Everything we ship, in plain language. Newest first.
The big one: a new look, a new way to pay, and sixty achievements
GLOBAL UPDATE
Months of work that had been waiting behind one branch, landing at once. The site has been redrawn, there is another way to pay and a better way to sign in, achievements are worth collecting, and Spyfall, Bunker and Alias now answer to Spy, Shelter and TheHat.
A new look
- New key art for every game, in both languages — ComedOn, Wordhack and BeIntelligent had been falling back to the English card and now have Russian covers of their own.
- Your wallpaper actually paints, on the identity card and behind the whole page.
- The profile caught up with the rest: dice and coin tiles, a bigger pet and a gallery of the ones you own, dates that read DD.MM.YYYY, and a guard that stops you leaving with unsaved changes.
- The shop got collections, a sort menu, gifting, and equip straight from a pet you already own.
- Leaderboards are grouped instead of fourteen buttons in one wall: pick a kind of board first — level, coins, dice, pets or a game — and the variants open underneath. Plus a podium for the top three.
- Donate was one scrolling column of wallet addresses in monospace. It is now four sources as tabs, each with a code you can scan or tap.
- Entrance animations, custom scrollbars, a footer that behaves on a phone, and a long tail of things that were quietly the wrong colour.
Signing in
- The Telegram button is ours now — same shape, same font, translated, sitting in the row with the other three. It used to be an iframe on their origin: their blue, their size, their English.
- Telegram can be connected to an account you already have, instead of only starting a new one.
- Avatars never render as a hole any more. The letter sits under the photo, so a picture that fails to load simply uncovers it.
- A Telegram sign-in gives a name and a face but no email address, and every payment route needs one. That used to be a dead end with an English browser alert on it. Now a panel offers Google, Discord or GitHub — each brings a confirmed address — or a field to type one in, and your purchase carries on by itself.
Paying
- Tribute joins Whop: pay inside Telegram, in roubles, and a week is available there too.
- Storefront, period and currency are one decision, so they are one row of controls — and picking a storefront narrows the currencies to what it can actually charge.
- Quarterly and half-yearly, not just monthly and annual.
- Russian readers get the Russian plans at rouble prices. Both storefronts carry two sets of the same three plans and we were showing everyone the English one.
- The subscription page leads with the invite ladder, and the bar sits directly above the cards so a rung and the plan it unlocks are touching.
- Checkout happens on our own page in a modal, with an "open in a new tab" escape hatch that is always there.
Achievements
- A board per game — Mafia, Shelter, Spy, Who Am I? and TheHat — with sixty new achievements between them.
- Almost none of them are about playing a hundred games. They are about the moment: winning in Shelter without ever being nominated, explaining ten words in one turn of TheHat, guessing your character without hearing a single "yes".
- An achievement can pay coins, XP and dice, and it says what it pays before you earn it.
- The prize is yours to collect. Unlocking one no longer quietly credits your balance — the card lights up and you press the button.
- Locked ones stay on the board with a progress bar, each wears its rarity as a colour and keeps its unlock date, and you can pin six to your profile.
Rewards and levels
- One page for everything you can earn: the quests, the daily and weekly tasks, and every achievement board. The tasks moved here from your profile.
- Quests pay coins for things you were doing anyway — following, joining, wearing our tag — and each tile says how it is checked rather than implying every tick was earned the same way.
- Invite a friend and you both get 100 coins. It used to pay only you.
- XP shows up when you earn it: a quiet "+15 XP" after a game, wherever you happen to be looking.
- A level-up takes the whole screen, and every level now pays coins — twice the level you reached. Level 30 is 60 coins.
- The GamePass island is server-run now: real dice, real coins, your tier, avatar, frame and pet.
New names
- Spyfall is Spy, on spy.chillgame.online.
- Bunker is Shelter, on shelter.chillgame.online.
- Alias is TheHat, on thehat.chillgame.online.
- Your stats, wins and achievements are untouched — only the names and the addresses changed, and the old addresses still work.
In the games
- Wordhack and BeIntelligent are in beta — playable from the games list.
- Wordhack runs inside Discord as an Activity: start it from a voice channel and play without leaving.
- Shelter hosts can write their own cataclysms, with real effects, in the same language their custom cards already use — plus a button that fires a random one.
- Chat, names and custom room content go through a language filter now. It is written to avoid false positives more than to catch words: being told no with nobody to ask why is worse than a word getting through.
- ComedOn loads faster — 138 MB of audio moved off the page and onto storage built for it.
Behind the scenes
- Email, Telegram and Discord announcements, with one consent switch every channel respects and an unsubscribe that works without signing in.
- Share a link and the preview card now speaks the reader’s language.
