — and every answer moves the film, the budget and the buzz. Then the edit: your cut, the short one, or a test screening in Ohio.
New A poster, and a box office run. Every film gets its own poster. When the year turns it opens: the weekend, ten weeks of takings as a chart that goes green from the week it is in profit, critics against audiences, a headline, your share, awards season — and a hit comes back as a sequel offer. A small film the critics love can break out of the festivals and change a career overnight.
Fix Labels were little balls. The casino's chip style had leaked out of the blackjack table, so status labels all over the game — a football club's form, an agent's cut, a film's verdict — were drawn as a 20-pixel poker chip. It stays on the felt now.
New Nobody testifies against the top. The further up the underworld you are, and the more people have heard what happens to those who talk, the fewer witnesses remember seeing anything — in court and when the police come through the door. The crime panel says what the street thinks of testifying against you.
New Police in your pocket. Paying off a detective now keeps him on the payroll, every year. A boss can instead get something on an officer, which costs nothing until the year they decide internal affairs is safer than you. The more you own, the more often a raid is quietly called off, an arrest never becomes a file, and a sentence comes back a year shorter for each of them. A nobody who steals a car goes inside about one time in four; an organisation with five officers, one time in forty.
Fix An ordinary job covers an ordinary year, everywhere. In the poorest countries an ordinary wage was less than the cost of living, so every life there went into debt every year whatever it did. Rent and food now follow local wages — still a little less than all the way down, so it stays harder, and a car still costs what a car costs — but a working life can stay out of the red.
Fix Free is free, even in debt. Things marked $0 — training, a walk as a date, a free stream — refused anybody below zero. They do not any more.

A stone worth sharing, a country to run, and the forty years the game used to skip

