What's new? Legal... polish... badges? • July 2, 2026

🏅 Badges

Badges are now fully live! 30+ badges across Special, Foundation, Supporter, and gameplay tiers.

Earn badges automatically by clearing boards in any mode.

Open your Account menu to claim progress you've already made.

Equip a badge by tapping it on the Account screen. A few badges are only shown once unlocked, so keep your eyes peeled for them.

What's new:

New Player, Beta, and PreVS badges now unlock correctly for everyone (including Google/Discord sign-ups)

Multiple badges earned at once now cycle through with a quick blink instead of a slow fade

Badges load faster when you open the Account screen

Time Attack unlock celebration now plays reliably when you cross 10 games

🏷️ Player Tags

Every registered account gets a 6-character tag (e.g. #AB12CD).

Right now, it'll be shown on Help Me! and Let Me Help! for the social layer, but we're rapidly expanding on it as we speak.

Help Me! and Let Me Help! links now use tags instead of raw usernames. Opening a friend's link shows their current name and badge.

What's new:

Supporters can now claim short tags (1–6 characters) using the full alphabet.

⌨️ Keyboard & Focus

Keyboard warriors rejoice. I play Shikaku+ on the keyboard personally, and I've noticed some bugs that are totally unacceptable! We've resolved most of these, but more polish is underway to make the keyboard experience better.

Game area focus fixed
Pressing an arrow key now correctly activates the board instead of landing on the "Help Me" button

Solved modal

Escape now returns to the main menu (was: just dismissed the popup). R key gives you a new puzzle (Daily exempt — stays fixed)

Replays

The keyboard crosshair no longer appears in spectator/review mode

📰 What's New Feed

We've added a new place where you can read the latest and the greatest from Shikaku+ and me, while the game is still in active development, you get to see new cool features exactly when we're working on it!

The bell icon in the home header now lights up amber when there's something new to read. Tap it to see the latest updates, patch notes, and announcements. The newest post also appears as a toast when you launch the app.

Also: Tapping the version number on the About page opens a surprise. See it for yourself!

📄 About & Legal

The About page (Settings → About) now has everything in one place:

Full credits (art, alpha feedback, fonts, game code, icons)

Legal links (Website, Privacy Policy, Terms of Service, Data Deletion)

Licenses drill-in with full OFL 1.1 text for our fonts

"All open-source licenses" button shows every package the app uses

All external links open in your browser, not inside the app.

🔗 Help Me! Links

We've noticed that Help Me! links to non Shikaku+ players may look intimidating when greeted with a login/signup page and blocking the whole puzzle. We've flipped the script and made it so that they can solve the puzzle first and THEN have the option to send the puzzle back after they've registered.

No more login wall for link visitors

Fresh guests opening a shared board now land straight on the puzzle

Name prompt for guests

If you solve a link as a guest and tap "Send it back!", you'll be asked for your name before sending (with an option to register instead)

📱 Android App Links

Currently in development, needs more extensive testing (for me)

Shikaku+ links (like shikaku.plus/...) now open directly in the app on Android. One manual step remains: hosting a verification file on the website. Until then, links fall back to browser behavior.

⏱️ Blitz

Blitz mode now unlocks by date (July 5, 2026 06:00 PHT) and shows a live countdown on the Custom Game card. Tekazu mode stays developer-gated for now.

Note: You still need 50 completed games to unlock Blitz — the date gate only determines when the mode is available in the app.

🎨 Polish

Badge progress bars show your progress toward gameplay badges (e.g. "12 / 25 · 48%")

Account screen shows newest badges first

Favorite ruleset and favorite gamemode now split in your stats (Classic/Hokan vs Time Attack/Blitz/Tekazu)

Still Coming

Vanity tags & Friends system — Future updates

💛🟨 Thank you for playing Shikaku+!

sagings