Worth knowing
- Eight achievements are switched off for now — four in Spy, three streaks and one in TheHat. Each needs the game to remember something it does not keep yet. They will turn on without anybody having to re-earn anything.
- lava.top is not among the payment methods at the moment. Whop and Tribute are unaffected.
Themes for Shelter, and a table that answers questions
GLOBAL UPDATE
Shelter can wear a different world — magic, cyberpunk or a castle keep — with its own art, its own soundtrack and its own names for the cards. Plus a reference for every card and skill, a live console for the narrator, and a long list of things the table kept tripping over.
Themes and skins
- Three new looks beside the original: Arcanum, Neon and The Keep. Each brings its own table, its own room and its own music.
- A skin is yours alone. A theme is the host’s choice for the room, and everyone at the table gets it — including players without a subscription. Ultra sets it.
- Arcanum renames the whole deck: Spotlight becomes Revealing Light, Shield becomes Ward. Same cards, same effects, different world.
- Subscription tiers now show at the table. Plus gets a mark and a colour, Pro and Ultra a name that runs a gradient.
Knowing what things do
- A codex, open to everyone: every action card and all ninety profession skills, with search. It says what a card does, never who is holding one.
- The journal unfolds. Tap a line to read the card’s wording, or a skill’s once the profession card is face-up.
- A skill being used now announces itself to the table with what it actually did, instead of a line nobody sees.
Every skill does something
- Twenty-eight profession skills were flavour text and nothing else. All of them land a real effect now, and keep their wording.
- The Electrician rewires the shelter into a portable generator you can argue over. The lawyer subpoenas a file. The politician promises change, and a trait really does change.
The host’s hand on the dial
- A live console: how many cards open this round, how long each phase runs, how much of a skill the table may read — all changeable mid-game.
- How many copies of a card may be in play at once. Spotlight is one per game by default, and 0 removes a card from the deck entirely.
- How likely a player is to be dealt their profession’s skill at all, from certain to a lucky break.
- A cooldown between actions, so ten people cannot empty their hands in ten seconds.
- Hosts can rewrite any card’s name and text for their own table.
On a phone
- The room is a page you scroll rather than a fixed screen with controls piled on top of each other.
- The table turns with a drag. It used to need a mouse wheel, which a phone has not got.
- The back gesture asks before it drops you out of a game.
- An exile’s dossier closes, however long it runs.
Fixes worth naming
- Spotlight opened every dossier two or three times a game. There was no shared deck, so nothing could be rare — now there is one, and it is.
- Turn time means what the dial says. Classic rules were quietly stretching it by half again.
- Eight of nine pets and every bought frame drew as a broken box in Shelter. They come from where the artwork actually lives now.
- Pausing stops the clock under a name, not just the number beside it.
- A deploy tells the table it is happening instead of dropping the connection without a word.
Spy and Who Am I
- The clue box folds away, so you can re-read the word list and the clues already given while you write.
- The theme catalogue opens for every seat, not only the host’s.
- Every game now shows the whole set of what an account wears: photo, frame, title, pet and tier.
- Who Am I’s question card carries the asker’s sticker and name, and whether it rises at all is your own setting.
Worth knowing
- Neon and The Keep have their own art and music but still use the original card names. Their words are being written.
- Themes are an Ultra feature. A room dressed by an Ultra host looks that way for everyone in it.
Global update — every game touched
GLOBAL UPDATE
The biggest update we have shipped. Watching without taking a seat, a rebuilt Shelter, a fairer Spy, and far less advertising in your way. Here is what changed, game by game.
Spy
- You can now watch a game without playing it. Become an observer from the lobby or the end screen, and step back in before the next round starts.
- Catching the Double Agent is its own hunt. After the spy vote there is always a second vote to name the agent — everyone votes, the unmasked spy included, and guessing wrong costs you nothing. Catch both and the table takes 175 points instead of 100, plus a new award for it.
- Unanimous voting, if you want it. Switch it on in the lobby and every voter has to name the same player, or the round simply carries on.
- Themes and secret words are in Russian for Russian players. They used to show in English no matter what language you played in.
- Words and turn order stop repeating. The same word will not come back around until the deck has moved on, and the same player will not open two rounds in a row.
- The host can end a game, or end a player's turn, without leaving the table.
- The Double Agent is finally scored as the side they actually play for, and the word-giver no longer earns points for a game they only watch.
- New awards for games played, a lobby setting for turn order, and a tidier player grid.
Shelter
- Settings are one screen now. Seats, hidden cards, the opening round and the reveal schedule live together instead of being scattered — and if two settings contradict each other, the game says so before you start rather than after.