September 27, 2026

New The grave is the screen, and it is a real image. A life ends on its own card — the stone filling it, the name, the years, how long they lasted, what killed them, a line about what the life was mostly about, and as many facts as the stone has room for, cut into the face of it. Share hands it to your phone as a picture; Save puts it in your downloads. It is 1080 by 1350, which is the shape that lands properly in a feed.
New The funeral. Under the stone: who came, counted off the life you actually led, and up to three of them standing up to say something — chosen by what they were to you and how you treated them. A child you were never there for says so. Nobody speaks for somebody who left nobody behind. None of it is a dice roll.
New A solicitor writes. Every so often somebody you barely knew dies and the post brings a damp cottage, a cheque from an uncle nobody talked about, a shop with four months of unpaid rent, or a funeral director who has your address. Rare, and commoner the older you get, because older people know more dead people.
New When a country stops letting you run it. Unhappy enough for long enough and the meters stop being the story: the country becomes a hex map, and it goes up one district at a time. Three moves a year — soldiers, who work at once and leave a number everybody remembers; talks, which cost money rather than people; or the agencies, quiet and effective and hardening the next district. Lose half the country and whether you get the aeroplane, the dock or neither depends on whether anybody in your cabinet was still taking your orders.
New A country you inherit, and a cabinet to run it with. The top job used to hand you every budget line at nothing. It hands you a country now: departments already funded, a treasury that may be in the red, and births, deaths, life expectancy, literacy and prices that came off the real place. Six ministers to appoint — an academic, a career official, a party loyalist, somebody who stood against you, or your sister — and a department with nobody in charge wastes nearly a third of what you give it. An adviser reads the country in the order it would break and says the one thing that matters, with the button that does it.
New An election is a map. A seat is ten to twenty-two wards you take one at a time. A campaign only spreads along ground it already holds — advertising is what you buy to ignore that — and the other side pushes back after every move.
New Five countries written out properly. Jamaica, Iceland, Switzerland, Cuba and Qatar have their own names, their own towns and one thing the game plays differently: legs, fame that travels twice as fast, money work that pays, a wage everybody shares, and a yearly cut of what the country sells.
Fix A driving test you can tell what to do in. Three black rectangles and a warning triangle was a guess, not a test. It is a road now, with lanes and your car at the bottom of one, and three goes at spotting what steps out — and tapping early is told to you rather than quietly ending it.
New It goes on your home screen. The game now installs like an app and plays with no signal at all. There is a page about it, and it takes two taps.
New A seat is a board. Politics was one number against another. It is a map now: ten to twenty-two wards on a hex board, yours in blue, theirs in red, the middle still out, each worth one to three votes and each showing how much of it is yours.
New Moves land somewhere. Knocking on doors works the ward you are standing in, and a quarter of it spills next door. A campaign spreads along the ground it already holds, so you can only work a ward that touches one you are ahead in — advertising is the thing you buy to ignore that. After every move the other side pushes into whatever of yours is weakest.
New A name is ground, not a bonus. A known candidate walks in holding half the board; an unknown holds their own street. The vote reads the board at the end of the year, counting what is still out by the way it is leaning.
New Five countries written out properly. Jamaica, Iceland, Switzerland, Cuba and Qatar have their own book of names — lightly bent versions of the people each is famous for, family included — their own towns, their own line, and one thing the rest of the game reads: Jamaica starts you with more in your legs, Iceland is small enough that fame travels twice as fast, Switzerland pays the people who count money, Cuba pays a surgeon and a porter nearly the same, and Qatar hands every citizen a share of what it sells.
New A life starts somewhere, and it matters. Fifty-four real countries, each with two numbers: what a year of ordinary work is worth there, and how much of the world is in reach from it. Wages, what a year costs, the family you are born into and half the job board come off those. Wages fall away faster than prices do, which is the whole of it — in a poor country you earn a fifth of what somebody earns elsewhere and a car still costs what a car costs.
New Nothing about it is fixed. A country has good years and bad ones, so two lives in the same place are not the same life. The family you are born into sits in the band its country sits in — and a family with money is possible anywhere and common nowhere.
New Three countries you may not leave. The job board there is what the state hands out, and getting out is something you do rather than something you buy: a real attempt, most of what you own going to whoever takes you, and years inside if they are waiting at the other end, with your family told about it. A very few lives there start at the top of it instead.
New You can choose where to start. The creator will take a country, or leave it to the world — and where there is a family that runs the place, it will let you be born into it.
New Somewhere else. From anywhere you are allowed to leave, you can look at leaving: what the papers and the flight cost, and whether that country would have you at all. Arriving is arriving — the job goes, and you start again.
New A year you can read instead of tap. Settings now asks how a year should be told. Turn it to the story and the year writes itself straight into the feed with no card to dismiss, and anything that needs an answer is asked at the bottom of the page. Only the games still take the screen.
Fix The case got the screen it needed. A board squeezed into a card, with the third suspect under the motive chips and the journal over both, is now the whole screen: people, string, one line of what just happened, and the motive asked at the moment you write a name.
Fix The flat is out for now. The room, the furniture and the arranging did not work well enough to keep. A place you own is still a place you move into, and the child your will names still inherits it.
Fix Nine-year-olds are not structural engineers. Everybody the game made was handed a trade the moment they existed, so the friends you made at school were plumbers and estate agents at eleven. Nobody has a job before eighteen now; they are at school, which is where they were. A job the game deliberately gives somebody young — a sixteen-year-old on a professional contract — still stands.
Fix The people at your work are at your work. Colleagues were drawing a trade out of the same hat as everybody else, so an office was a bus driver, a chef and a hairdresser. Your boss now holds the job you are trying to be promoted into, which is most of why they are in the way, and your rival is doing exactly what you are doing.
New Glimpse. The photo app, inside the game, shaped like the one everybody knows: stories along the top, a feed of square photographs, the like count in bold, a grid on your profile and a blue tick. The people in your life post their own lives to it — your mother's fifth loaf this week, a friend's two weeks somewhere you were not invited — and they can all see how long you have not been.
New One post a year, and what it does. The gym again, your own face, something about work, the dog, somewhere else, the sponsor's post — each reaches a share of your following, decided mostly by what you look like and how known you are. An opinion goes four times as far and one in four goes badly, taking a chunk of the following with it and a scandal that sits on your record for three years.
New The blue tick asks for three things. A hundred thousand followers, a name that is known off the internet, and no scandal in three years. Have all three and they still say no to some people, without a reason and without an appeal — and they take it back off anybody who stops being somebody.
New A following is a thing you keep. Go quiet for a year and fourteen per cent of it drifts off. Brands start ringing at about six thousand followers, pay by the thousand, and lose interest after three years when they find somebody younger.
New Being a grown-up now has something in it. Childhood had sixty-two things that could happen in it and everything after twenty-six had a handful, which is why a life went quiet exactly when it should have got complicated. Fifty more: the Sunday dread, finding out what the person next to you is paid, the school friend who got rich, the side project, the back going, the reunion, the boiler, lending money to somebody you love. Then the ceiling at work and the young boss, the redundancy with a number beside your name, the last year you could have changed what you do, the menu held further away, the first person your own age to die, the stupid car, a parent who is not managing on their own any more.
New A marriage can end without you pressing anything. It gets said on an ordinary Tuesday, and you can ask for a year, pay for counselling, or agree that it is over. Then the year of the settlement: split it down the middle, pay a solicitor and fight for the house, or walk out with a car and a box of records. What it costs is a share of everything you have, so it means the same to a cleaner and to a millionaire. Afterwards there is the flat with one bedroom, the children every other weekend, and the day your ex remarries.
New You can stop working. Retire is in the job screen from sixty, and it says what the pension will be before you press it — built on the wage you left and the years you put in, with a floor under it so nobody retires on nothing. Going early costs you. A retired year that had nothing in it costs you something else.
New Grandchildren. Your child rings, crying, and it is the good kind. They need somebody on Thursdays and you are somebody. They have their own line in the people list, and somebody to write the names on the back of the photographs for.
Fix The front page shows the game. The top of the site was a stock drawing of a crowd with somebody else's signature in the corner. It is a phone now, with a real screen in it from a real played life — the settlement, the jury summons, the ex in your messages at midnight — and the numbers beside it are counted out of the game rather than typed in. Discord has a proper mark and a place of its own on the page.

