Pre-release patch notes

We reworked the game around physics-based water-current controls, collecting and combining creatures, and taking on a variety of modes.

• Turtle Mode: Refined the gameplay of guiding creatures with water currents, merging matching creatures to grow them, and feeding them to the turtle while striving to survive and earn higher scores.

• Ring Mode: Added 100 stages where water currents guide rings onto pegs. Navigate varied terrain, moving pegs and creature obstacles, and earn up to 3 stars based on your remaining current gauge.

• Shark Challenge: Added 100 levels where you choose 4 creature species, build power through merging and feeding, and challenge increasingly strong sharks.

• Deckbuilding and ecosystems: Expanded creatures' distinct abilities and their interactions through feeding, egg laying, transformation and growth. Build different strategies by choosing which creatures to keep, grow or feed, with recommended decks and tips on how to play them.

• Creature collection and encyclopedia: Golden fish earned through play can be used for collection at the Marine Research Lab to discover new creatures, fill your encyclopedia and expand your lineup options.

• Growth and legendary discoveries: Introduced creature leveling and legendary forms. Legendary creatures you discover by growing them yourself can be viewed in the encyclopedia.

• Customization: Expanded customization with ocean backgrounds, frames and a variety of rings, and added support for backgrounds subscribed to through the Steam Workshop.

• Controls and convenience: Refined creature movement and collisions, screen layouts and gameplay instructions, and improved keyboard, controller and Steam Deck controls along with features such as leaderboards and achievements.

• Added merge hints from Turtle Level 2, advanced hints at higher levels, and a hint toggle. Dangerous Trash and Pufferfish gained blinking warnings.

• Added creature-level achievements and new level-based appearances for Piranha and Pufferfish, including special Level 50 materials.

• Introduced turtle-level-based creature unlocks, an EXP gauge and revised shop unlock conditions. Higher-level creatures could appear later in a run.

• Rebalanced merge rewards and the EXP curve, adjusted late-game spawning and the Merge Gauge, and prevented duplicate items from spawning simultaneously.

• Refined creature collision physics, added a trash-merge sound, and fixed controller and off-screen creature movement issues.

• Reduced the installation size from roughly 300 MB to the 200 MB range.

• Replaced slot-item-dependent spawning with continuous spawning of five random creature types, and adjusted related items and balance.

• Successful merges began restoring 15 HP, adding a direct survival reward to merging.

• Added particles and sound when setting a new high score during a run.

• Removed the Squid, refined creature physics interactions, and fixed intermittent controller input failures.

• Added an item that copies one selected creature slot to all other slots, and a Turtle Suction item that pulls in food.

• Added numeric Hunger and Merge Gauge displays, feedback for taking damage, and visual and sound feedback when a merge lacked enough gauge.

• Shortened spawn intervals, increased Merge Gauge recovery and retuned hunger warnings to improve pacing.

• Adjusted physics by creature type and size, improved joystick response, and refined hunger sounds.

• Standardized Fish Eggs to 1 EXP and 1 Hunger and removed their ability to spawn more eggs when eaten.

• Fixed a Starfish scoring error, missing non-English rules text, and an effect-related crash introduced during the engine upgrade.

• Allowed creatures of the same type to merge across different levels, producing the higher level plus one. Fixed chain merges and set the creature level cap to 50.

• Removed the Wind Gauge for unlimited wind use, and introduced a separate Merge Gauge to control merging.

• Expanded creature-specific conversion and targeting skills. New Red, Black and Blue Eggs restored HP, dealt damage or replenished the Merge Gauge.

• Reworked creature spawning and item timers, adjusted score scaling and growth requirements, and made level achievements unlock cumulatively.

• Added wind-control hints, a turtle-level display and merge-level popups; reorganized the gauges and item controls.

• Fixed zero-HP death handling, crashes caused by very large scores, and creatures moving backwards after wind ended.

• Expanded turtle behavior with drifting, resting, surfacing, threat avoidance and food tracking, plus clearer collision and poisoning reactions.

• Added item drops from merged creatures, revised creature spawn limits, and improved jellyfish movement and anti-stuck handling.

• Improved wind response, buoyancy, rotation and bottom-boundary handling; refined turtle movement and recovery after collisions.

• Added pickup and recovery effects, gauge previews, readable large-score formatting, and keyboard/controller paging for the rules screen.

• Fixed slot ordering, creatures freezing or spinning in place, turtle movement jumps and a crash when returning to the lobby.

• Rebalanced hunger drain, creature rewards and level-up requirements around more active merging.

• Added downward wind and updated Steam Deck bindings, expanding control over merge positioning.

• Made eating sea creatures the main source of Fish Eggs, reduced egg-chain spawning, standardized egg EXP and increased Red Fish healing.

• Rebalanced merge rewards, creature scores and turtle EXP requirements across several updates.

• Added a jellyfish score bonus, then corrected its scaling from exponential to linear to prevent excessive high-level scores.

• Adjusted slot refresh and expired-item replacement, delayed Trash Generator spawning until later progression, and limited simultaneous trash.

• Updated creature visuals and slot pickup feedback, added Credits, improved cancel controls, and revised the How to Play layout and wording.

• Added rolling creature slots that automatically populate the field. Follow-up updates reduced the slot count from six to five and revised slot-item rewards and timing.

• Expanded identical-creature merging so merged creatures grew and awarded more score; creature-spawn and trash-spawn items could cancel each other out.

• Improved prey hunting, matching-creature movement, shell buoyancy and merging, and turtle turns near walls.

• Added optional score popups and corrected their calculations, smoothed the HP bar, improved wind response and refined feeding effects.

• Fixed ranking-language display, replaced a score-threshold achievement with “Check the Ranking,” and adjusted Fish Egg rewards for early progression.

• Fixed initial slot population and zero-HP death handling. Problematic Thai and Norwegian language options were temporarily removed.

• Launched Turtle Game in Early Access on October 15, 2025, with water-driven movement and creature feeding.

• Added controller support, automatic pausing for Steam Overlay and controller disconnection, and Steam Deck interface scaling.

• Introduced leaderboards, expanded localization and improved menu focus and input handling.

• Introduced shell merging and the ability to cancel out matching trash generators.

• Added Steam Cloud saves for high scores and unlocked background and frame skins, enabling progress to carry between devices.

• Improved buoyancy and creature movement, adjusted early balance, and fixed the first level achievement.