- Presets are gone. Nothing is hidden behind Classic / Blitz / Hardcore any more; you set what you want directly.
- Room setups can be shared. Every configuration gets a short code you can send to a friend.
- The log looks like an old monitor — green phosphor, scan lines and all. Both the log and the notepad can be dragged where you like, and they remember where you put them.
- Skipping a vote is now a rule you set: when it is allowed, how many times per game, and whether it is free, doubly punished, or a debt that piles up.
- Sex and age were merged into one "identity" card, and the freed slot went to build. Special skills read as skills again — the life story moved to the extra information.
- Skills come in three shapes: a random card, a specific one, or one you pick yourself. They no longer wait for your profession to be revealed first.
- The host can remove a player mid-game, and can now leave from any phase rather than only the lobby.
- Russian text stays inside its card. Names wrap onto two lines, descriptions cut off cleanly, and hovering a card shows the whole thing above the fan.
- Talk in the app or on Discord — your choice, set per room. Cameras are ULTRA only, and the option is now hidden rather than shown and quietly ignored.
- A dropped connection in the lobby holds your seat for ten seconds, so a refresh is just a refresh.
- The end screen is open: the whole cast, every dossier readable.
- Plenty of small things: wider limits on every setting, close buttons that work on draggable panels, avatars that no longer overlap the apocalypse bar, a paused-timer marker that no longer hides behind a face, and "Unlimited" written out instead of an ∞.
TheHat
- Observers. Anyone, host included, can step out of the game and just watch — and an observer always sees the word from the explaining player's side.
- One "⋯" menu per player instead of a row of buttons: move them between teams, to the bench, to observers, reorder, or remove.
- Bigger rooms. Twelve players by default, up to sixteen on PRO and ULTRA.
- Rounds can be anywhere from 10 to 240 seconds, and the penalty for skipping a word is a number you choose rather than an on/off switch.
- The host can end a turn early. Points already earned stay; the card in hand goes back to the deck.
- Typing a team name is smooth again — it used to fight you back on every keystroke.
- "All words" now clears and locks the other themes, and turning it off leaves you on a real theme instead of an empty deck.
Across the site
- Search finds people again. Players whose name has a space or a dot in it were invisible in search and in the leaderboards; they are back.
- No more advertising the moment you walk into a room. What is left is out of the way, and the reward ad opens in the middle of the screen instead of clinging to the top.
- The Discord invite is on the English site too, not only the Russian one.
- And plenty more!
Tokens replace play-time limits
Play used to be measured in minutes counted against a daily allowance. It is now measured in tokens, and you spend them on a game rather than on the clock. The point of the change: you know what a game costs before you start it, and you get back whatever you did not use.
How it works
- One token is fifteen minutes of play.
- Every lobby works out how long its game will run from its own settings — players, timers, rounds — and shows the price before anyone starts. The most any game can cost is 20 tokens.
- The price is charged to everyone at the start, the host included.
- If a game runs longer than the estimate, it costs nothing extra. The estimate is a price, not a meter.
Getting tokens back
- One token is spent the moment a game starts. After that, one more for every 15 minutes you stay in the room.
- Everything you did not spend comes back the moment your seat closes — when the game ends, or when you leave.
- Your clock is your own. It stops when you leave the room, not when you are eliminated: sitting and watching still holds a seat.
- Dropped out by a bad connection? That time is not charged, and a card in the corner offers you the way back — or the way out with your tokens.
What you get a day
- Guests and free accounts: 20 tokens a day. They refresh at midnight UTC and they do not stack up.
- A 30-second ad is worth +2 tokens, up to 10 a day.
- PRO and ULTRA: unlimited. No game is ever priced against you.
If you were here before
- Play minutes you were still holding have been converted to tokens at the same rate — 15 minutes to a token — and the tokens are already on your account.
- Everyone who was playing back when play was measured in minutes gets the "Timer" title.
Worth knowing
- Tokens are not money and cannot be bought, traded or refunded for money. They are a daily play allowance.
- The estimate a lobby shows is a ceiling worked out from that room's settings, not a promise about how long you will actually play.
- Prices, daily allowances and ad rewards may change as we see how this works in practice. If we change them, it will be in these notes.
Spy and Shelter — fixes and comfort
Bug fixes, small comforts, and a bigger welcome for newcomers.
Spy
- Turn order is shuffled now — no more the same player always going first.
Shelter
- The door, monitor and radio on the home screen light up on hover, so it is obvious what you can click.
- The exit button is red and easy to find.
- A "Leave" button was added on the left of the lobby.
- Chat is fixed — messages no longer send twice.
- Bigger type in the game and the lobby.
- You can change your name from inside the lobby (the ✎ button up top).
Settings
- Buttons respond faster.