A case to solve, a flat to live in, and a country to play for

September 25, 2026

New Finding out. A career that is one job at three ranks: uniform, detective, and your own name on a door. A case comes with four people in the frame and a week of days to spend — ask around, pull the file, turn the place over, or sit outside somebody's house in a cold car. Each move costs a day and turns over a line of evidence.
New The board, and the string on it. Every clue points at somebody by something they are: a car, a key they never gave back, money trouble, a temper. Every person's card says what they are — one thing face up, one thing they keep back. You draw the line between the two by hand, and the certainty bar counts your own lines back to you. It will agree with a mistake.
New The room across the table. Sit anybody down. One is frightened, one has sat in that chair before, one cannot stand a silence — and what opens one shuts another. Get it right and they tell you the thing they were keeping back, or hand you the alibi that puts them out of it. The guilty one answers everything, carefully, and tells you nothing.
New Writing a name down. Right, with enough behind it, and it is a conviction and a fee. Right without it, and they walk, and they know you know. Wrong, and somebody goes away for something they did not do — three of those and you never work a case again.
New Your flat is a room. Buy furniture a piece at a time and put it where you want it: move it, turn it, make it bigger, run it round the colour wheel, and say with layers what stands in front of what. Walk along the room and zoom in on it.
New Somebody inherits the place. The child your will points at gets the home itself — its condition, the work done on it, and the room still arranged the way you left it — rather than a share of what it sold for. What it is worth comes off their cash, because a house is not also money.
New A country, and the summer it comes round. Every life is born into one of thirty-two countries, and the World Cup, the European Championship and the Champions League are brackets you play rather than results you are told: the draw, the opponents, a decision a round, and a final.
Fix The take is playable. The notes in the studio fall slower and the window to hit them is wider — the guitar was harder than it was ever meant to be.
Fix A roof you own is a roof you can live under. Property that arrived any way other than buying it now offers you the door. And nothing stands halfway up the wall any more.

Scouts at the kids' game, the World Cup, friends you make, and bands that fall out

September 23, 2026

New Football starts at five. Kids' football at the local side, a season every year whether anybody is watching or not, and a reputation that builds on what you do in it. From twelve the scouts come: a place in an academy, or a trial first — keep it simple, run all day, or try the thing nobody else would.
New The famous academies. Forty real clubs across the Premier League, La Liga, the Bundesliga, Ligue 1 and the Eredivisie — Paris Saint-Germain, Barcelona, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich, Manchester City, Liverpool, Ajax and the rest. The bigger the club, the better you have to be for its scouts to come, and they come as you get better. Say yes, say no, or leave the letter on the side until your next birthday.
New Sixteen. Your academy keeps you on a first professional contract, or lets you go — and whoever else has been watching makes their offer too. Nobody came? The local side will always sign you, on almost nothing.
New The nights around the league. Your country's cup every season. The Champions League for a first division's top places. And your country on a four-year cycle: World Cup qualifiers, the World Cup, the Nations League, the European Championship — with the Olympics for the under-23s and an Under-17 World Cup for the best of the kids. It is all in a cabinet you can open.
New Friends are made, not handed out. The people in your year, at your club, at the party are people you know. Ask one to hang out and see if it takes — it is likelier with somebody who already likes you, and likelier if people like you. No more discovering thirteen friends you never made.
New Your parents pay for school. Every family is born with money of its own, and the fees are theirs to find, not yours. The grammar school sets an exam, the sports academy a trial, the arts school an audition — and a very good result comes with a bursary that pays for everything.
New Bands fall out. Ten ways it goes wrong: a writing credit, a drunk gig, a solo record nobody mentioned, a partner in the studio, the money, a fight on stage, a better player who wants somebody's place, a label with a favourite, six weeks on a tour bus, and the one who wants a normal life. Each is about one of them, and any of them can end with that person gone — or with no band at all.
Fix The same year, told the same way. Flu, a quiet year, another anniversary: things that happen more than once are told several ways now, and get rarer each time they happen. And a life no longer opens with the same sentence as every other.

Prison, medicine, streaming, solicitors, real cards — and games you play yourself

September 21, 2026

New A sentence is a place. Prison used to be a number counting down while your life sat still. It is a wing: four people on it who are people, what the wing thinks of you, how much trouble the staff have with you, and a year's worth of things to do about both. A detail to work, a crew to be in, a governor who adds years — and two ways out: the board, three questions on top of everything already in your file, or the fence, four plans and years of quiet work that only move while nobody is watching.
New Medicine. Five years of school, two on the wards, then a specialty — and the long ones only take the people at the top of the list. Then the table: three moments, and the patient is a number you are trying not to lower. Being out of your depth costs on every move, not only the dangerous ones. Lose somebody and the family sometimes takes it further; three claims with nothing left of your reputation and you are struck off.
New Streaming. Six things to play and the category decides everything. Three numbers run it: how good you are, how far it travels, and how much of you is left. Then the internet does what it does — a clip without the context, a suspension for a rule that does not exist, a hundred thousand viewers raided onto you, your own face as a reaction image.
New Solicitors. Three firms, from whoever is on duty to a floor of a building with your surname spelled right. A retainer every year, a bonus that buys goodwill, and when you are free you can point them at anybody in your relationships. Their money buys a defence, so suing somebody rich is a real fight, and either way it costs you the relationship. When they come for you, a firm is what argues the sentence down.
New Play it in. A song on the shelf is tracked once, and you play the take: four lanes, notes coming down them, and a line at the bottom where they have to be met. Worth about as much to the record as a good producer, and a bad take is worse than none.
New A hacker's terminal. A contract is no longer a dice roll you watch. Seven puzzles on a green screen with a trace running behind them, and everything needed to answer is on the screen.
New Five seconds of doing it yourself. At the optician, a wall of one character with a single other one hidden in it — miss it and you wear glasses for the rest of your life, on your face, in every picture. Plus a reaction light, three cards at the memory clinic, a finger to hold steady at the roadside, and tones to count.
New A licence you sit for, in two halves, and cars you can then actually take out — for a long empty road, a fine, or a bollard and a bodywork bill.
New Somebody else owns a piece of your company. Four funding rounds, a cap table that pays everybody when you take money out or sell, a board that pushes, staff who do you dirty when they have stopped caring, and years that simply go wrong.
Fix The throttle could not be put to 100. The marks and the control now share one box, so the last mark is 100 and the first is 0.
Fix The character creator was rendering its name fields as basketball courts, which is exactly as stupid as it sounds: two things shared a class name. Colours are swatches you tap now rather than hex codes to read.
Fix Rows across the whole game look like the buttons they are, and whenever the game asks you something the question is set as a question rather than as another one of the answers.
New The casino deals real cards. Blackjack is a sitting now, not a line of text: a shoe shuffled when you sit down, up to eight hands off it, the dealer's hole card face down until it matters, and cards that are cards — pips where a deck puts them, turning over on the felt. Next to it, a five-card draw machine with the paytable on the glass: hold what you want, draw, and a royal flush pays 250 to 1.
Fix The social network is gone. Fame is what the rest of your life did, and it goes quiet when none of it is happening.
Fix The first half-second of the site was the page with no design on it. What loads first is now a still of the screen you are about to get — the front page, or the game's own frame if you have a life saved.
Fix Nothing drawn around a question any more, the name button is the size of the button under it, and the site has an icon of its own in the tab.

Basketball, football, baseball, tennis — and your kid on your team

September 20, 2026

New One ladder, four sports. Little league at eight, the high-school team at fourteen, a college that wants you — or the draft at eighteen if you would rather not wait — and then as long as the body holds up, which the sport decides. Tennis takes the other road: juniors, turn professional, go and earn a ranking.
New You play the game that decides the season, under that sport's own rules. Basketball is possessions down the stretch. Gridiron is a drive, down by down, with the clock against you. Baseball is an at-bat with the season standing on second. Tennis is a set, point by point, deuce and advantage and all.
New Everybody has a ceiling, rolled from what they are made of, and no amount of six o'clock mornings moves it. It is why the draft sends some people first and some people nowhere.
New Recruiting, the draft, and what it pays. Programmes write to you once somebody with a clipboard has watched you play; where you go on draft night decides your first contract, and what you do after that decides the next one. Rings, MVPs, rookie of the year and the all-league team are all things you have to be in a position to win.
New Get a ball in your child's hands. Early enough and they might take it. If they make it while you are still playing, you can end up on the same team as your own kid.
New The people already in the league are affectionate inventions, every one of them: Le'Brawn Jameson, Tom Bratwurst, Babe Ruthless, Rodger Feathers.

A band of your own, and somewhere to get better at it

September 19, 2026

New A music career. Seven kinds of music, three ways to play each of them, and whether it is you, the two of you or a band — which is other people, with names and instruments and a habit of leaving over something that started in a van.
New The hundred. Write up to three songs a year, pay somebody to make one of them sound better than it is, and put one out. Where it lands is the record itself, how many people were waiting, how hot you are and who is pushing it — and a number one wants all four at once.
New Songs are yours to name, with one filled in for the nights nothing comes.
New Somewhere to get better. Practice, singing lessons, a vocal coach with a waiting list, a songwriting group, a writing camp, open mics, stagecraft. One of each a year, and what an hour is worth depends on how quick you are and how much room is left above you. A better song charts higher whoever you are — that is the part of this that is not luck.
New A record can get away from everybody. It happens to good ones far more than to bad ones and it does not care whose logo is on the sleeve, so somebody with nothing can still be heard. Rare enough to be an event.
New Labels that come for you once you are worth coming for, tours from the back room of a pub to a stadium, a back catalogue that pays every year, and Song of the Year at the end of a good one.
Fix Prom offered to ask "the person you like" and then handed you a stranger it had invented. It names them now, and if they say yes it is that same person you are seeing.
Fix Starting at thirteen and working at it, the first record that charts comes in the early twenties rather than at thirty.
New A new front page, which tells you one life instead of listing features at you.

Everybody you know has a life of their own

September 18, 2026

New People are people. Everyone you know has looks, a temperament, money of their own and a job they go to. Their card shows who they are, what they do all day, how rich they look from outside, and how close the two of you are.
New Three times as much to do to somebody, sorted onto shelves — time together, asking for something, where this is going, and the sharp end — and which shelf appears depends on what they are to you. A rich parent really is likelier to hand the money over.
New You see how it landed. Whatever you do to somebody, a card shows it from their side: what they said, how they took it, and what it did to the two of you.
New The crush is a person. The one you cannot stop thinking about is in your relationships now — flirt, gossip, cut them off, or ask them out, and if they say yes that is who you are seeing.
New You name your own babies, with one already filled in.
New School clubs are somewhere you go. Seven of them, you pick, and you meet somebody there. Audition for the lead, take the solo, enter the county championship, print what you were told not to, build the rocket while the teacher is at a conference.
New What you own is on shelves: everything, property, vehicles, other things, what came from the saleroom, and what you still owe.
Fix The circuit fits a phone. The track was being squashed by a screen too short for it, so the picture kept its shape while the cars were stretched across a flatter one — they drove off the road because the road was no longer where they thought. Circuit, dials, throttle, brake, lanes and running order now all fit at 320 points wide.

The child actors have their say

September 17, 2026

New You can start acting at ten. The industry starts them young, and now the game does too — two years earlier than before.
New Rooms open easier when you are young. A young face is what young parts want: casting counts it in your favour from the day you start, the bar in the room is lower while you grow up, and minors get an extra open-call audition every year.
New Drama club. An activity for school-age kids: Saturday mornings in a church hall, and craft earned before your first room. Starting young also means walking in with more of it.
Fix The years of nothing between twelve and your first credit are largely gone — first parts should come in the first couple of years now, not the second couple of decades.

Faces of our own, and a race worth driving

September 16, 2026

New The artwork is ours now. Every face used to be a request to an avatar API. The game draws its own portraits — offline, instantly, with pieces that exist nowhere else: turtleneck, vest, race suit, football shirt, beanie, bandana. Strangers get a face built from their name, so a driver on a grid always has the same one.
New A face is a life. Children look like children — big head, no hair, a bowl cut at five. Hair greys from the mid-forties, lines come in from the fifties, reading glasses turn up in the sixties. Everyone around you ages too.
New Racing, rebuilt. The race runs in real time against the two cars you qualified between. The throttle is how close to the limit you dare run: over it, the car runs wide, smokes, and you can still save it. Going off means going off — you end up in the trees, spinning.
Fix Cars can no longer be dragged backwards when they catch somebody, quick cars brake in time for corners again, and the field races you instead of waiting to be lapped.
New The books. A life can be read as a set of accounts: what each year made and cost, every line of it.
Fix Collars close over necks, children keep their necks, and a life's lines sit under the fringe where they belong.

Acting, the saleroom, and a school that teaches

September 15, 2026

New Acting. An agent on the phone, a slate of films and shows, auditions to win, and whatever the box office says about you afterwards.
New The saleroom is a room. Three houses under the hammer, a live auction against a hidden ceiling, and what you got home — the cheap room is stocked, so the doors actually open.
New School is a place you go. One paper at the end of a programme, sat properly: revise, cram, work with friends, hire a tutor, copy off the person beside you, or turn up and hope. The paper is worth forty marks, and graduation hangs on the last one.
New A job is something you steer: one move a year, each with a way of going wrong, and a rival going for the same rung.
Fix You no longer bid against yourself at auction, and clubs knock before offering you a trial.
Fix Screens stop looking like every other screen — each tab leads with its own shape.

Country, casino, dating, hacking, crime, sport

September 14, 2026

New Run the country. A budget of seven lines, a tax rate, six foreign powers to trade with or fight, and an opposition that grows on unhappiness.
New The casino business. Play the floor — slots, roulette, a real hand of blackjack — then own it: licence, games, building, and a cage that can run empty.
New Dating, rewritten. One person, one opening line, and a personality it either lands on. The app deals faces; affection grows toward exclusive, moving in, and a proposal.
New The hacking career. Skill bought slowly, work legal and not, and what you mostly do is your main defence when the investigation arrives.
New The underworld. Street criminal to crime boss, crew on wages whose loyalty follows the pay, districts that earn every year and are noticed for it, and heat as the other currency.
New A sporting career. A season with a ladder under it — training, form, a calendar, and a country that picks you when you are worth picking.

Exams, politics, and the first year

September 13, 2026

New An actual exam paper — three written questions and one sum made up on the spot, pitched at your year. Exams are a decision, not a roll.
New Politics, and a cult. Councillor to president, debates fought on what the place is actually worried about, and a doctrine you can grow — carefully.
New Health is a system. Conditions caught, lived with and treated: asthma, diabetes, a bad back, depression, and what years of unhappiness grow into.
New Children, a will, and an heir. Finish a life and carry on as one of the children — same economy, same surname, their own life.
Fix Saves that were stuck are freed, and the prom, sexuality and teen-parent storylines behave.

What has changed